Dark Elves Sorceress riding Dark Pegasus - Part 1

 Dark Elves Sorceress riding Dark Pegasus

It is the third time I am starting this posting and it´s a bit funny that the first miniature I write about in 2021 is the first I painted in 2020. That all is a bit representative for a curse lying on this miniature and indeed we have a very special relationship. But let´s go back to the start, lets go back into the into the year 1999. The loyal blog readers already know that I started late in the 5th Edition with the Warhammer Hobby with this Dark Elves army. The Bestiary of the 5th Edition I got from some school friends was the thing who catched me back in the day. Here the Sorceress riding Dark Pegasus decorated the army shot and the Dark Elves entry. Unfortunately, her box was already discontinued and the miniature was Mail Order only. She was one of the few things I was able to order when trying to complete the range the official way. I was more than happy to have her in my hands and painted her as good as my 20 year old self was able to achive. I painted her close to the studio paint job and was very happy with the final result. Definatly, not good enough in her eyes and her curse was sure.

 

I dug deep in my picture vault and found these two shots from my old website. That´s all what´s left from this ancient shame.

Back in the day I used some vanish to seal my painted miniatures and I made that embarassing mistake to take the can with chaos black instead of the vanish. I noticed it at once, but it was already to late. A multitude of fine black droplets covered a big part of the miniature. I was not much and I decided to life with it. But that fault never let me go. Years later in the mid of the 6th Edition, I stripped off the colour and tried to convert the Sorceress into a contemporary miniature using the Pegasus but replacing the most of the Sorceress by a Dark Eldar Sucubus. A conversion which was never finished and her parts always remembered me her story and that shame. Long before I started the repainting of my 4th Edition Dark Elves Army I had bought a second copy of her to erase that shame from my collection. Again she had to wait. When finally starting this project she was one of the first minatures I had on my workbench and which I started to prepare. It was about time to get her all the love she deserves. But having waited that long, she wanted it to be perfect! The perfect base, the perfect painting, the perfect banner and finally the perfect pictures! Read now the detailed story of my curse to make her perfect.

 

History of the Sorceress

Eavy Metal site of The Sorceress

I am known to do always a lot of research for the here presented old- and middlehammer miniatures. However, for the Sorceress, there is not much that I was able to find out. The Sorceress was designed late in the release schedule. That late, that she missed a display shot in the Armybook. That fit to the working procedure of Marauder Miniatures and Aly as he always designed the Core Troopers first and the Characters later. The Sorceress was then released in October 1995 beside the Dark Elf General on Cold One and the Repeater Bolt Thrower, all presented in the White Dwarf #190. She got an awesome shot together with her Dark Elves Army fighting the Undead presented on the back of the Cover page. Additionally, she got her own Eavy Metal page showing her in all her glory and with a print of her back Banner. The design followed the typical Dark Elves look of the range with big hair, an impressive backrest and a big Banner. Her design shares a lot of similarities with the Morathi description and also used some details of her artwork. Therefore, it was rumored if she was planned to reflect this character. But beside other special characters she never get that titel written on her box showing that even if Games Workshop intended to do a Morathi miniature they decieded to go with a generic Sorceress riding a Dark Pegasus. Probably Alys design was to far off from Mark Gibbons iconic design which is one of the most impressive ones from the Amrybook and cemented her look for an era.

      

Backsite of the Cover from White Dward #190

Preparation of the miniature

I started by carefully cleaning all parts. As always on mounted miniatures keep the rider parts seperated from each other and from the beast itself. The pegasus I glued together. All bigger beasts of this age needed a lot of intensive care by gap filling and resculpting some loss of details which oftern occures when separating the miniatures for the molding process. Therefore, I spent a lot of time to built the Pegasus and to repair everything properly. Because the pose and wing position cover a lot of the impressive beast when fixed directly on a base I decided to place the miniature on a higher position. For that I get a High Elves obelisc from the Sky Cutter set and tried to position the miniature as close to the edge as possible. I wanted it looking like the Pagasus just jump off into the flight. The whole miniature is very heavy and required to fill the obelisc with steel balls to get some counter weight. Additionally, the bottome of 40 mm Base itself was undermined and a steel disc was added. It is balanced that perfectly that it has to stand on totally even ground otherwise it fell off. The adding of the banner pole finally added the necessary weight to stabilize it properly. Here you can see the final miniature before starting the painting:

 

 Painting the Sorceress

 The original studio painting of the miniature was done by Stuart Thomas and the banner by Neil Hodgson. Stuart did an incredible job on this complex miniature to make the Sorceress an army centerpiece. His work is a great source of inspiration and there is not much that I would make different. Transfering his work into a contemporary paintjob would require to get rid of some colours on the backrest and Pegausu which make the project to colourful. The colour choice of the Sorceress itself is timeless and I decided to copy that very close to the original. Because of the backrest the miniature was painted in two pieces but both in parallel. I started this project during a painting weekend  at Mr. Dorns Mansion in Dresden. It was a funny weekend with a lot of good food, some beers and of course miniature hobby. The painted the daytimes and played games in the evenings. The miniature itself made me enthusiastic and the guys pushed me further so I had much progress after these two days.

