My first 6th Edition Army

The gang from the new Millenium

This year the 6th Edition Dark Elves Army release celebrates its 20th anniversary. The Armybook written by Gav Thorpe and illustrated by Dave Gallagher was mind blowing. Dave designed the Dark Elves from scratch and gave them a much darker more delicate appearance fitting perfectly into the new 6th Edition character. The new miniature range designed in majority by Chris Fitzpatrick and Juan Diaz herald a new era of miniature design. I was already a great fan of Chris Dark Elves Sorceress and his Dark Eldar miniatures. Therefore, he was a worthy successor to Aly Morrisons heir and the best what could happened to my beloved Dark Elves. During the years I painted two appreciable 6th Edition Dark Elves armies. My first try on these miniatures was a very dark and gothic like version. It brought me the nickname "Mr. 50 shades of Grey" long before this became the name of an awful novel and translation into much more awful movies. Actually, this chapter of my painting career would be long forgotten and unknown if not one unit of this army won Silver at the Golden Demon competiton 2004 in Germany. Oh wait... there is this Golden Demon series on this blog. Yes... and in preparation for the corresponding article for this unit it is useful to light this dark chapter of my miniature painting. Luckily it was a short phase with a doubtful results but also with teachings preparing me to become one of the best painters of the upcoming years.   

 

The Dark Elves of this millenium

The Army Dark Elves Armydeal of the 6th Edition

It was the year 2001 and the new Dark Elves army was already announced. Official and unofficial teasers were shared in the young internet and I could not wait to get my hands on all these new fantastic miniatures. I still remember when picking up my Dark Elves Army box containing most of the new stuff and also a limited Battle Standard Bearer. At home I dived deep into the new book. The dark illustrations from Dave Gallagher completly overwhelmed me. I was lost in a dark atmosphere, a world in black and white which worked completly without colours. At then end of this sinister path I found light at the last page of the book showing some example miniatures painted by the Eavy Metal team members. There was a Dark Elves Hag Queen painted by Neil Green showing that a Black and White painting scheme could work. Retrospectively, I think it was this combination of Daves atmosphere and Neils fantastic paint job trying to paint miniatures close to Black and White illustrations. I gave it a first try and painted a Witch Elf designed from Chris Fitzpatrick in Neils colour scheme. 

Dark Elves Pristess painted by Neil Green (left) and Witch Elves test miniature painted in 2001 (right)

The result convinced me and I moved on painting my new army this way. The next miniature I painted was the Dark Paladin riding a Cold One. This miniature also won a price at a local painting competition and encouraged me to be on a good way. However, the more I moved on in this project the more critic I got and the community quickly got bored of the monotonous miniatures. However, I was very stubborn at that time and it need a couple of failed painting competitions and long nights looking enviously at the new style from the colourful Rackham miniatures which arrived in the painting scene to change my mind. After two years this phase ended with painting my Dark Elves Princes rinding a Cold One which get me my first Golden Demon Trophy. However, I was able to finish a couple of miniatures in these two dark years and taken together this was enough for a small Army. Lets take a closer look at these really, really Dark Elves.  

 

The dark side of the Force

I painted this Army from mid 2001 to mid 2003. After the Witch Elf I painted further test miniatures incluing a Corsair, a Cold One Knight and a Harpy. These helped me to adjust the colour scheme. I can´t remember exactly in which sequence I painted the remaining troopers of these units. I suggest I did the Cold One Knights first followed by the corsairs. Then I painted Harpies and Dark Riders. The Malus Darkblade on Cold One as well as further Malus miniature riding a winged beast were created and painted rather late 2002 and early 2003. The last miniature I painted in that style was definatly the mounted Sorceress, as she was already going into a new more colourful direction. You see an overview of the army below.

 

My 6th Edition Dark Elves Army from the early 2000+ years

    

In the following paragraphs will find more detailed information about the single regiments (the small bits I can rememeber and reconstruct from my old website) as well as more detailed pictures. 

 

Cold One Knights

Dark Paladin on his Cold One

The Cold One Knights were one of the first units I started for this army. I remember that the Cold Ones were a matter of a great discussion and they polarized the community in fans and haters. I stand a bit in between. I liked their Godzilla like heads and the fact that they get back to move more on four legs. Unfortunately, they got a bulky shape and the constraints for plastic miniatures did not allow to create them more delicate. However, the Knights from the talented hands of Chris Fitzpatrick made these some of the best miniature of the range. Especially, their helmets are great designs. A shame that my lousy colour sheme did not allow to get more out of these beauties. Having repeated that I want to point you to some highlights of my painting. My Finelineing was already very good as you can spot on the various runes I added to the shields and pennants. I also showed some good freehand skills that can be seen at the coiled snakes of the banner, the small dragon on one of the the shields and at the pattern on the trumpet.

