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Bretonnian Princess : a tribute to goatman (repost)
(Repost : smaller but much higher quality pic. Apologies to all who'd left comments and votes - feel free to comment again) Phew. This one was a hard one. Ok, first of all : why 'tribute' ? Well, I started painting minis 2 years ago, under tutelage of a friend (merci Boubou !), but what really got me striving to improve my painting was goatman's 'Highelv princess'. When I first saw it, I couldn't believe such a thing was humanly possible. Damn, even nowadays, whenever I see it I'm awed by the amount of skill it virtually oozes. So I thought I wanted to do something along the same lines. At first I wanted to paint, like her evil twin or something, so I was going for a banner-holding lahmian vampire on a horse (for which I used Tyrion's horse's head). After having nearly finished the horse, I made a mistake and totally screwed up the 30+ hours I'd spent on it :cry:. Then I melted the next horse I tried to paint (whoa, acetone dissolves plastic !). A trifle disgruntled, I decided to have a go at painting the rider. That's when I realized how ugly the fangs were (not to mention the frightening amount of flash she had on her face). So I started all over, using a bretonnian sorceress this time, and a standard horse - the banner's the only thing that hasn't changed, it's a Dirz banner. I picked up the Fenryll base along the way. Painting-wise, this is my best effort to date. Not only because I seemed to be cursed (after the whole horse episode, I oversprayed varnish on the sorceress, cut through the banner with a little buzzsaw, & so on - it's a wonder I ever finished this, but it did take about two months), but also because of all that I tried : - Study of reds : there are 3 different types of reds here : pinkinsh purplish red of sorts, blood red on the banner, and fiery red on her sleeves, plus a sort of leathery deep red on the saddle, but you can't see it so it doesn't count. - Black & white freehand + blending : this was a nightmare. Black & white are the hardest colors to paint smoothly because the eye is more sensitive to their transitions than for colors, so I spent hours upon hours trying to get it smooth. I started out with layering, and then I went back at it with local glazes to smooth out the blending :exhausted:. - Shading of the barding : I can shade a flat, uniform color using layering, but shading this was a whole different thing because of the black-to-white blending. Inks, washes, and another few hours did the trick. - I'm really happy with the tail, though I used very straightforward drybrushing (paint brown, dark brown ink, then drybrush brown, then brown/red, red, red/orange, and finally yellow). - I also like my little freehand NMM gold necklace/choker I gave the horse - I thought it needed something in that area. Nice gems, huh :) ? - The sorceress' face is my best to date ; it's actually the first I managed to give a hint of emotion to. 'Most Surprizingly Important Detail' award goes to the little white spot that shows the gloss of her lipstick. - The ice effect on the sword was actually really easy to do, and rather fun too. Turquoise, painted sort of NMM, and very thin parallel white streaks. - The banner pole's my best NMM here, both steel and gold, in my opinion. The gold on the rest of the mini doesn't look as, uh, goldish, to me :(. - The base was painted using Lazslo's technique for painting granite and marble, which you should find at http://hot-lead.org. The granite didn't turn out as nice on the pic, oh well... Anecdotes : - I painted a very intricate pattern on the saddle... but then I had to glue the rider over it. D'oh ! - I gave the horse red evil eyes because I had no idea what a real horse's eyes should look like (and I was too lazy for research) :D. Tips of the day : - Brush-on varnish is your friend. - Always put a drop or two of dish detergent in your water if you're going to use inks or washes. - Whomever put that curse on me, could you please lift it now ? :) Thanks for reading this far.
Posted: 27 Oct 2003
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