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

Unreleased Sorceress 2  - Part 3

Unreleased Dark Elves Sorceress 2

Sorry for the long silence on this blog. The last months were very chaotic for me and my little family. As my wife returns to her job and our little boy changed the child day care, our days have become very exhausting. Additionally, the heat waves here in Germany reduced my remaining energy and things in my beloved hobby slowed down. While I was able to paint from time to time I had neglected this blog and was not able to finish my articles. I started writing this finaly part of painting my unreleased Sorceress two months ago but did not get it finished neither in August nor in September. Now I am sitting here in a train back to Leipzig and will give it a next try. Therefore, welcome to the final part of this article series for painting the Unreleased Sorceress 2. Painting this miniature has developed into a very long journey which stretched for three parts now. In case you missed the history and preparation of the miniature click part 1 or the design of her little Cold One pet and the first painting click part 2. As already announced part 3 will be about painting the cloak with a focus on the freehand work I put on it.

 

Painting the cloak

For painting the cloak I put the cloak on a wooden stick from an ice lolly using Patafix. Then I started painting the surfaces. For the colours I oriented again on Dave Gallaghers artwork and used a bluish colour for the backside and a cold red for the furish inside. The latter was painted  in darker tones as it lies mostly in the shadows. Because the backside would be decorated with a lot of freehands I did not spend to much time and effort to achive perfect blendings. As a lot of correction work on the background would be needed, there would be plenty of time to clean these blendings after the freehand work. Here my result I started the freehand work with.

 

 

Preparing of the cloak, back view (left) and front view (right)

Planning the Freehand

The big surface of the cloak screamed Freehand all over it. Therefore, I spent a lot of time thinking about what I could put onto this cloak and what could fit to this miniature. Thankfully, there were already good examples of painted versions of this miniature trying to achive this. 

Sorceress by Myles David

In this regard I like Myles work the most and going with one of the many versions of a grining skull should fit perfectly into the style of this age. Like Myles I checked the artworks of the armybook and sticked to the Tower artwork from Des Hanley. 

Artwork by Des Henley

The Black Guard helmet in this artwork shows some nice skulls which could still looking good when reduced in size for the freehand. Additionally I wanted to add some line work on the lower border which should show the typical spikes as well as some on the sides. I also wanted to add some gems serving as coloured eyecatchers which could be placed on the skull and in the center and in the corners of the line work. My initial planning also contained the idea to paint the lower jar of the skull as part of the lower line work combined with the gem as well as some runes between the jars. It becomes clear later that not everything could be realized as planned. But here you can see my 1:1 drawing I did as reference to start with.

 

Concept sketch for the planned Freehand

 

I discussed my ideas with some befriended painters, among them the Master of Freehands himself, Stephan Rath multiple Slayer Sword winner and known for his amazing freehands. He liked the design and told me to go with it. Because a freehand mostly developes with every element added I should be open to changes and bear in mind that most of his amazing stuff did not ended as they were planned or painted in the beginning. He should be very right about this. 

 

Painting the central element

For transfering the skull design onto the surface I used my already described masking tape technique shown here. In brief, I photocopied my sketch and fixed it on some layers of masking tape. Then I cut the symbol off and from this I cut off the eyes and noseholes. This mask should provide enough markers to transfer the design. I put it properly in place on the drapery of the cloak. Then I painted softly the outlines as well as the eye and nosehole markers with Screaming Skull. I removed the tape and corrected the lines and spots. Then I painted the the surface with XV-88 and painted the outlines and additional lines in black. Further markings and helping lines for details, teeth and the central gem were added. The final result was my initial sketch I started the detailing work with.

 

 

Transfer of the central freehand using a masking tape technique

I painted the skull in golden NMM with light bluish eyesockets. I quickly realized that the central gem was placed badly on the drapery and replacing won´t really work. Because the drapery added a lot of detail in this central area I dropped the idea of a gem on the skull. Even if I was forced to make some first changes to my concept I was very happy with the final result. 

Finished Skull Freehand

Lessons of Try& Error

For a first sketch of my line work I sticked closely to my initial concept. I quickly realized that I won´t have the same space between Skull and line work as planned on my sketch. Consequently, it was very early clear that I have to drop the idea of the glowing runes. Additionally, I started to dislike the idea of adding the lower jar as part of the line work. To test alternatives I used a actual picture and Photoshop to do some quick rearrangements.

 

Use of Photoshop to test some Freehand design changes

I discussed the ideas again with some other painters, put the cloak beside and spent some days in vacation with my family. With some new energy and motivation I returned to my workbench and decided to skip the jar idea and go with my latest photoshop concept.

 

Painting the line work

I started my next painting session on the line work with erasing and repainting some areas. Then, I added all the details of the gold NMM for the lines and painted the gems in purple. Because the gold tones of the skull with its big areas and the line work with its small areas looked differently, there was need to adapt the gold colours so that line work and skull better fit together.

 

Final Freehand Design

Putting the whole model together

I glued the finished cloak in place and it still fit perfectly on the Sorceress and the little Cold One. Checking the final results showed from the back view that the cloak did not goodly integrate into the miniature as the bluish colours of the cloak and redish ones of the collar contrasted to much resulting in seperation of both elements.

View on the assembled Sorceress miniature

 

Therefore, I added some red and purple colour to the top of the cloak to make a softer transition from the collar to the cloak. This optimization worked fine and the backview looked much more harmonic.  

Finished Unreleased Dark Elves Sorceress 2

Final Pictures

Finally, this journey had come to and end and I had my painted version of this amazing miniature in my hand. This girl really had cost me a lot of time but I enjoyed every minute painted this lovely masterpiece. The painting pulled me away and resulted in a miniature so full of character and different additional details.

 

 

 

 

I hope you enjoyed my journey paying this awesome Design from Aly Morrsion as well as the iconic armybook cover from Dave Gallagher justice. Let me know what you like the most on this evil lady and leave your thoughts in the comments.

Thanks for reading!

Kind Regards,
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