Unreleased Sorceress I - Part I

Unreleased Sorceress I

Through all my years collecting and painting Games-Workshop Miniatures I knew that there were a lot of unreleased Dark Elves miniatures because somehow most of these popped up in official Games Workshop publications. But there were also a couple which were unknown and which I get knowledge of first by the work of Michael Garza aka Heldrake who put up the Dark Elves in the CCM Wiki and created the Dark Elves Collectors Guide. From Michael we learned about the two unreleased Dark Elves Sorceresses. While the Sorceress II can be seen in multiple collections in painted and unpainted versions, the Sorceress I is missing even in some of the most ambitious collections for unreleased Games Workshop miniatures out there. Asking around in the collectors scene you quickly get the feedback that this miniature is extremly rare. At that time I only know of three copies. For sure there will be some more but not that much. Therefore, this miniature is very hard to find and it has become that this special lady became my holy grail.

Hunting the Sorceress

With returning to my 4th Edition Dark Elves project in fall 2018 I also started to check Ebay and the Oldhammer and Middlehammer Trading places on Facebook very frequently looking for my missing pieces. Independently of the platform, "Buy it now" offers on Ebay and offers on the Facebook marketplaces required very quick reactions because first come first served. Therefore, I already spent a lot of time checking these sites each day triggered by the fear missing anything. The drama continued in June the 5th in 2019.

I get up early and as ususal the first I did was checking Ebay and the FB marketplaces. I found nothing and get up, starting taking care of our little son which was just three months old at this time point. When checking less than an hour later the sites again I can´t belief my eyes. 

 

Original picture of Brads identification and valuatio request

A guy named Brad from Canada posted the Unreleased Sorceress I on a Facebook trading group asking for an identification and valuation. So far no replies. I wrote as quickly as possible my interest and a personal message. Then I saw in an other group that Bruce, a Dark Elves collector from Australia had already posted the devestating words: "First in line for the Sorceress" 16 minutes ago and 15 minutes after Brad had posted his offer. I sat down and waited for Brads reply to my message. We changed some offers and I was informed that I was second. Brad also told me where he gets the miniature from: 

My bro died...I inherited his collection and found the mini mixed in with a large collection of dark elves. It was an odd figure..tried researching...found it on a site as unreleased and started asking...ppl messaged me and the battle was on.... Never posted it for sale

I was sad for Brads loss and hoped to get this miniature also to paint it in memorial of Brads bro. Make a long story short, Brad found himself in a bidding war and finally the miniature went to Australia into the Collection of Bruce. 

The unreleased Sorceress I; painted by SkitsMix Commissions for Brads Collection

I was very, very sad. I missed that chance by 16 minutes! The fear missing anything gets bigger and with time checking for updates on the marketplaces has become a bit of an obsession.  I do not know how much life time I has lost checking these sites, but it was a lot. I knew that I could relaxe first when having this collection completed. I realised that simple waiting won´t solve my problem quickly and I started to become more active. First, I moved on and painted more references for this project. Second, with having good references at hand I started asking in the Facebook groups. This way I get hold of the Unreleased Sorcerers II from Emiel in the beginning of 2020. I painted his unreleased evil lady a couple of months later and whenever I posted an update in the Facebook groups I noted that I am still looking for the Unreleased Sorceress I. The community quickly noticed that this particular Sorceress is my holy grail and that I am desperatly looking for this lady. 
     

The Replica

A very generous gift

In June 2020, one of my oldhammer friends asked for my address. One week later I received an anonymous envelope. You couldn’t imagine my face when this little evil lady fell out of it. 
I hold a casting of a beautifully sculpted replica of the unreleased Sorceress I in my hands. I received her with a picture of her green and the short notice:  

A gift for an inspiring collector . 

 

I felt very honored receiving this gift and I started to paint her immediately. She would be a nice addition to my collection and I hoped that her original reference will join her one day.

 

 

Painting the Replica

I wanted that this Sorceress joins my other sorceresses which share a Ghrond theme. Therefore, I decided for a purple colour scheme with white hair. While painting her I get the idea to paint her as a Morathi Prototype reflecting some of the elements Mark Gibbons used in his famous Artwork of the Dark Queen. For that there was need to add some additional decoration on her clothes by freehand. These were the gold linings on the bra and the spike pattern on her skirt. The latter also can be found on the skirt of the Sorceress riding the Dark Pegasus and is a nice detail linking these two. I started by preparing the miniature as usualy. My copy needed a bit of repair work and I had to rebuild some edges and repair her right eye. I used a simple basing for her as her two sisters already have very complex bases. Then the whole miniature was primed and was ready for some colour.

