Unreleased Sorceress 2 - Part 1

To the general knowledge three unreleased mage miniatures exist for the 4th Edition Dark Elves Army. There is the male Sorcerer riding Warhydra and two Sorceresses on foot. All three miniatures were designed by Aly Morrison. Aly told me that initially a box of mages was planned including these miniatures. But most of them never saw an official release. By definition from the Collecting Citadel Miniature Wiki the unreleased Sorceresses were named Sorceress 1 and 2. Sorceress 1 is very rare and through the years I only now from three copies out there. Sorceress 2 is also rare. But here I know at least of six copies. One you can see in my hand on the picture to the left. While the male Sorcerer appears frequently in Ebay, but through all the years I never saw one of these Sorceresses. With time goes by they become my holy grail. In January I put up this request in the Oldhammer Trading Company FB group:


Hello,
I am looking for some hard to find and unreleased Dark Elf and Chaos miniatures to complete my armies and collections. I know that most of these will be a long shot but perhaps some of you honorable collectors are willing to sell and look for a new home for one of these fantastic miniatures. Be sure that your offered miniatures do not end as piece of lead in a dark box. Each miniatures gets a first class paint job (19 Golden Demon Trophies) and a special place in my cabinet and in my heart!

... and I was very lucky when Emiel S. answered me, thinking about selling his copy to me. Emiel get this miniature a long time ago. Even if Emiel is a good painter himself he never felt comfortable painting her. We had a lot of conversation and negotiations, but finally Emiel decided that she will move to a new home, where she will get the painting she deserves. I am very thankful for this awesome miniature! I won´t disappoint Emiel and keep my promise. Here is the first part of the story of this fantastic miniature.


Some Sorceress miniature history

Aly looking at his work from 1993

When visiting Aly in Hamburg I showed him this miniature and we chatted about her history and her design. Here I will sum up his thoughts as well as some more information I was able to collect through the years. Back in 1993 Aly sculpted some early prototypes of the Dark Elves. These miniatures followed closely to his 4th Edition High Elves. In cooperation with Jes Godwin he finished the High Elves range sculpting the Elyrion Reavers, Shadow Warriors, White Lions and some Command Crews. The new Dark Elves were planned as a dark and sinister mirror of the High Elves sharing the same grace. To my knowledge his first set of prototypes include 2 Warriors, 2 Spearmen, a Witch Elf and a Sorceress. You can recognize these miniatures by their higher degree of detail compared to their later counterparts. This is especially true for the Witch Elf and the Sorceress.

Dark Elves Armybook Cover

Michael Perrys Talisman Sorceress

Aly remembered that he was carried away when sculpting them, trying to catch all the little details the concept artists put in their concept sketches and artworks. On the other hand, miniatures often were used as basis for further artworks by the atists. Alys early Dark Elves then became the basis for Dave Gallagher famous Cover Artwork of the 4th Edition Dark Elves Armybook we all know. Several months before I asked in another article the question if the Talisman figures were first or was it the Cover Artwork. The truth is, Alys unreleased prototypes were first, then came the Cover Artwork which was then used by Michael Perry as basis for the Talisman plastic Dark Elves miniatures. 

Comaprison of Artwork and reference

But, back to our unreleased Sorceress. It is amazing how many similarities you can recognize when comparing the miniature and the artwork. Here I want to mention the loincloth, the crown, the pearls and jewels in her hair, the sword, the mask (which switched sides) as well as the dominant high collar. Aly really did a Masterpiece in her. But, most of these details became even more filigree in Daves Artwork. And there are also a lot of differences, where Dave improved Alys work. In particular Dave was not a fan of the gloves which he dropped on the Sorceress as well as on the Witch Elf. Dave also replaced the medallion by a spell effect and added a small Cold One to her feet which looks like serving as a familiar. It is awesome to see how the Games Workshop design develop by different artists through different iterations of a design. A shame that we know so less about the fantastic work the designers do in the studio.

