The General,

released in October 1995, the Dark Elf General on Cold One was one of the last miniatures seeing the light of the day of the 4th Edition Dark Elves release. Dark Elf collectors get a first sight of this chap in the Dark Elves Armybook as part of Kurl Vraneths Raiders, an exemplary army supported by pictures of unpainted miniatures. After its release in White Dwarf (WD) #190 he get further appearances WD #191 in an army shot fighting Dwarfs and in WD #192 and WD #193 leading the Dark Elves army of Jake Thornton in a campaign titeled RAID. In the 5th Edition he reappeared again during the High Elves release in WD #210 leading the Dark Elves against their hated cousins in an army shot decorating the back cover. During the Tears of Isha campaign in April 1998 he decorated the index pages refering to a Warhammer Battle Report were he loosed against a Chaos Army. In shame of this battle or as a reaction to the 6th Edition Dark Elves release he disappeared. Now he is back and celebrates his comeback 20 years later on these pages.
    



The miniature

The miniature was sculptured by Trish Carden and Aly Morrison. Trish was responsible for the basic Cold One parts released earlier in 1995. The final Cold One is a conversion created by Aly Morrison mixing parts of the running and standing Cold One versions which was then heavily armored. The Cold One head based on the head with the horn ridge which get an impressive helmet. The tail was a free choice of the four existing tails but most blisters contained the version with two lateral spikes.
Aly also sculptured the rider. While the leg part was newly created, the torso based on one of the Cold One Knights torsos. The head get a skull like design reflecting the skull iconography of the entire Dark Elves release. In contrast to the Champion of the Cold One Knights, Aly decided to give his General a lance and to put a second lance on the back rest of his saddle. Taken together this miniature was an awesome sight and a worthy leader of many Dark Elves forces.

The studio paint job,
    

Studio paintjob by Stuart Thomas

is a bit disappointing. The colour scheme based mainly on bluish and red colours. Therefore, the colour scheme remembers a bit the studio painting of Rakarth on his Black Dragon. However, in relation to the other Cold One Knights, the choice of colors look a bit strange. Especially the reds are a bit outstanding here. Red always draw a lot of attention but in this case on the wrong parts of the model. Consequently, a lot of interessting details get lost, e.g. armour, clothes and the saddle. Additionally, the metals look very flat and the gems are painted in dark and cold colors, not able to challenge these red eyecatchers. Therefore, the dull overall appearance didn´t flatter this very detailed miniature. Regarding the Cold One Knights, the painting make him standing out of a unit but also he loose a bit his connection to the other Knights. The unique shield design supports this impression. While the banner symbol can be spotted in simpler version on some of the shield and lance pennants the red of the shield and the winged skull didn´t appear again in the Dark Elves army. While I like the idea of give the General a more unique appearance I would have prefered to keep him more in line with the rest of the Cold One Knights and the Dark Elves army. These findings motivated me, when planning the paint job of the General as well as of the rest of the Cold One Knights.



A contemporary painting

Even if I am not a big fan of the classic studio painting I decieded to paint my General in a similar way and try to improve where necessary to get the best out of this chap. I really liked the idea of the bluish Cold One as I interpreted the colour shift from green to bluish with a higher age. I droped the blue colours and replaced them by the classic purple as I wanted to reduce the whole army look to a less colourful scheme compared to the studio painting. The thing I most disliked were the red claws and horns. Even if I like some red and used it as a preferd detail colour, the red claws and horns didn´t make any sense in my opinion. Therefore, I used more brown and bonish tones. The most difficult question was if I would to go with the studios shield and banner designs. Both were a bit cartoony but typical elements of their time. I thought a lot how I could improve these designs to fit into a more contemporary painting style. Final question, what kind of base should I use. It was clear that this mini has to stand out from all others and therefore stand on higher ground. Since a long time I was a fan of the broken obelisk from the High Elf Princes Set. Therefore, I produced a copy of this bit in gypsum and placed it in my knwon High Elf ruins setting. So far the plan... lets take a walk through the process:
   


The armored Cold One
I started my own paintjob of this miniature with the Cold One in the beginning of January. I already painted a dark green version of a Cold One based on Incubi Darkness lighted with Bleached Bone. To shift this colour more into a bluish tone I added Regal Blue. This mix I used as a basic colour on the skin. I shaded the skin with a thinned mix of Abbadon Black with a tiny bit of Incubi Darknes. For the highlights and the light belly I used Bleached Bone. The scales I painted with Incubi Darkness Shaded to the top with Model Air Black and lighted them to the bottom with Bleached Bone. After I basic Cold One was painted I quickly started to paint the armour. I used the same NMM silver and gold as described by my Dark Elves Champion. I reduced the gold share to some details only as the General itself will become the shiny guy on top. I added purple to the saddle and the inner side of the chainmail and red to the gems all over the armour. Mouth and teeth were painted similar to my other Cold Ones. Claws and horns were painted with my usual Bleached Bone tones highlighted to white and shaded with Graveyaed Earth and the shading mix consisting of Abbadon Black with a tiny bit of Incubi Darkness. To reflect the older age I added some layers of Scorched brown in the shadows shifting the whole look more into the brownish tones. 

