Report from Abstracity

Minidragon (Joe Wiedeman) writes:

Painting the Female Druid

For starters, I want to talk about assembly on this figure. Assembly consists of attaching the standard/totem top to the pole. At first, I thought this would be simple - the parts are cut so that they have more surface area for bonding than normal. Going with the "more surface area means I won't need a pin" theory, I simply glued the pieces together with superglue.

This turned out to be a mistake as I ended up breaking the pieces apart with minimal force while I was painting! With the need for a stronger join apparent, I decided to drill straight throught the join and put a pin in "sideways." I couldn't insert the pin in the regular way because of the odd way i-Kore had decided to cut the joint. After pinning, I was left with two rugged little bumps sticking out of the pole...I decided to hide them behind gems instead of filing them down. The only picture I got of assembly was from the first attempt...no pin, just glue.

Now with that out of the way, we can get down to the painting!

I decided to basecoat this one black (my usual approach...I've got to know for certain that I want primarily light colors before I'll even consider using white). I used black because I had no clue what kind of colors I was going to use - I work that way often, especially when not working from reference material. I used GW black paint for the basecoat, after the mini had been washed with warm water and dish soap.

I decided to paint the totem first as it was the only bit I had a plan for. I'd decided that such a massive thing could only be lifted if it were made of wood...so wood it would be! I used a very simple method on the wood (and I think it worked out so well that I'll be using it on all the wood I paint from now on). I started with a medium brown base. With that dry, I picked 3 other browns (a reddish one, a very light one, and an "earthy" one) and simply painted lots of little stripes of color. I just kept at it until I had a good mix of colors, and then I painted darker lines in showing where boards might be joined together. It all went very quickly.

Next I painted the skin, this would take care of 50% of the figure! I had to do a lot of thin coats (4 or 5) to get a nice smooth finish (painting light colors over a black base and doing it smoothly takes perserverance!). After I had the base color on, I gave her a wash with slightly thinned GW Chestnut Ink. The ink wash defined her features and gave some shading. After the wash, I added some shading and highlighting where needed. (I kept the shading light as I wanted pale skin.)

With the skin out of the way, I decided to work on her hair. I didn't want to do blonde, brown, black, or some off-the-wall color...so red it was. Doing red hair would also be an explanation for her very pale complexion. I started her hair with a very dark red, and added orange and yellow to lighten it for the highlights. When the highlights were finished, I went back to the dark red and painted some dark lines in. I think she ended up with a very luxurious-looking mane!

In the next stage, I did a few areas together. I finished her face (adding a painted-on top lip that helps her looks tremendously), where I paid special attention to the eyes. Seen up close, the eyes are a very deep brown with tiny points of reflected light. After the face, I painted the breastplate and spearhead-thingy on her totem. I used the non-metallic style (NMM) because it's faster than trying to get a nice effect with metallics, and it gives a clean, high contrast look. I did gold trim on the breastplate, gold bracelets and "charm thighlet," and copper charms...all in NMM. The copper required only two colors: the same deep red from her hair and white (in various mixes). Also at this point, I painted her finger- and toe-nails.

In the last "progress shot," you can see where I added the gems to the totem to cover the pin. It was at this point that I broke the thing! Here I painted her thong, topknot holder, sickle, and bracers. I chose very stark highlighting on the sickle, to try to give it the super shiny chipped obsidian look.

In the finished pictures you can see the final touches: some lining for definition; the totem is finished (I tried for a wrought-iron look for the bulbous bits between the "horns"); and I finished the base.

I spent a bit of extra time on the base for this one as I really liked how she turned out. I painted some tiny grey rocks on and added a couple plants to give some height variation to the base. (Usually I just do my sand mix, flock, and static grass.)

Finally, as I really did like this mini, I consulted with my wife to come up with a name for her. We perused the websites of some druid fanatics and settled on Valeda.

That's it!! Don't vote me off or I'll cry like baby.

Finished Pictures from Abstracity