My version of  the Sorceress
It was clear that such a piece of Dark Elves history has to become a very special display miniature. Additionally, I had promised Emiel that this girl will get a paintjob she deserves. I really want her to become special and to do my part in the footprints of Aly and Dave. Therefore, I decided to pay respect to both artists by bringing togehter both designs. The idea is to paint her by the Cover Artwork from Dave and to catch his vision of her I had to sculpt the little Cold One in reference to Aly.       

Sculpting the Small Cold One
I used Trish Cardens Cold Ones for the 4th Edition for reference. For the pose I tried to get the spirit from Daves Cover art. I started with a wire construction which I covered with a layer brown stuff to give the armature more stability:

Next I added the rough proportions using greenstuff. I was very carefully to do the whole design a bit smaller because the scales will add the final volume later.  

Then I added the spikes on the spine and covered the whole lizard with scales. I used the original Cold One as reference and repeated the original scale pattern from Trish. Here it is important to use always fresh putty when it is the most sticky. I formed small balls and pressed them on the surface. then I pushed the sides of each scale in shape. I used a small needle to do this between two scales. Here you can see the progress after my first session using two times fresh putty. 

Cold One sculpt after the first session of adding scales

Next there was need to finish all proportions by sculpting the arms and the head. I didn´t care to much about the detail work as most of it will be covered later with scales. The head was a bit tricky and I had to iterate the eyesockets and eys several times before I was happy with the result. Also there was need to sculpt a new lower jar because my first one disappeared after adding the teeth. In this way several parts were removed and resculpted or improved during the sculpting process. Finally, there was need to add much more scales which took a lot of small sessions and a lot of patience.

Done! I now have an idea of the ordeal of Trish with the myriad of scales sculptured in her life or Chris Fitzpatrick sculpting these very filigree scales of the cloaks of his Dark Elves Corsairs! Kudos to both! Here you can see the small Cold One in reference to his bigger brother. You can see that I tried to get identical proportions and scale patterns.

Comparison of the sculpt with the original Cold One from Trish

And here you can see the Sorceress with her little familiar. My goal was to catch the atmosphere of Dave Gallaghers artwork with a small Cold One sneaking around his mistress gnarling and hissing ready to attack each enemy coming to close. In the artwork the Cold One sneaks around her cloak which fits very good as the cloak has a movement to the right. The cloak from Alys miniature is different and very special. Aly sculpted a big cloak as seperate piece which stick out much from the miniature. Consequently, there is a big gap between cloak and miniature which is in my eyes the only weakness this beautiful miniature has. By putting the small Cold One into this gap I was able to reduce this weakness and give the whole miniature a much more compact shape.

Finally, some pictures of this fantastic team on their base. Because the miniature is very large and the Cold One also needs some space I enlarged the 20 mm Base by some cork. The base is still work in progress. I think I will add a second layer of cork to get a bit more complexity.

However, I think you get an idea in which direction this miniature is developing. I am looking forward to do the next steps including finish the base and add some paint to the Cold One and the Sorceress. The painting will become a good challenge because I want to reproduce the transparent loincloth from Daves Artwork and there is also need for an imressive Freehand on the back of her cloak. As promised to Emiel, I will let her shine and will give her a special place in my heart and in my cabinet!! In this regard a short message in my own interest:

I am still after some unreleased and rare Dark Elves miniatures of that era. If you have such a miniature in a dark box, rarely seeing the light of the day and far away to see some paint, think about seeling it to me to become part of this collection. Drop me a message to: georgdamm @ web . de Thanks in advance!

I hope you like that first part. Stay tuned for the second part when this miniature will get painted. As always I am happy to read your thoughts in the comments.
Kind Regards,
GeOrc

 

The Talisman Sorceress

Dark Elf Sorceress, painted 08.2019

My Instagram Followers surely have noticed that there is a new girl in town. And yes, a new Hero strengthen my Dark Elf force. I painted this Sorceress already in late August, but spare time was rare the last months so that I was not able to write a proper article about her. Time to change that.
Just like the Talisman Witch Elf, this Sorceress from the same Games Workshop Board Game is a very special miniature for me. Together with some other Dark Elf representives she decorated the first Eavy Metal site in the 4th Edition Armybook. Immediatly, I fell in love with this girl! I started stalking her but no retailer was able to help me to get in touch with her. Desperately, I called the UK Mail Order Trolls and they told me she´s out of town... no chance to date her. It was 1998, long before Ebay and second hand market places where you can meet these kind of girls today. I was very sad. All what I had were some glossy magazine pictures. But, I didn´t give up. I asked friends and other players and then in the year 2000, friends called me to say that they have seen her. The Sorceress was back... and my friends reacted quickly and arranged a blind date. And, yes, a couple of weeks later we both met on my workbench! Finally a Happy End!