I am also very proud of my faces and eye paintings on these miniatures. Beside fifty shades of grey you can also spot some rare colours like the dark green of the Cold Ones, the light green Cold One eyes, purple saddles and a bluish pet dragon. And you can also see some faults like the wrong transition on the gem and the matt vanish I used on my first Cold One knight I painted as a test miniature. I am sure you can spot him ;)

I still love these fantastic Knight miniatures. One day I will paint a further unit of these probably with some optimized Cold Ones working a bit more like the Baby-Godzillas from the Emmerich movie.     

 

Corsairs

Dark Elves Corsair Champion

I remember painting the Corsairs as the next regiment. I finished the Command Group and the the Malus Darkblade on Foot which I put together into the Golden Demon Competition in the Warhammer Fantasy Command entry in Germany 2002. Beside my Dark Elves Demonrider shown below this was my second entry. Unfortunately, I failed with both and drove home without a trophy. I was able to finish further miniatures of this regiment in the months after. Two years later I gave the unit a second chance in the Golden Demon competition and was successful... partly by some sneaky gambling. Read the full story about this event in one of upcoming articles in the Golden Demon section. 

Looking at the regiment now I have to admit that it work much better as the rest of the army. The advantage here is that the unit comes with much more coloured areas and the proportion of light/dark areas is much more balanced. The Standard Bearer and his banner is still today a respectable work and the light blue colours are a very nice eyecatcher. Today it would add more global light and would get more out of the scaled cloaks and weapons. These three points are some major drawbacks looking at them now. However, the unit is still the strongest part of this army seen from the painting perspective. 

Harpies

 I started this regiment already in mid 2001 and my plan was to play a unit at the big DUZI Tournament in October 2001. Unfortunately, the painting was to time-consuming and I was not able to finish it in time. The painting scheme of them is not so special and is very close to the one of the Studio Army. Major differences are my paler skin tone and the missing purple eye shadow. I also added the bluish colour on the wing endings visible in the pictures from the Studio Army in the Armybook. I noticed later that the colour is missing in other pictures of these miniatues making it probably a (nice) artefact from taking the pictures. Back in the days I had planned painting a second unit. But thanks to the Dark Gods this will never happen. 

Dark Riders

The Dark Riders were the last unit I completed for this Army. As you can see in the pictures below I took these words DARK RIDER very, very serious. Some first miniatures of this unit were painted in October 2002. Further members of this dark gang followed in spring 2003 before this army project came to an end. There is not much to say about the painting. As you can see I maximized the possibility to paint 50 shades of black and grey. I remember not much about painting these but what I still have in mind is that it was terrible and frustrating painting these miniatures The final result surely has helped to distance from the idea of an Army in Black and White.

Characters

There is no Warhammer Army without their Leaders. The first Charakter I had finished for this Army was Malus Darkblade riding his Cold One Spite. This miniature fitted so nicely into my growing regiment of Cold One Knigths so that Malus was a must have to be painted. I added him already in October 2001 to my Cold One Knights long before the entire unit was finished. 

Malus Darkblade on his mount Spite painted in 2001

 

Malus is a nice mixture of elements from the Cold One Knights and the Corsairs. I really like his green sword, but I have no idea which demon bite me to paint it this way. If you can here me demon... thanks a lot! A major Drawback is the cut off head which just looks strange and unfinished. Definitely, something I would do better today... and a lot of other things too. 

 

Limited Malus on Foot painted in 2001

Malus twin brother on foot was introduced into my army in April 2002. This Limited Edition miniature was a Give Away during the Albion Roadshow and at this time point very rare. I remember paying 80 Euro for this guy which is still today a lot of money for such a rare miniature. 3 year later I got the same miniature for free as an event miniature at the Gaming Day in Vienna in 2005... and with me hundreds of other people. Definitely, one of my worser investments into rare miniatures. However, at the timepoint of purchasing this little bastard I was more than proud to have one and wanted to decorate him with a worthy paintjob. This meant during that time spending him some extra greys. Therefore, he get a loincloth and a sash full of skulls. The idea was from a Undead Necromancer who had the skulls sculpted into the clothes. Here I added them by freehand. I put one bigger skull into the center which was my favorite Dark Elves skull design released as an icon coming with the Tears of Isha campaign. Various smaller skulls I painted around thisone. The sword als got some special effect. It was inspired by a further Undead miniature I found in the widths of the internet, a vampire conversion which based on Aenur. His green sword remembered me on the greens of emeralds. A gem which fascinated me and which I often looked at in an geological exhibition in our institute where I studied chemistry at that time point. Today I am still very happy with this miniature and the challenges I mastered when painting him. The only thing which drives me totally crazy are his squinting eyes. The next time I will sit on the workbench I have to correct this or I go mad.  