I painted her skin tones first with my typical light color scheme. You have to know, that the north of Naggaroth is not a sunny place and painting these Dark Elves with a very white skin tone helps to seperate them from their Caribian Cousins of Ulthuan. Next, I painted the clothes and the central juwelry. I spared the gloves because at this point I had no idea if these will follow the purple or black direction. I also added the freehand work to the skirt and used the skirt from the mounted Sorceress as reference.

First steps on painting the Unreleased Sorceress I replica

With completion of these elements I realized that the gloves would work best when repeating the colours of her boots. To break off the black I added some further freehand details. Here I used the Champion on foot as reference, painted the edge in purple and added some freehand gems on the back. 

The weekend in the end of July my wife and son visited my parents in law and I had a lot of spare time. I took the chance and tried to finish the Sorceress. First, I painted the sword and the staff. I decided to vary a lot between silver and gold to maximize the contrast. How to do the flame pattern on sword, staff and crest was a bit difficult question. The flames are a very dominating symbol on this figure but can also be found on other miniatures of this range. I had three options in mind, painting it as well in gold as a metalic element, in a more redish gold or in the corresponding army colour. Finally, I decided for the gold variant to mark this element as clearly decorative part of the metalic object. The result looked fine and painted in my NMM style the golden flame looked metalic but also hat a flame character with a light glowing inside. Then I painted the leather parts and scrolls.

Next I added the decorative gold elements on her bra. I used Mark Gibbons Morathi Artwork as reference and painted the curls freehand on the cloth. In the following I added most of the missing details and did a lot of corrections works. Finally, I painted her eyes which I had spared since the beginning.

Maximizing contrast on the metalic elements and the result of adding freehand curls to her bra

The last part on this miniature was the Base. I painted it in my typical light colours for High Elves ruins and added some grass and further details later.

Finally, I was able to finish the miniature on this weekend before the return of my family. In the end it was a bit a rush but painting was so much fun that I can´t stop. In general, painting this miniature was a lot of fun and a great honour. I moved on and posted her painted on the Facebook groups and told her story. The community enjoyed this miniature a lot and I get a lot of very kind feedbacks. I also used the attention with this posting to remember that I am still desperately looking for the unreleased original. But here the final pictures of the replica.

  

Happy Ending - Receiving my own copy

The 2nd of August I found a message from Bruce in my FB Mailbox I had to read twice:

Hey Mate
Shoot me a message when you get a chance. I've seen your recent posts and that inspired work you did on the unreleased sorceress #2. I think it might be time for you to have my Sorceress #1

I will never forget this day! I received my copy of the unreleased Sorceress! The same copy I missed two years ago by 16 min which was sold in the OTC to Bruce from Australia. The one of Brads dead Bro. Bruce was very touched by my recent work and my painting of the replica so he decided to sell her to me for no more than his own costs. That was very very generous, especially because he looked desperately for this miniatures for more than six years. I am more than happy and feel very honored.

My own copy of the unreleased Sorceress I after stripping the paint

Until today I am often sitting on my desk in front of this evil lady, looking in disbelief on her. She had observed how the Dark Riders get finished and waited patiently until some work in progress stuff was finished. Now she knows that her time has come. She get a proper cleaning, basing and a fine coating. Time to get dressed.

Stay tuned for the next part when I will paint my holy grail!  

As always I am interested to read your thoughts in the comments. And please do not ask about the sculpter of the replica because he decided to stay anonymou

Kind Regards,
GeOrc

Unreleased Dark Riders - Part I

Unreleased Dark Riders - Part I

Today I want to show something very special which has been rarely seen. A full regiment of unreleased Dark Riders from the 4th Edition. These miniatures belong to some of the most rare ones from this Dark Elves range. But, somehow some of them sneaked on my workbench to complete my collection. For more than 1.5 years I have worked secretly on this regiment beside all my other Dark Elves stuff. As I have rarely seen these miniatures painted and never much more than the two trooper miniatures I wanted to be the first showing a whole regiment with full command. There is a lot to tell you about these miniatures, their history and painting them. Therefore, I will split their story in two articles dealing with the troopers in part I and the command crew in part II.