The Sorceress Miniature

Dark Elf Armybook Cover

The Sorceress is like her Witch Elf sister a plastic miniature. Both miniatures were designed by Michael Perry in reference to some concept art by David Gallagher. Davids concept later becomes the Dark Elf Armybook cover presenting these early miniatures. David says about his artwork:

 "I can’t actually remember too much about this cover other than it was at the start of a process that refined the imagery, not just the figures either, at this stage I was beginning to look at the whole range of box and book packaging and how random it was, just starting to refine a whole range rather than individual items was surprisingly difficult at the time."

Therefore, the cover figures show the new design direction the new Dark Elf miniature range would develop. However, these plastic miniatures were released as part of the Talisman Board Game Expansions. Read more about the Witch Elf Champion figure here. The Sorceress was part of the Dragons Tower Expansion released in June 1995. Here, she was also available as a free miniature with White Dwarf #186. All Talisman and Warhammer Quest plastics were released a second time in the late 90s or early 2000 in so called Toy Boxes. The release of these boxes allowed me to buy and own these fantastic miniatures. Thank to these boxes, these old plastics are more common these day. Back to the mid 90s! The Sorceress had her first appearance in White Dwarf #186 as part of the Eavy Metal site presenting all plastic Wizards which were available as give away. This version was painted by Stuart Thomas and reflected closely the 4th Edition Armybook Cover. Her next appearance was then in the 4th Edition Dark Elf Armybook released in July 1995. This Version was painted by Paul Muller.

                                    The Talisman Dark Elf Sorceress painted by Stuat Thomas (left) and by Paul Muller (right)


Painting the plastic Sorceress

I bought the Sorceress as a painted second hand miniature on Ebay. The miniature was badly painted without primer. It took a lot of work to strip the old paint using Revell Airbrush Cleaner. Finally I used a toothpick to pick out the old rubber like colour from the depths of the miniature. Luckily, the miniature didn´t get damaged which can happen easily when the plastic miniature is for a to long in contact with your cleaner. Because the Sorceress miniatures appear a bit smaller compared to her metal collegues I put her on a ruined obelisk. This obelisk is a gipsum casting of a high elf terrain plastic bit. The based miniature was primed with two component priming and then was ready for painting. For that, I had in mind that I wanted the Sorceress on Pegasus and this lady here will share much similarities. Therefore, I decieded to go with Paul Mullers reference for painting my own but with some minor changes. I pushed the purple more into my way of painting purple and also I skiped the coloured hair as both Sorcerersses should have white hair.  In the following I will describe some crucial steps in detail. As you can see on the work-in-progress pictures I skipped some steps in the descriptions.

The skin
The skin was painted first using my established light skin colour scheme. In brief, I primed the surface with Bleached Bone (Ushabti Bone, Screaming Skull, tiny bit of Golden Yellow). This base colour was darkend by adding different amounts of Shading mix (Abbadon Black and some Incubi Darkness) resulting in two colours I used for shading. Then I added highlights with white (here Hobby line White). Light and shadows were painted in reference to an imaginary zenital light source. After the colour transistions were finished I Used Warlock Purple (magenta tone) and then liche purple as glaze to add some colour. Improtant to pull the colours from the light areas to the shadow areas
 

Clothes
Here, I used my typical cloth colours described already in detail in my Exectutions posting. What I want to add here is that I painted different textures. While I wanted a fine fabric for her loincloth I wanted a more rough fabric for her cloak. I started for both by adding the basic colours and the shading. Then it started to get in different directions. While I painted the highlights on the loincloth in a classic way I painted the highlights on the cloak with very fine short lines in horizontal direction. These lines give the whole thing the textured look I wanted. I had a lot of fun trying this. Looking at the result I had hoped will look a bit more explicit but it is a good direction. I 
will definitly try out more with textures in future.