The first steps of painting on the Sorceress

 

I started with my usual skin tone and with the basic colours for the clothes. Here I used also Liche Purple as base but used a plain version with modification of glazes with Warlock Purple. For the bluish grey I used the old Shadow Grey which is much more saturated and a bit darker is the Russ Grey. Both worked perfectly to copy Stuarts style. It was a joy to see his beautiful colour scheme with some natural light distribution. I moved further and added the NMM parts for the backrest and the sword. Finally I was able to add some colour to details like gems and hair on this weekend. I decided to go with red gems only to stay in my usual army colours. The hair was painted plain white without colour nuances as the Witch Elves wear them. When we parted on Sunday the miniature showed already in which direction this project would go and I was very happy with the result. The monday after I was able to smooth some blendings and add more colours to the details. The sword was painted as her studio reference as a normal one but with some additional reflections. I looked forward to marry both parts and continue the work on one piece.    

The Sorceress after two days of painting at the hobby weekend in Dresden

 

Monday night, after 3 days of painting I was already able to join the parts. It required a further painting session to finish her and paint the back of the backrest. The result looked already very stunning and I had to share some first picture in the social media.

The Sorceress after 3 days of painting.

Painting the Pegasus

Painting the Sorceress worked very well. The hobby weekend in Dresden was very good to focus on her and I rushed through the painting. Because of the fast progress I was highly motivated to finish the whole miniature before mid of February, because the meeting with Aly was already planned and I wanted to surprise him with something very big. Therefore, I quickly moved on and started the work on the Pegasus.

The Pegasus ready for some colour

I started the painting with the body of the horse. I did this similar to the my painting of the Dark Horses from the Dark Riders using Russ Grey as basis for my highlights. Because I wanted it less colourful than Stuarts version I replaced the green scales by purple ones to stay closeer to an overall dark cold look. For the membranes I used my typical leather receipt which is a cold skin tone. It based on Tallarn Flesh (Foundation Colour) which gets shaed with Scorched Brown and highlighted with Bleached Bone (1:1 Mix of Ushabti Bone:Screaming Skull with a tiny bit of Golden Yellow). Finally, the whole leather here membran surfaces were washed with a glaze of Liche Purple. I used a lighter version of this receipt for the top and a darker version for the bottom of the membranes, respectively. The colours worked fantastically together and I was very happy with the result.

 

 

 First Colour tests on the Pegasus

After havin successfully tested all colours the diligence work started. There was need to paint the bottom sides of the membrane and on more wing. Also the second side of the Pegasus wanted some colour. I had a lot of fun with the scales and the hair from mane and tail because the highlights were a welcome variation to the moronic blending of the membranes.

 

After two weeks and several painting sessions all areas were processes and the main work was done 

Even if the membranes were a terrible work their great appearance always kept me motivated to continue painting them. When the work gets to boring I added some colours to the details and painted the face, eyes, horns and hooves. For the latter I based the colour on Graveyard Earth to contrast them from the main colours of the Pegasus.

I love that top view on the wings and I am more than happy with light on the wings

Now only the base was missing. It was only two days before the Tactica Event ind Hamburg and going off to meet Aly. I remember that everything now paced very fast. I hade some days vacation in front of the Tactica Event and used the time to finish the miniature. My wife was already off to visit my parents in law. So there was plenty of Hobby time to finish this project and pack my luggage. Therefore, I have not much work in progress pictures. I took these after glueing the Pegasus on the finished base.

Finished Base with fixed Pegasus. Finally, it holds without the weight of the Sorceress

 

Final Pictures

The main miniature was finished Friday night. I was not able to do the banner pole and the banner in that time and I knew this would cost me some further weeks of hard work. However, The main parts were finished and just in time before I would left the next day into direction Hamburg. I took the time to make some final pictures before she disappeared with the rest of my stuff I would show Aly in my transport box.

 

I hope you enjoyed this project so far. I really rushed through painting her and she was done in 3 weeks only. At this point I did not know that being able to finish her would need a whole year. For the moment I was lucky and it was a pleasure to show this big miniature to Aly. He liked her a lot and his positive feedback was a great honor. She also get a lot of positive reactions from the Oldhammer and Middlehammer Community. Especially, the positive Feedback from Stuart wasa joy to read. All that was motivation to move on with the banner pole and banner but it should come otherwiese.

 
Stay tuned for part two which is all about banner design and Freehand painting.

As always I would be happy to read your thoughts in the comments.

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