 

 

The Miniatures 

Dark Riders as shown in the 4th Edition Dark Elves Armybook

The unreleased Dark Riders are miniatures well known to every Dark Elf player of the 4th/5th Edition. Despite they were never released these miniatures were shown in the Eavy Metal section of the Dark Elves Armybook. They were shown there as single miniatures as well as in a group shot together with a Cold One Knight and the plastic Talisman Sorceress. And if this wasn´t enough, the latter picture was reused in the Beastiary of the 5th Edition released in October 1996 and was shown there on the back of the cover page. The Dark Elf players had to wait until 1998 for their Dark Riders but in form of alternative miniatures designed by Gary Morley and released as part of the Tears of Isha campaign. The unreleased versions never saw the light of the day.   

Dark Riders supporting a Dark Elf Sorceress in their fight against Chaos

The history of the unreleased Dark Riders
Two Dark Rider trooper miniatures were designed by Aly Morrison. I always thought both were prototypes designed very early in the 90, but propably I was wrong. I learned from Iain Aitken who owns some with their tabs that they are dated 1995.    

              Untreated Dark Rider miniatures, some with their tabs dating them 1995, kindly provided by Iain Aitken

Aly remembers that he designed them in 90s. They were casted, painted and pictured for their release with the miniature range but finally that never happend. For years we learned from the Collecting Cital Miniature Wiki: 

Rumour has it that they were dropped from the line because the torso on the rider figure is too short (although this is a commonplace failing of 4th edition GW cavalry models across the board).

Having the miniatures in my hands I can confirm that the torso is a bit short. From design side the miniatures look like a dark version of Alys Elyrion Reavers designed from him a couple of years earlier. 

They were also designed to fit on the same type of plastic horse from 1991. But, that generic horse was replaced by the Elven Horse designed by Trish Carden in 1995. I learned from a GW employee:

For the Dark Riders I think the issue was that the plastic horses were being changed and the riders didn't fit the new horses. But it was less expensive to sculpt and mold metal models than to remake the plastic tools. 

That makes sense, as the Elven Horse saw the light of the day with the Wood Elves release in May 1996. It was also used as basis for the later Dark Riders designed by Gary Morley in 1998. But I was also told that there there were problems with molds and castings of the Dark Riders. This was confirmed also by Aly. The miniatures pop up rarely on ebay and I know only a couple of collectors owning them. One set I was able to trace back as test castings which were  sold back in the days by the Mail Order when placing an order and when asking for something new. The fact that these miniatures are very very rare makes it more likely that casting problems were a key problem. Taken together, its is very likely that a combination of casting problems and the change of the plastic horse required a extensive revision of the miniatures and therefore they were hold back and were finally never released.

Collecting my own regiment of Dark Riders

I searched with more or less intensity for these miniatures for more than two decades. In December 2018 I spoted a set on Ebay sold in the US and after a sleepless night of bidding they became my own. Luckily, they weren´t that expensive as thought at the beginning. But because of the Ebay global shipping program and the fact that it does not allow combined shipping ended in shipping costs as high as the price for the riders. After a lot of asking around and negotiations I was able to use a US contact from a friend to receive the riders on national shipping costs. The contact fowarded them first to my friend and then further to me. After an odysee of shipping the riders finally arrived and I held them in my lucky hands in January 2019. The same year the same trader sold a second set. Suspicious, but the casting quality was good and even if these were recasts, they were good ones and the best I was able to get after all these years of searching.

The preparation
Having a couple of Dark Rider miniatures in my hands I started putting them together in a regiment. My plan was to rebuild the Elyrion Reaver regiment shown above consisting of a command crew and four troopers. I started with preparing six plastic horses I had left in my collection. Then I created the whole basing scene. My idea was to show a broken high elves obelisk which spans diagonal across all bases. For the realization I used several gypsum parts which I casted using molds I made from plastic bitz.  

 

Preparation of plastic horses and their bases

For the four troopers I wanted to show every possible combination of the two leg and two torso parts. For that I started with the combination the Eavy Metal team used in 1995. The alternative version was used by the miniatures shown on the CCM wiki. I realized quickly that when reproducing the Eavy Metal build that I had problems placing the riders on the horses. This was less a problem when you change the horse type. Aly assured me that the riders were sculpted on top of these horses. But it looks like the horsebacks are slightly different so that the riders do not fit properly when the horse was changed. If you take a close look on the Eavy Metal ones you can spot this problem in a gap between rider and horse. I decided to remove patially the plastic saddle to make the riders fit on their horses without a gap. But then the torso does not fit any longer because the cloak hits the horseback and makes a gap between leg part and torso. 

