Executioners - Part II

Initial thoughts
After I had finished the preperations on my executioners unit I can´t resist to paint the first miniature of this unit. Therefore, today I want to write down my experiences with these miniatures. In preperation for the paint job I made a lot of thoughts which colour scheme I should use. I liked the original colour scheme from GW very much, showing them in purple. But this was different to my initial idea for this army, seperating it in a basic part coloured in purple and a Temple of Khaine addicted part coloured in red. Consequently, I thought about red coloured hoddies and cloths fitting to the colour scheme of the witch elves. I stumbled on the beautifully executioner unit from Iain Aitken, who painted an awesome 4th Edition Dark Elves Army. Please check Iains Facebook site and take a look on Iains Miniature Art.

Executioner Unit by Iain Aitken

 Iain painted the hoddies red, exactly as I had it planned. His result is stunning, but resulted in a much lighter colour as I had it in my mind. I wanted somethind dark and sinister in its appearance. However, I wanted to avoid black hoddies, as I wanted the hair and the axe shafts in black, ending in a to dark area on the upper side of the miniature. I already made this fault, when painting the first executioners 18 years ago. Finially, the GW colour sheme wasn´t that bad and I gave it a go. Beside the purple for all cloth parts I really liked the golden bracers in this colour scheme.    


The Way of Painting
As always I started with the skin colour based on Bleached Bone with some glazes of warlock purple to add some warmth. Then I started my work on the purple clothes. For my basic colour I used Liche Purple. For the highlights I mixed Liche Purple and Bleached Bone in different variations. For shading I used a mix of Abbadon Black with a bit of Incubi Darkness. I painted the light distribution strict by zenital light rules which resulted in very nice coloured purple hoddy. Finally I added some glazes with Warlock Purple to add some more saturation to the purple. In a next step I painted the black parts consisting of hair, axe shaft, shoes and some smaller parts of his loin decoration. Then I added the gold and the red gems. I used some brownish silver NMM for the chainmail and headdress and a bluish silver NMM for his axe. The last step included the leather, based on Tallarn Flesh, shaded with Scorched Brown and black and Highlighted with Bleached Bone. The Leather was washed with Liche Purple to merge it into the purple colour scheme and some scratched were added for a used look. The base was painted similiar to the others reflecting some High Elves ruins.

I was very pleased how the Executioner turned out. The purple hoddie added some colour and therefore much more character as a black one could add. In contrast to red clothes the purple helped to get the miniature a darker and sinister look. He fits very good between the other miniatures of his gang. He is not that light compared to the with Elves and in my opinion slightly darker than the Champion. The latters appears more shiny as he carries a lot more bling bling with him as reasonable when calling yourself a champion.

Dark Elves Warband

How you think about the colour scheme and how it works compared to the rest of my current Dark Elves warband. Let me know in the comments.
Kind Regards,
GeOrc