In October 2002 I painted a further Character, the Sorceress miniature on foot from Chris Firtzpatrick also known as Morathi in reference to the famous Mark Gibbons Artwork. The miniature was already created in 1998 and beside the Dark Riders on of the few old miniatures which were transfered into the new miniature range. This Sorceress was my third version of this miniature I painted. Again I decided to spent a few extra greys on her. Because the girls of ther 00-years loved animal prints I went with the trend and painted her a snow leopard cloak.

She get some further decoration my adding finelings to the staff and on the inside of her cloak. The only drawback on her is that the pure white needed a bit more shading to make it a bit interesting but these times were far away from painting light sources into miniatures. I am still very happy with her and I have seen several copies of my painting floating around in the internet. What more you can expect as a painter than serving as inspiration for others.

The last character I added was the Sorceress riding a Cold One. This miniature was already a step into a more colourful direction and therefore she had already its appearance. Here full story can be read in my Articel about my first successful Golden Demon entry dealing with my Dark Elves Princess / Druchii Anointed on Cold One from 2003. 

   

Sorceress riding a Cold One painted in spring 2002

The Outcast

There was a third brother of my Malus Darkblade family... and if every family has this strange psychopathic member who ruins your family party. Here is mine. Make a long story short he disappointed me and was planned to get a complete rework. Finally, he ended as an outcast on my pile of shame and that is why you did not find him in the Army overview at the beginning. However, he has his a story to tell.

 

 His story started with release of the Melchior riding a winged nighmare. I liked that mount a lot and my idea was to use him in my army as a count as Dark Pegasus. I still like the idea and some mounted creatures in this direction were part of the Malus Darkblade comics, therefore not totally absurd. I spent a lot of work into his conversion. The nightmare get a head swap and with Spites head he looked muc more like a daemonic mount. On his back I added spikes and a chainmail armor. Malus himself get a self sculptured seadragon cloak with a hood as well as a halberd and reins. So far this conversion looked pretty nice but the problems started with paiting. At the beginning the miniature was painted the classic way of this army. But with the idea of a daemonic mount in my head and in discussions with others the idea of a mist/shadow daemon was born. I tried to add an effect which should look like the demon materializes out of a fog. Therefore, I painted swirls of fog onto the lower part of the mount and blended skin and fog into each other. Unfortunately, the effect was not self explaining. In my distress I sculpted some swirls of greenstuff and as these also not work I added a lot of cotton wool.

Detail pictures of highlights of this Character Conversion

Back in the day I thought all this was a good idea. I thought this idea was so brilliant to make this miniature an entry at the Golden Demon Competititon in the monster category in Germany 2004.As you might imagine, I totally failed. I never tried it a second time and the miniature was shelved. But with further development in my skills this miniature become more and more a thorn in my side. One day I ripped him in pieces with the goal to rework him completly and make him part of my second 6th Edition Army. The mount was resculpted and I started painting but the project was never finished and ended on my pile of shame. But there is hope! From time to time I grap miniatures from my pile of shame and finish them. Possibly, he will get a second chance one day.

 

Closing the cabinet

Time to put back this army into the cabinet. It really enjoyed to blow the dust from these miniatures, to take new pictures of them and dig through all the picture folders and my old website to gather a few information about what happend here 20 years ago. It was a busy time in which I started my studies, changed girlfriends and made a lot of Hobby. Beside painting I also learned sculpturing during that time and sculptured my first own miniatures. That all beside painting this army. Looking back I ask myself how I was able to paint so many miniatures during that busy time.

Sure, the colour scheme looks simple on first sight but is much more difficult when taking a closer look. All these black areas were highlighted towards dark or light grey and sometimes towards pure white. That is the maximum contrast you can paint and this contrast does not forgive you any mistakes. Taking togehter, painting all these Black and White transitions for two years trained me to paint very very accurate blendings. Therefore, this time was probably boring but not lost at all. All this helped me to become one of the most accurate technical painters in that time. And that outcast Malus on his winged Nightmare would become the last miniature which failed me in a Golden Demon contest for a long time. One other thing which remained was the pale Dark Elves skin tone which I became very famous for and which I use (slightly modified) until today for my Dark Elves.