 

 

Trying to make the riders fit on their horses results in a gap between the rider parts

It hurts me to make changes to these valuable miniatures but there was need for some Greenstuff to fix the problem. I decided to fill the gap and to extend the body a bit. This solved the problem with the gap and also I enlarged the miniature to a size comparable to the other mounted Dark Elves of the range. In a first step I added some putty to create the right space between the parts. The putty was then cut back and the cloth with drapery was sculpted above. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of the finished conversions.

 

Dark Riders with (left) and without (right) gap filling between torso and legs

 

However, the procedure was approved by Aly and with his blessing I continued the project this way.
 

Painting of the Dark Riders

The problem of Dark Riders is that they are predominantly dark guys riding black horses. That means painting them is a story about fifty shades of black. In contrast to the Eavy Metal version I decided for a black and purple colour scheme to make them appear even much more darker. The painting of the amazing miniatures itself was not that excited. I painted them in their single parts to reach all areas of the miniatures. I always started to paint the faces and skin parts. Then, the more boring black and purple part started. At least when I had finished the inside of the cloak and the clothes and saddle of the leg part I glued both parts together and continued the work on one miniatures. Painting some red gems, golden skulls and the weapons were some highly appreciated alternations to all the blacks and purples. Here you can see each Trooper in different work in progress stages but in chonological order.

 

I painted the riders first, the horses second and finally the base. The horses were the most terrible and most boring part. First I had to say that I dislike painting horses very much. A horse, thats four legs, inside parts of legs and a lot of areas which are difficult to handle when using my blending technique.... and then there is also this much hair of mane and tail which needs correct light reflections! Taken together,  that´s the reason I had not painted any cavalery since ages. Doing all this in black explains why I need more than a year to finish this unit and why a lot of other things were painted during this time. However, one evening in the first week of 2020 I did my last brush stroke on the last of the the four Troopers and glued this last rider on the back of his horse. It was an amazing moment to see these four rareties finished in front of me. But there was still the command crew missing which would make this regiment much more exciting.

Probably you have already calculated that I needed another 10 months until this Dark Rider regiment was finished. Well, I took a break after all this black... No not really from the black but from the riders. I went straight forward in January and painted a Sorceress riding a Black Pegasus which was a very similar colour scheme.Then several other limited and rare beauties went over my workbench and if you followed this blog you already have seen my latest outputs. But, from time to time I returned to the work on this regiment until I concentrated on finishing their command crew this fall. But, that´s a different story and if you have enjoyed my teaser picture at the beginning of this article you will keep an eye open for the next part of this series.

I hopy you enjoyed the Dark Rider story so far. Please let me know what you think and write your thoughts in the comments.

Kind Regards,
GeOrc

Unreleased Sorceress 2  - Part 3

Unreleased Dark Elves Sorceress 2

Sorry for the long silence on this blog. The last months were very chaotic for me and my little family. As my wife returns to her job and our little boy changed the child day care, our days have become very exhausting. Additionally, the heat waves here in Germany reduced my remaining energy and things in my beloved hobby slowed down. While I was able to paint from time to time I had neglected this blog and was not able to finish my articles. I started writing this finaly part of painting my unreleased Sorceress two months ago but did not get it finished neither in August nor in September. Now I am sitting here in a train back to Leipzig and will give it a next try. Therefore, welcome to the final part of this article series for painting the Unreleased Sorceress 2. Painting this miniature has developed into a very long journey which stretched for three parts now. In case you missed the history and preparation of the miniature click part 1 or the design of her little Cold One pet and the first painting click part 2. As already announced part 3 will be about painting the cloak with a focus on the freehand work I put on it.

 

Painting the cloak

For painting the cloak I put the cloak on a wooden stick from an ice lolly using Patafix. Then I started painting the surfaces. For the colours I oriented again on Dave Gallaghers artwork and used a bluish colour for the backside and a cold red for the furish inside. The latter was painted  in darker tones as it lies mostly in the shadows. Because the backside would be decorated with a lot of freehands I did not spend to much time and effort to achive perfect blendings. As a lot of correction work on the background would be needed, there would be plenty of time to clean these blendings after the freehand work. Here my result I started the freehand work with.