The sword
I always like the red-orange sword Paul painted on his version and I definatly wanted to copy this great eyecatcher. In contrast to Paul I painted mine with reflections typical for NMM. I added Mephiston Red as basic colour. For all further red toned I used my classic mix of Red Gore and Dark Flesh. There was need to mix some further colours. First a yellow. Here I wanted a desaturated light Yellow and mixed Golden Yellow with Bleached Bone. Then I needed an Orange which I mixed from the before described Red Tone with that Yellow Tone. For the shading I used Scorched Brown. As always when painting NMM I add some first contrast by lightening the basic colour with that Orange Tone and shading with Scorched Brown. Then I maximized the contrast by using the Yellow Tone and Black (here Vallejo Air Black). For softening the colour transistions to the base colour I used the mixed red tone. Finally I used some Bleached Bone and partly some white for reflections and the edge highlights.

Object source lighning (OSL)
To balance the eyecatching sword I added some OSL to her right hand. T he effect should look like a spell comparable to the one in the artwork from David Gallagher. Therefore, I painted the hand in bluish tones using Lightning Blue and Regal Blue. For that I defined a center on her hand where the origin centers. Then I added shades in different intensities with growing distance. To make this really looking an OSL there is need for some bluish reflections in close distance on the surounding areas. The picture reflects this only as a first sketch. I maximized this effect in the end, therefore you have to check the final pictures to see the effect working. 

The Base
The base was painted in my typical colours for High Elf ruins. In brief, I primed the obelisk with Screaming Skull and the debris in Steel Legion Drab. Then the obelisk was shaded with Steel Legion Drab and highlighted with White. The debris was shaded with Scorched Brown and with the Shading Mix. Then, the debris was drybrushed with Steel Legion Drab, Screaming Skull and white. The gem was painted with the before mentioned Red Mix. I used this Red Mix and made lighter colour mixtures by adding Dwarf Flesh. Using these mixtures and pure Dark Flesh I highlighted the gem to the bottom. Then I used the Shading Mix for shading the gem to the top. If you take a close look you will see, that the transition is positioned in a diagonal way. Finally I add a white reflection spot into the dark top area and a white cuvature at the lightest spot at the bottom. I added some ready to use grass from Mininatur. The ear was made with a brush hair dipped into glue and then in beige pigment. Then the ear was glued into the gras.

Freehands
I added some freehands on the inside and outside of the cloak. For the inside I painted small gold runes on the bottom and added a bottom line. I used the Urial Poisenblade artwork from David Gallagher as reference for the scripture. For the outside I wanted something simple due to the fact that the drapery is very tight. A tight drapery results in a lot of offset and hided areas. This makes it hard to work with bigger symbols. Therefore, I decided to do some linework. I wanted to paint coiled snakes into the corners. I made a sketch and tried to bring this onto the cloak. It is not my best freehand work and I am not that happy with the result. However, I decided to go with the result, as I had not the patience to start again on this difficult surface.
 


The finished Miniature

Here you can see the finished Sorceress:

I am very happy how she turned out. I really enjoyed to paint all the small details, which Michael Perry was able to realize from Davids Artwork, namley the crest with its little skull, the arm decoration, all the small jewelry on her cloth and in her hair. I like how the sword and the competing spell turned out. But, I am not so happy with her backview and the Freehand work on the cloak. However, she is a beautiful miniature and the best I have painted so far.

Talisman Dark Elf Sorceress miniatures I have painted so far, 1999 (left); 2000 (centre) and 2019 (right)

After 20 years we have met again and she is still a beauty and aged very well. I hope you enjoyed reading. Let me know your stories of this awesome miniature or let me know what you think about mine.

