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Dark Elf Assassin
There is quite a story behind this miniature, for me. I painted this in december 2003. I started painting miniatures during july 2003, at which time I got this mini. I also bought a Games Workshop starting kit, including 9 pots of colour and 6 Bretonnian plastic bowmen. I wanted a couple of more minis than just the 6 bowmen in the starting kit, so i picked some Warhammer minis to go along with it. I finally picked a blister of 3 dwarf slayers, and a blister with this dark elf assassin. A great start, i thought! So I got home and opened all the packages, and started painting. Starting off with one of the bowmen, i was incredibly proud when i succeeded in getting all of the paint in the right areas. His bow was brown and his eyes blue, etc, which I thought was great. I didn't even try shading or drybrushing or anything fancy like that, mainly because I was oblivious to these concepts. And so I thought, "Hey, why don't I give this dark elf assassin a try now?!". And so I tried, after a moment's frustration realizing that the assassin was WAY more complex to paint than the bowman I had so glouriously finished a few hours earlier. The assassin had too many details and hard-to-reach bits for me to be able to even give it it's base colours. A little demoralized i put the assassin aside and kept practicing on the other miniatures, the rest of the bowmen and the dwarf slayers. After a couple of weeks I felt very confident, as I had learnt about shading, drybrushing and several other techniques. I had also finished the dwarf slayers to a standard which I at the time found highly impressive. "Why not give that darn assassin another try", I thought to myself, and went at it again. I gave it the base colours, which went alright, then went on to shading and highlighting. By then I realized that the cloak was much more than I could handle! It ended up looking very grainy and not at all realistic or very smooth. Seriously demoralized again, I was! About a month later I had another try, which much the same results. I could not get the cloak to look anything but grainy and horrific. Neither could I get the skin-areas to look smooth at all. Further months later, I discovered acetone and it's uses in miniature painting! ;) Mr Dark Elf had a long over-night's bath and was back to his original metal-self. Great! I was ready for another try. I gave him a white undercoat, blacklined him a little and started all over again. And this is the result! Believe me, it is at least ten times better than any of my previous editions! All in all, for me it has been a true test of patience and persistance, which I think I passed. Because it's now finished, and I am quite satisfied with it :)
Posted: 2 Jan 2004
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