 

 

Preparing of the cloak, back view (left) and front view (right)

Planning the Freehand

The big surface of the cloak screamed Freehand all over it. Therefore, I spent a lot of time thinking about what I could put onto this cloak and what could fit to this miniature. Thankfully, there were already good examples of painted versions of this miniature trying to achive this. 

Sorceress by Myles David

In this regard I like Myles work the most and going with one of the many versions of a grining skull should fit perfectly into the style of this age. Like Myles I checked the artworks of the armybook and sticked to the Tower artwork from Des Hanley. 

Artwork by Des Henley

The Black Guard helmet in this artwork shows some nice skulls which could still looking good when reduced in size for the freehand. Additionally I wanted to add some line work on the lower border which should show the typical spikes as well as some on the sides. I also wanted to add some gems serving as coloured eyecatchers which could be placed on the skull and in the center and in the corners of the line work. My initial planning also contained the idea to paint the lower jar of the skull as part of the lower line work combined with the gem as well as some runes between the jars. It becomes clear later that not everything could be realized as planned. But here you can see my 1:1 drawing I did as reference to start with.

 

Concept sketch for the planned Freehand

 

I discussed my ideas with some befriended painters, among them the Master of Freehands himself, Stephan Rath multiple Slayer Sword winner and known for his amazing freehands. He liked the design and told me to go with it. Because a freehand mostly developes with every element added I should be open to changes and bear in mind that most of his amazing stuff did not ended as they were planned or painted in the beginning. He should be very right about this. 

 

Painting the central element

For transfering the skull design onto the surface I used my already described masking tape technique shown here. In brief, I photocopied my sketch and fixed it on some layers of masking tape. Then I cut the symbol off and from this I cut off the eyes and noseholes. This mask should provide enough markers to transfer the design. I put it properly in place on the drapery of the cloak. Then I painted softly the outlines as well as the eye and nosehole markers with Screaming Skull. I removed the tape and corrected the lines and spots. Then I painted the the surface with XV-88 and painted the outlines and additional lines in black. Further markings and helping lines for details, teeth and the central gem were added. The final result was my initial sketch I started the detailing work with.

 

 

Transfer of the central freehand using a masking tape technique

I painted the skull in golden NMM with light bluish eyesockets. I quickly realized that the central gem was placed badly on the drapery and replacing won´t really work. Because the drapery added a lot of detail in this central area I dropped the idea of a gem on the skull. Even if I was forced to make some first changes to my concept I was very happy with the final result. 

Finished Skull Freehand

Lessons of Try& Error

For a first sketch of my line work I sticked closely to my initial concept. I quickly realized that I won´t have the same space between Skull and line work as planned on my sketch. Consequently, it was very early clear that I have to drop the idea of the glowing runes. Additionally, I started to dislike the idea of adding the lower jar as part of the line work. To test alternatives I used a actual picture and Photoshop to do some quick rearrangements.

 

Use of Photoshop to test some Freehand design changes

I discussed the ideas again with some other painters, put the cloak beside and spent some days in vacation with my family. With some new energy and motivation I returned to my workbench and decided to skip the jar idea and go with my latest photoshop concept.

 

Painting the line work

I started my next painting session on the line work with erasing and repainting some areas. Then, I added all the details of the gold NMM for the lines and painted the gems in purple. Because the gold tones of the skull with its big areas and the line work with its small areas looked differently, there was need to adapt the gold colours so that line work and skull better fit together.

 

Final Freehand Design

Putting the whole model together

I glued the finished cloak in place and it still fit perfectly on the Sorceress and the little Cold One. Checking the final results showed from the back view that the cloak did not goodly integrate into the miniature as the bluish colours of the cloak and redish ones of the collar contrasted to much resulting in seperation of both elements.

View on the assembled Sorceress miniature

 

Therefore, I added some red and purple colour to the top of the cloak to make a softer transition from the collar to the cloak. This optimization worked fine and the backview looked much more harmonic.  

Finished Unreleased Dark Elves Sorceress 2

Final Pictures

Finally, this journey had come to and end and I had my painted version of this amazing miniature in my hand. This girl really had cost me a lot of time but I enjoyed every minute painted this lovely masterpiece. The painting pulled me away and resulted in a miniature so full of character and different additional details.

 

 

 

 

I hope you enjoyed my journey paying this awesome Design from Aly Morrsion as well as the iconic armybook cover from Dave Gallagher justice. Let me know what you like the most on this evil lady and leave your thoughts in the comments.

Thanks for reading!

Kind Regards,
GeOrc