I hope you enjoyed this trip down the Memory Lane. As always I would be happy to read your thoughts in the comments. So long, train your blendings and happy painting,

GeOrc

Unreleased Sorceress 2 - Part 2

Unreleased Sorceress 2 - Part 2

Unreleased Dark Elf Sorceress (without cloak)

June 2020 was marked by painting my unreleased Sorceress. A miniature which keeps me busy since many weeks now. in May I already showed the preparation of this miniature. There was a lot of work in cleaning, repairing and basing her. In case that you missed the first part, see here. This second part will show the final preparations, guide you through the first part of the painting progress and will show my thoughts while painting her.



Motivation and Inspiration
Unreleased miniatures are rare and their painted counterparts are even more rare. Some collectors prefer their miniatures unpainted, others are just bad painters, others fear painting rare miniatures will reduce their value and others just have to much respect of trying to paint them. Therefore, these beeautiful miniatures were often locked away in dark boxes, never seeing the light of a cabinet. But, there also exists a small league of extraordinary collectors who beautifully paint their precious or pay a hugh amount of money to professional painters to let these miniatures become masterpieces. I want to show you some examples of this miniature I cames across through the years. They all did a fantastic job, enjoy!

 Unreleased Dark Elf Sorceress painted by Myles David aka Lil'Legend Miniatures

 Unreleased Dark Elf Sorceress from the collection of Remí Oliveras, painted by a befriended french painter

   Unreleased Dark Elf Sorceress from the collection of Bruce Faketron, painted by SkitsMix Commissions

  Unreleased Dark Elf Sorceress from the collection of Richard "Orclord" Hale, painted by Adam Skinner

Unreleased Dark Elf Sorceress painted by Iain Aitken aka Darkblade´s Workshop

   
My own version

Due to the fact that this lady never appeard in any official Games Workshop publication no Eavy Metal reference material exists of her. Therefore, I am bit more free in the decision for a colour scheme than this projects normally allows me. As allready announced earlier my goal was to paint this Sorceress in reference to the Sorceress from Dave Gallaghers famous Dark Elves Armybook cover. This artwork comprised some true challenges when trying to be transfered on a miniature. There is a highly complex loincloth consisting of a highly embroidered part and a lucent part, a collar consisting of delicate lace, a magic effect from her spell weaving hand and a cloak which is screaming for a freehand. I have to say I like nearly everything on this artwork with some small exception and this is the pink sword. I know that coloured swords were a thing in this era, but it doesnt work that good with a modern paint job. But, to get a bit close to this I will try to paint a miorror effect into the swordblade reflecting the reds from her collar in the swordblade. But first, there are some more preparations to be done. There is need to cast the little Cold One, base the miniature and prime her. Lets get started.



Casting the little Cold One

Centricast Casting and Mold making machine

This is not my first moldmaking and metal casting. Back in 2003 after I had sculpted my first bunch of greens I considered to do miniature design as a professional. My grandfather supported me and bought me a moldmaking and spin casting machine. Make a long story short, I decided against it and became a scientist. However, my moldmaking and spin casting machine has accompanied me until today and after years unneeded it is spinning again.

The mold is made using heat-stable RTV silicone. I started to fill one half of the mold with play dough. Then the greens were put into the dough. The mold was closed and the RTV silicone was put into the the empty space above the miniatures creating the first half of the mold. After the silicon has vulcanized, the mold was seperated and the play dough discarded. The silicone of the first half of the mold was treated with a seperation wax to avoid that the silicon for the second half of the mold reacts with the first one. Everything was closed again and the second half was filled with RTV silicon. A couple of hours later the mold can be seperated and the greens were removed. Then there was need to carve and cut the sprues into the mold. Also I carved and drilled the air release channels into the mold. The mold was then ready for some first test casting. I use a white metal alloy with a melting point of 260°C and a casting temperature around 300°C. For the casting the mold is powdered with Talkum. Then I cast the the metal ito the spinning mold. The mold was then optimized by improving the sprues and air channels. This is only a short summery of the process. If you like to get a more detailed article about mold making and miniature casting let me know in the comments.

Here the results! Even if some of my greens were very difficult to cast, the little Cold One made less problems. I was able to get some proper castings of this complex little Cold One.

