Varghar

painting time: 38-40 hours, plus the base.

This mini was a commission job. It's the first Rackham miniature I have painted for a while, and certainly the largest. He is so chunky and heavy!

The client wanted the fur to have a slight texture - a sort of subtle dotted, mottled effect, rather than being completely flat and smooth like skin. So, this proved the be a new sort of challenge: I didn't have to worry so much about the smoothness of the transitions, but it was tricky to try to obtain a textured effect that wasn't too noticeable, and still looked good.

The colours I used for the fur were VMC medium sea grey + VMC basalt grey + VMC burnt umber for the base colour, the shading with basalt grey + burnt umber + black, and more, darker shading with mixtures of dark browns and black, and even dark blue colours for the darkest shadows. Highlights were with pure medium sea grey, and then adding VMC silvergrey. Once this had been done, I went back with a normal brush and painted lots of tiny dots over the fur areas, using the full gradient of grey colours from darkest to lightest. The colours overlapped though, so that there were some dots of lighter grey in the sections dominated by dark dots, and some darker dots in the parts dominated by light dots. Then I painted a series of glazes and 'juices' over all of the fur, using mixes of browns such as burnt umber, GW bestial brown, GW snakebite leather and VMC german cam. black brown.

For the silver metal parts, I used a different, more blue colour than normal, to try to obtain more contrast with the dominant greys on the fur. The metal colour was based around VMC dark seagreen, adding VMC light sand and VMC silvergrey for highlights, and pure white for the final light points. For shading, I added VMC dark sea blue and black.

There is quite a lot of blood on the mini - perhaps it is a little too gory, but I couldn't resist the nice contrast of the stronger blood colours against the more neutral colours that dominate the rest of the model. Also, I think that the blood emphasise the brutal and primal nature of the miniature quite well, so I think it works ok. Plus I do love a good blood splatter! :)

To paint the blood, I used a combination of 3 different substances: first, I painted on some patches and streaks with dark red paint (VMC carmine red + VMC cadmium maroon). Then, using a brighter red mixture of red ink + black ink + red paint, I went over some of the streaks to make them more solid, and did a few extra random spots. Then, after varnishing, I went back and painted gloss varnish on most of the blood areas - dilute varnish on most parts, but pure varnish on other parts, so there was a varation in the amount of shine. Then, to finish I used a mixture of tamiya clear red + black ink to put some heavy, solid marks in the most bloody areas.

Guild Artisan,
Sebastian.