It is done. Finally!

This project took much, much, more time than I ever anticipated. It was a struggle in keeping painting on the level I wanted, as well as motivating myself to finish it. It didn’t turn out as I wished, but, man, I did learn a lot.

I wanted this model since the leaks came out last year. Finally I got this miniature during my trip to France, in a small shop in Nice (I didn’t want to wait even a day to get it : ) and started working on it the day we got back home.

After assembling I wanted it to be special. To paint it using much different techniques than usually and, god damn it, to make it the best model I ever painted.

Honestly speaking, I failed. Maybe not miserably, as the mini is finished and doesn’t occupy the never finished part of my display cabinet. But still – the whole process became really frustrating in the end.

(What is worth to mention if you followed the progress on this miniature, you can see that most of the elements of it were re-painted at least once.)

Anyway, here is Trajann Valoris:

(The photo was a bit toned down. I decreased saturation, contrast and exposition to make it look as it is painted)

Armour:

The general idea which I had was to paint a shiny saturated gold NMM (similarly to  this ). Rigil, who painted that miniature, was kind enough to share with me the mix for the armour.

The base colour is Golden Brown, with added Flat Earth for shades and Light Flesh for Highlights (all by Valleyo). I added a bit Mars Orange (duh) to Golden Brown, to make it a bit more vibrant.

Anyway, the colour turned out far too flat for my liking – I reworked most of the elements, but the effect was still not satisfying. The mistake I made was, that I painted it on top of white base-coat. Funny thing is, that for this colour, it works much better when painted overt black.

You can see it on the halberd, as well as on the small shield on his chest plate. The colour seems far more metallic, has more depth and looks more shiny.

Robe:

The robe on the other hand turned out quite good. The red is rich and vibrant. BUT, it doesn’t play well with the rest of the model. The high contrast of the cloth seems a bit too much for the toned down metallic parts.

I used for this part Antares Red by Scale 75, which was then highlighted by adding White + Mars Orange. Shades were done by adding Flat Black.

The trick to achieve this kind of saturation when painting red is to use white and black undercoats* and to keep red coats thin and NOT numerous.

I will write a tutorial for this – for now, this is a sample:

Face.

Ok, this is something I am proud of. This is the second version of the head (first you can see here)

So, the mix is:

• Base: Elf Flesh + Wild Rider Red (8:1), both by Games Workshop
• Shades: Added Chestnut Brown (by Reaper Miniatures) to the base
• Darkest shades / Glazes: shaded with Burgundy Wine (again by Reaper Miniatures)
• Highlights: added Linen White (by Reaper Miniatures) to the base
• Last highlights / Glazes: pure white

I got some feedback, that the hair / skin contrast is a bit too big and doesn’t go well with the rest of the miniature. This is a fair comment, but still I like how this turned out.

I am really surprised how good those two paints by Reaper miniatures turned out. The

Cloak

I had participated in workshop organized by Redav (here), which focused on painting patterns and textures on metal and cloths. One of the techniques showcased during it, was doting and lining. I wanted to pain the cloak in a fairly short time (at this point I was extremely tired of this miniature) and decided to try something new.

The effect you can see below:

This technique is quite simple – you paint general colours shades / highlights and then start painting crossed lines (shown below). The effect is nice. Moreover, the whole thing can be painted in a significant less amount of time. And the whole approach is simple.

I painted the KD:M survivor in the exact same technique – I will post about it soon, to showcase what effect you can achieve with this!

To sum up:

What I learned?

• Simply put: I still need to work on my NMM. It is far more difficult to plan how the light should be reflected than what I expected.
• If you go with high contrast, go with it on the whole model.
• NMM works better on black.
• My brushwork improved.
• Linning / Dotting technique!

I think that is all.

I already finished the KD:M miniature, which hopefully I will post this weekend. As for know, I will probably work on a Gobo champion I prepared.

Have a nice day!