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Mourning Her Maker
This scene was one of my entries into the GenCon 2006 painting contest. I was honoured that it received fourth place in the diorama category, and third place in the manufacturer's category. If it looks familiar, you may have seen a similar scene that I did a while back. Jim Ludwig of Dark Sword Miniatures contacted me and asked me to do two more scenes, but using Dark Sword minis, many of which (including this one) were sculpted by Dennis Mize. This first one was a memorial to Dennis for Jim himself. He commissioned a second diorama as a gift to Mike Noe of Iron Wind Miniatures, who worked with Dennis for many years. Jim asked for a fall colour scheme, so I painted the bulk of the mini with reds, yellows and browns, then mixed touches of blue into my NMM mix to evoke an autumn sky and provide some contrast to the warmer colours. She didn't have sculpted fingernails, but with the detail in the rest of the sculpt and the very natural look I was going for, I figured I'd add those in, but paint them to look natural rather than nailpolished. The Dark Sword fingures are lovely, with nice natural proportions and a fineness of scale without being too delicate and fiddly. As far as the rest of the diorama goes, I used white in the tombstone and flower bouquet in an effort to help draw the viewer's eye from the NMM hotspots to other parts of the scene. The flower bouquet and scattered leaves are made from natural plant products I painted. The plant beside the gravestone and the fern are my first go at using brass etched plants, which I purchased from Hasslefree Miniatures. They were interesting to work with, but I think I'll need to try for thinner coats in both primer and paint next time. They didn't really start to look 'natural' until I bent them around quite a bit and then added a few touches of browns and oranges in places.
Posted: 24 Aug 2006
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