The General
For painting the General itself I used established colour shemes and light situations similar developed by painting my Dark Elf Champions on foot and on Cold One. Some features here are the helmet, the lance and his shield. Taking a closer look at his helmet it becomes clear that Aly Morrison sculptured this helmet in reference to the skull designs by the illustrations of Wayne England. Therefore, I choose a light situation and reflectios which support the skull like appearance. The center I painted very bright to give the skull appearance a white look. For the top and the spikes I used a lot of gold to draw the attention of the miniature to this part of the figure. In combination with the red from the gem the helmet draw a lot of attention and become a good eyecatcher. The lances I painted in my typical weapon NMM. While in most cases before I restricted the refelctions to bluish colors. Here I used also brownish glaces for the bottom part of his handheld lance. The brownish tones stand for the earth reflections and together with the bluish heavon reflections they create a much better environmental reflection situation on this miniature. Another eyecatching reflection situation is the big red gem on the bottom of his handheld lance. I decieded to paint this ball with classic spheric
reflecions consisting of two color transitions from dark to light seperated by a curved horizon line. Painting these color transitions need a lot of patience and repetitions to get them smooth. Even if this is hard to achive on a spheric object the result is worth all the pain and tears while painting on this detail. Same is true for the cylincric reflections on the lance poles. Even if these lances look discreet compared to other parts, their simply painting contain a lot of effort and work. Final detail I want to say some word about is the shield. I thought very long about its design because I had not a good feeling for the studio painting. On one hand I liked its unique design compared to the more uniform Knights shield on the other hand I missed the link to the Knights shields. I started with copying the skull design from the knights. For the wings I experimented with the colored illustrations from the armybook. I tested a lot with wings and the skull in different sizes using photoshop. Finally, there was need to morph the wings in a way filling most of the shield and to size down the skull as much to fit between the wings. Then printed the final design and transfered it on the shild using a mask (check my tutorial for a more detail description).  
 

Shield Design from Artwork to mask to final Painting

Banner and banner pole
Some last words on the about the banner. This was the most annoying part of the miniature. I thought a lot about a general banner strategy, when starting this Dark Elves army. 20 year ago I created paper banner as everyone else. As time goes by and the miniatures developed further more and more plastic banners appeard. When you were forced to create a banner by your own using plastic card or polysterene sheet was closer on the plastic banners of the rest of your army. Therefore, I initially thought about using plastic card. I thought these banners would look much more qualitative like the paper ones. I experimented a lot and tried different painting techniques to apply the freehands. Make a long story short, in the end the plast card banner didn´t work. Perhaps I will discuss this topics and show my failings in an own aticle. I removed the plastic banner and painted the same again on paper. The paper banner was more flexible and I was able to add a better movement.

For the Freehands I choose the same symbols and design as the studio did more than 20 years ago. These were copied from an other banner from the shield and banner section from the armybook. I really liked the broken heart design. Its origin comes from the medusa of the army standard design. I have planned to use the broken heart design also on some shields and the army standard will tie later everything together. Further symbols contain the runes from the same banner I used the heart form. I put everything togehter in Photoshop, printed it on 100 g paper and primed it with some Valejo matt medium. In contrast to the studio I choose a puple background which fits better to the rest of the miniature. To transfer that design into a contemporary painting some modificatiosn were needed. As a modern paintjob contains a lot of painting a light situation into a miniature, the banner needs to be adapted to your light source as well. This requires a lot of colour transitions in the vertical axis but also in the banner folds. Something the light situation adds to your miniature are a lot of more details. Therefore, the simple banner design has to be adapted with some additional details to fit to the rest of the minture. Here, I used the dots from the printing for the texture of the cloth. As I always used a very thin painting, the dots from the print were slightly visible until the end. Additionally, I added further details with a gold frame and some damage. I put everything togehter and corrected the movement of the pennant a bit.

I hope you like the final result. Let me know what you think and share your thoughts in comments.
Kind Regards,
GeOrc