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Malachi - Dark Elf Mage
This is Malachi, special miniature, that was designed by I-Kore's Kevin White, but for New Wave Games, which casted it as their limited edition mini, running only 500 casts. Anyway, the mini really fits to I-Kore's Celtos range, it's the same scale (25mm) and same style. I got this mini from New Wave to paint it for them. I thought I should do something special about it. Well, the No. 1 painter for New Wave is famous Jen Haley, so first I looked at the way she painted this mini, for a reference. I was surprised she was getting only 7.1 for this mini on CMON, and I told myself, hey, I can beat that ;). OK, there is not much to think about the mini, except the cloak and few other details. First thing to decide was the colour scheme, and as I paint all Dark Elves in violet-black-gold scheme, this was easy for this miniature. When I painted the inner shirt, I decided for the hem, which made it stand out. I wasn't still sure what to paint on the cloak. Well, finally I looked at the dragon on the staff and decided to do the same dragon on the cloak! That would be matching theme over whole mini, possibly he being able to control the dragons. Of course the cloak is quite wide, so different pose, flying dragon, was more natural to fit on the cloak. First I drawed the dragon on piece of paper, using pencil. I always do things like that when I'm going to paint something like that. If I have a model to follow (like I did with Grail Knight Hero chalices), first I try it on a paper in full colors, just for a test. If I don't have the model, I take pencil and draw it on the paper in pencil, to find the proportions. Once the dragon was on the paper, I made a square net on the paper, over the dragon. Simple one, three squares horizontally accross the dragon, two vertically. Just to find the exact proportions of each part relative to any other, so I could easily transfer this to the miniature. OK, then I took basic color, this time my NMM Gold mix (as I use it quite often I mixed these paints into separate bottle, but it's mix of Bleached Bone, Sunburst Yellow and Snakebite Leather paints) and painted the dragon to the cloak, in the proportions I saw on the paper. Fine, then came the shading, with darker tones, the highlighting in lighter tones. All in all, these things are not so difficult, and they do not even take long time to paint. Just try it and you'll see yourself. And final point: yes, I succeeded, my Malachi gets better mark then Jen's one ;).
Posted: 24 May 2002
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