                                                                                         Casted bits of the little Cold One

But three scales located on the snout and on the legs were missing or misplaced. Probably, damaged by the mold making. I am not an expert and I still have a lot to learn. I prepared one of the castings, glued the miniature together and repaired the scales.

The result looks fantastic and I am very happy to have this little critter as a metal miniature. Having this little critter casted I had everything at hand to put togehter the final arrangement of the figures.

Basing

Consequently I arrange everything on a base and start the priming. The miniature with cloak is very large as you can see on the examples above. It is hard to place her on a 20 mm base without enlargement of the base surface. Therefore, I extended the base by two layers of cork. I took care to have enough space for centering the sorceress and putting the right lower cloak tip on the ground. Additionally, there was need to have enough space for placing the little Cold One on the left side. I minimized the cork layers to show the base corners and sides were it was possible. Also I took care that I get two steps on the front view allowing me to reflect the little rise in the ground from the artwork. Building three bases and trying different top layers until I was pleased with the result shows how difficult this steps was. In reference to the artwork I will also try to use a good amount of grass the dark lady stands on. Before that I covered all surfaces with sand and small stones to have a nice underground. After everything was built, I fixed the little Cold One and primed the whole scene making it ready for painting

Primed base with the Cold One critter, Sorceress and cloak

Painting the Base and the little Cold One

WIP of painting the Cold One critter and its base

In the cover art the little cold one appeared bluish on the lower left corner of the sorceress cloak. For sure it was painted this way to fade into the background while the sorceress dominates the scene. Therefore, I decided to go with my bluish colour scheme I already used on the General on Cold One. In brief, I started with a basic colour mixed of Regal Blue and Incubi Darkness. The mixture was highlighted with Bleached Bone and used to prime the skin of the cold one. I used the basic colour for shading and added deeper shadows with my shading mixture consisting of Abbadon Black containing a little bit of Incubi Darkness. Then I painted the scales in Incubi Darkness. Each scale was painted as a reflecting material. Therefore, I highlighted the scales with Bleached Bone to the bottom and shaded them with the shading mixture to the top. Finally, the lower scale edges were highlighted with pure white. I added orange coloured eyes and brownish horns to give the little critter its final look. The base was painted exactly like my other High Elves ruin bases with a mixture of grayish stones combined with bone coloured debris. I used a lot of grass to cover the base because I wanted to get it close to the cover art. Consequently, I avoided to much eye catching basing elements to draw the attention on the sorceress and her little pet.

 Here some pictures of the finished Cold One critter on the base:

I am really happy how the Cold One turned out and the blue colours had worked very well again. For sure I will also paint a further one using my green colour scheme. I really enjoyed the process of designing, casting and painting a miniature. For sure this won´t be the last miniature design you have seen on this Blog. But, now it is time to get back to the focus of this article, the sorceress herself.



Painting the Sorceress

As usual I started with painting the skin. Here I make one of the less exceptions to the original cover art because I used my typical skin tones to make the sorceress fit into my army. I used my typical receipt based on Bleached Bone tones glazed with Warlock Purple. If you need a more detailed discription for painting light elven skin, just check the labels. In the following painting sessions I wanted to see her head area done and painted her hair, the jewelry and her bra. The latter was done using a red which based on pure Red Gore. Red Gore is a saturated red tone containg some blue making it more cold. Normaly, I reduced the cold temperature of this colour by adding Dark Flesh which is a warmed and desaturated red. The result is a neutral Red. With this miniature I wanted to play with different red tones from different colour temperatures as done in the cover art. This will be a break with the rest of the army colour scheme but in this case I decided for going with the reference. The next element I wanted to paint was the loincloth. In preparation for that I painted the boots with a warmer reds using my typical red tones but adding the highlights with Blood Red and a Blood Red and Golden Yellow mixture.

Painting the loincloth
Retrospectively, the loincloth was the most difficult part on this miniature. On the cover art it looked like consisting of two different materials, a golden one with delicate embroideries and a transparent one covering her left leg. In contrast the miniature only has a skirt which is one sided open. Therefore, there was need to combine both materials from the reference and transfer that on the miniature. For the golden tones I used my typical NMM gold colours. I started with the very light yellow mix as a base colour. Then I added the embroideries using Snakebite Leather. Looking at the cover art, it is not possible to get an idea of the original pattern because of the drapery. Therefore, I decided to use the typical flame motiv which was used several time as an element of the 4th Edition Dark Elves by Aly Morrsion. The transparent effect I get by glazing the warm red tones from the boots on these parts were the boot displayed under the skirt.The skull from the boot was painted freehand into the right position using Shadow Gray which contrasted perfectly to the warm tones.

