Visions In Colour #6

Commander Front

Commander Back

Commander Face

Musician Front

Musician Back

Standard Bearer Front

Standard Bearer Back

Here is my entry for the Visions In Colour #6 event. It is the commander figure from "Citadel's Warhammer #8510F Dark Elf Corsair Command E". There are two other figures in the pack ($16!) a Musician and a Standard Bearer.

These are interesting figures to work on. I only now wish I'd spent less time playing Rage of Mages and more time painting! I'm not particularly fond of Games Workshop figures because they are usually too heavily exaggerated for my tastes (look at how THICK that sword is), although in a fantasy world, what's exaggeration? I found that there were a number of places on this figure where the mold was indistinct and it was difficult to pick out where one feature ended and another one began. The area of the sword, right boot, and cloak on the commander is one example. The bottom of the standard bearer's cloak is another example because it just turns into a muddle and I don't know how to paint that so that it looks nice.

Anyways, enough complaining, let's get to the good stuff, the painting! I decided to do all three figures at the same time so that they would look somewhat similar. When I first looked at these figures I didn't know what to do with them since I don't do a lot of humanoinds but I've started doing some and I'm learning how to do faces and hands and quite enjoying it. When trying to decide on what to do, I noticed that these guys have absolutely huge feet and their ears come out of their necks. Very strange for elves, but not so strange for frogs! AHA! I'll paint 'em green! Actually it worked out well because I based the skin with Elf Flesh and washed with a dark green and that pretty much took care of 90% of the skin areas. A little bit of highlighting was all that was needed after that. Eyes were a lot trickier because it's really hard to get in there but I loaded up my white with extender so that I could wash it off if I needed to, and boy, did I need to! Most of the eyes I did by painting the eye black and then putting two white dots in the corners but for the commander I found that it was easier to paint the eye white and then just do a black stripe for the pupil.

The cloaks were very time consuming. I decided to wash each of them in a different colour (denoting rank) and then paint each scale with 4 other colours. I used purple, red, blue, green, and gold. I tried very hard to do it so that no two scales of the same colour are next to each other but I messed up a few times and there are some the same colour next to each other. Oh well. The one thing I like about using metallics is that they don't have to be highlighted. It's cheating, but it works well for me!

By about this time (I paint very, very slowly) October is past and I only just realized that the deadline is 01-Nov-01 instead of mid-November like I thought it had been extended to. Oh crap! I guess it's time to just do the base coats on the commander and get my entry written and hopefully when I get him done I can update the pictures!

One other thing is that the standard and pole are the first time I've ever done any pinning and because of the angle I accidentally drilled right out the front of the standard! Doh!

24-Mar-02
I finally finished work on the second figure from the pack, the Dark Elf Musician. I wasn't sure if I wanted to make these guys look alike by giving them similar swords and bases and the like, but, since I'd already given them different clothes and dragon skin cloaks and really, I wasn't too happy with the sword and base on the ViC#6 Elf (the Commander) I decided to just to what I felt like for the other two. To this end, the musician has a glowing green sword and and red base. I used some of my new fluorescent paints on the sword and base and because the tabard is red, it almost looks like the base is glowing and reflecting lights off the tabard. It's cool, although it was totally unplanned! I blame it on the fluorescents and the scanner. The fluorescent paints are pretty nifty to work with because they are very thin and almost don't show up at all. I used the red and yellow on the base and they hardly show. The sword has a lot of green and yellow in it, although you can't really see the yellow. I was gonna do it with metallic green but I kinda liked the green effect so I just darkened the metallic and used it for darklining the raised part of the sword. It's not a great job but it's okay. I got the guy done and right now I think that's what's most important right now! Now to get working on my top secret project for ViC#7! Muwahahahaha!!!

NEW!!!

17-Mar-03
Just a little update to say that the standard bearer was completed a while ago but I'm still waiting on the standard. And my ViC#7 project has been stagnant for a long time. I got the base well started but the figure herself has proven to be a bit of a block for me.