Dark Elf

This was one of my golden demon entries for 2006, in the fantasy single mini category!

The mini is based on one of the black guard musicians, with the drum under the left arm and drumstick in the other hand. So it was a fairly minor conversion - I just replaced the drumstick with the sword blade, drilled out the drum and put the scabbard in the space, bent the arm in towards the body and gave him a shield on that arm. Also, on the there were flames sculpted onto the shoulder plates, but I didn't like them so I filed them off and made the shoulder plates smooth.

For the painting, I knew that I wanted to try NMM for the metal, which is why I tried to choose a miniature with more intricate armour shapes than most GW minis. For the atmosphere of the mini, I was imagining the cold, frozen wastelands of Naggaroth, the home of the dark elves. Therefore, I tried to choose a colour scheme to reflect this: the colours revolve around the cold half of the colour wheel, blue, going to green on one side and purple on the other. These colours were offset by the orange and yellow of the rust, and red of the blood, both of which stand out more against cold backdrop.

The sort of frozen land I was imagining would have quite a low light level - the wintry light would be quite weak, meaning that colours would lack intensity. I tried to show this with the colours by making sure that there wasn't great contrast between colours: the colours are quite dark and dim, and are meant to sort of meld into each other, to give a shadowy, dark and cold atmosphere to the mini. I think this aspect also emphasises the cruel, cold nature of the dark elves - something I also tried to reflect in the jagged, sharp angles and shapes of the freehand designs on the armour and cloak, and the rune on the shield.

To paint the cloak, I wanted the purple colour moving from a slightly warmer aspect on the upper regions, to colder colour on the lower areas. So I started with a base of VMC violet mixed with some dark red and a little black and grey, to reduce the intensity of the colour (violet is quite bright). Then to shade, I mixed the base colour with darker reds and brown + black for the top areas, then with more blue introduced for the middle parts, and just pure dark blue for the lower parts. Then highlighting was done by adding VMC medium sea grey to the base colour for the lower areas, some medium grey to the base colour for the mid sections (medium grey is a warmer grey), and adding VMC beige red for the top areas - beige red is quite warm, an orange feeling to the colour, and so the top areas of the cloak are quite pink-orange in the highlights. I also used some turquoise glazes on the lower parts, to emphasise the colder blue feeling. There are also some turquoise glazes on the left, lower side of the shield, bringing some slight tints of an interesting colour in the darker parts.

I tried to introduce some colour into the armour plates as well, with glazes of dark green and purple in certain areas, to add a little more interest to the greys. The rust and oxidation is all done in the usual way.

On the base, the snow is a product weisern recommended: jo sonja's texture paste. It's a white paste, you can just paint it straight on and it dries slightly translucent, especially in the thin parts. It makes a pretty good snow effect - and the best part is that it's so easy, and predictable - less potential for disaster!

Guild Artisan,
Sebastian.