After the rough idea was realized on the miniature the detail work started. I used finelining techniques to give the embroideries a much more delicate look. Additionally, I highlighted the skirt a lot to make it softer. The transparent effect was intensified by adding the skin tones to the leg and adding shadows with thinned Shadow Gray to deepen areas with no background which could shine through. I also added some Dwarf Flesh here and there to add some warmth from diffuse reflection from the red boots. The edges I painted Snakebite Leather and added freehand painted rivets on the lower edge. Here a some final pictures of this step:

I was very happy with the result at this stage. That transparent effect was a fantastic eyecatcher and it was already clear that it will dominate the result in the end.

Painting the gloves
One of the main differences between the cover art and the miniature are the gloves. I assume Dave Gallagher did not like them and indeed beside all the filigree details the clumsy gloves look a bit misplaced. From my talks with Aly I know that the bigger hands of the past were often used to ensure a completee casting of the weapons. Putting the hands in gloves reduced a bit their disproportional size. However, even with gloves this part did not fit very good with the rest of this elfs slender shape. That´s propably why Dave decided to go with a very reduced version of a glove, more jewelry than something covering the hands. This brought me the idea to paint the gloves in a lace or net style with open fingers. For that I started to paint the gloves in my skin colours. Then I used a finelining technique to add very thin lines wiht the brush on the surface. I placed them in a curved way to avoid a boring look. Finally I shaded the lower parts of the glove highlightening her arms which helps to reduce the bulky look of the shape. I tried to add some lace details, but this got to busy and I dropped the idea and stayed with the net look only.   

I am very happy with the result. It is a fine example how a painting can be used to change the expression of a detail on a miniature. That´s why I still think that this detail is one of the best on this miniature.


Painting the collar
Here the idea was to create something similiar as the lace collar from the cover art. I decided to use the red background colour from Daves cover art as a underground for my freehand pattern. I started painting the collar already a few steps earlier. I added the basic colour which is similiar to the bra. Then, I thought how I could add a black lace pattern to this detail. Because the front view is dominated by her black hair I dropped the idea to paint that pattern also on the front side. Additionally, I needed some contrast between hair and collar and was happy to have that with the red colour. I painted the sculpted details on the backside in black and added differen lenghts of black lines which I decorated with arrow heads. I used grey tones to add some reflections of the material. The small pearls on the sculpted details I painted in light bluish colours.

In comparison with the other details thisone get a bit lost. However, I am very happy to have added it because I dislikd the free space of the collar in comparison to the fantastic decorations Aly sculpted on its top. This way the whole collar gets a very filigree look helping to reduce a further limitation of the figure.

Painting the amulet and sword
Next on my to do list were the amulet and the sword. Both elements shared some special translation in Dave’s cover art. The amulet was replaced by a lightning effect and the sword was decorated with a lot of ornaments and coloured pink. Again I tried to get somehow close to the artwork. Therefore, I painted a object source lightning (OSL) effect to the amulet. The amulet itself was painted golden with a blue shining rune on it. I used a lot of blue glazes of Lightning Blue and Regal Blue to colour the reflections on the surrounding. Unfortunately, there aren’t much surfaces which can support the effect. Therefore, the effect isn’t very eye catching and a bit disappointing.

I have allready admitted that I am not a great fan of the pink sword. It is one of the few elements of Dave’s breathtaking artwork which I really dislike. That’s why I decided against a completely pink coloured one but thought it could pay the pink justice by painting the red reflections from the collar into the sword. For that I started to paint the sword my usual greyish way and then quickly added glazes of Red Gore. I also give the ornaments a try but terribly failed because these completly destroyed the NMM effect. The latter was more important for me and consequently I painted that sword NMM a second time.

Finally, there were some details left like the bag and some jewelry. After the miniature was declared to be finished it was time to put her on her base. I was very excited and after weeks of painting the moment had come to join the sorceress and her pet. It was a joy to see them combined. Now the only thing missing was the cloak!

But, before I will start to paint the cloak I will make a cut here. Because the cloak will finally cover a lot of the miniature I want to show her first without it. Therefore, here some final pictures of part 2

 

 

 

I hope you like my progress so far. Maybe you have already spotted the finished version showing up in my instagram preview on the top of this site. If so, you eill slready know what part 3 of this miniature will be about. Stay tuned for the cloak and the finished miniature!

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

Kind Regards,
GeOrc