Kind Regards,
GeOrc

Cleaning up my Workbench

The Workbench in July 2019

My approach in painting miniatures is simple; Paint something which attracts you the most. The advantage is that you are always highly motivated. Unfortunately, it happens that you loose your interest before a project is finished. You grab the next one or move on to a different project. Therefore, my shelf of shame with all my unfinished projects is a large one. Becoming a Daddy has made things more complicated. My painting time devides into evenings doing the night shift by taking care for our little boy. As I am mostly tired from the day my painting concentrates on doing simple work like basic colours, simple transitions with less colours like in NMM, big surfaces, bases and so on. When having some spare time on the weekend I use it for work which needs much concentration like Freehands, finelining, painting eyes and so on. As you can image I do not have much spare time on the weekends which results in an unfinished miniature accumulation. When you are following this project you already noticed that half a dozen Cold Ones are still waiting to get saddled by their missing knights. However, when I started my work on the Cold Ones some of the infantry troopers become victims of loosing interest. From time to time I continued work on them but finally two executioners and two Witch Elf stuck in the pile for getting their finish sessions. Therefore, I decided that the July will be the month to finish all that stuff from my 4th Edition Dark Elves project that stucks somewhere in my painting pipeline. Lets see what we have here:


Executioners

The Workbench in end of 2018

I started painting the first three Executioners in end of November 2018. Quickly I concentrated on one miniature which left the two unfished troopers behind. My interest then quickly changed to the Cold One Knights and I wanted to paint a test miniature of this cavalery unit. The two unfinished Executioners patiently waited for their time to come.





During that time I had some smaller painting sessions on the hoodies, base and the black leather. Finally, they waited until mid of July 2019 to see a brush again. I started with finishing the chainmail, silver and gold elements, the gems as well as some correction work on all finished parts.

The next sessions covered the axes which were a lot of fun to paint. Finally I painted the leather, base and some battle damage as well as some blood on the axes.

Finished NMM on the two new collegues

I am happy that these two maniacs have joined their collegue to sever some limbs and heads.

 


Witch Elves

These two girls waited more than half a year to get finished.The Witch Elf in defending position was the last girl from the first rank which I started painting with the two other girls from the left flank in 2018. You can see her leying around in the first executioner picture above. The latter two were quickly finished but the motivation left me to continue with this third one.








The girl with the raising swords is from the second rank and joined her later to motivate me. From time to time I spent some painting time in both but quickly concentrated on this second Witch Elf as she was much more detailed and thrilling to paint.

Again the front rank girl was left unfinished behind. I do not know why this particular Witch Elf had her difficulties motivating me to finish her. I told her story in our Tabletop-Board and some angry members put up the pressure which was necessary to get the job done.

Sometimes a whip is motivating more than hundreds of nice words!

The Witch Elves Unit so far. Ready to shed some blood

       

Dark Elf Warriors

When ever I had some spare times in the early mornings while my little boy still sleeps I had a coffee and continue to prepare some troopers for my 20 miniature Dark Elf warrior unit. It took me a while to collect these very rare metal versions of the Dark Elf Warriors. Now, I am happy that the first 10 miniatures are prepared and ready for painting. I think I am going with some red colours for this regiment.

The first Dark Elves Warriors prepare theirselves for some undercoat

Sorceress on Dark Pegasus and Plastic Sorceress on foot 

Finally, I have a small teaser for you.

Two Sorceresses on their way to lead a new wing of this army

First, the Talisman Sorceress on foot. I get this plastic miniature from ebay. It was painted ok but with very very thick layers of paint and primer. It was hell to get this miniatures stripped from the paint and to prepare her for painting. Because this girl is a bit smaller compared to the metal miniatures, I put her on a bit higher base design to cover her size. Here she comes, ready for painting.

I also prepared the mighty sorceress on black pegasus. The challenge on this miniature was to create a base which supports the impression that this beast is just jumping to fly up into the air. As you can imagine it was a lot of planning and trying to get this heavy metal miniature balanced. But see it by youself.

                                                                       Its all about Balance


I hope you like my progress. As always I am happy to read your thoughts in the comments.

Kind Regards,
GeOrc