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Kommander Svetlana
Yeah, Svetlana. I mean, we all know our favourite Sorscha would never take a stroll without her trusty Frostfang scythe, don't we ? Hence, this evil sword-wielding gal is obviously her twin sister, Svetlana. Obviously... Yeah... Okay, enough with the fluff. This is the first mini I've painted in almost 6 months due to a burnout. As you may have gathered by now, she was converted, if slightly. On the Warmachine forums, some time ago, a person going under the name of Morbidangel suggested that while the "scythe-twirling" pose she had going was a bit wierd, the simple fact of replacing the polearm with a sword would make it perfect. Indeed, in my mind's eye I could see that it'd be fantastic. I mean, look at it : it seems the whole mini was tailored to that pose. Not one to let inspiration slip by, I stole his idea and got to work. So basically, I cut the haft, pinned a spare Tyrion's sword in its place, and while I was at it pinned the hands to the wrists for added resistance (I seldom play with my minis so usually I can do without the extra resilience). Well, actually, I didn't assemble the mini right then because it'd have been impossible to paint the upper back. I thought about the color scheme for a long while, toying with ideas of blues and whites or blacks and whites, then, in a daring feat of originality, decided to go for the factory paint-job, simply switching two colors (the inside and outside of the coat) :D. I basecoated everything (both the inside and outside of the coat were basecoated black, incidentally), then did the darklining. In order to avoid screwing up blended surfaces, I blocked out the freehand right then. Then I started on the highlighting. I seldom shade, preferring instead to basecoat with the darkest colors and highlight from there. After 6 months of not painting, the blending skills were a bit rusty, but a few tries got me smooth transitions (lesson of the day : thin your paints a lot, and them some more just for good measure). There are actually very few colors used here. The inside folds of the coat were basecoated black and highlighted up to Vallejo Model color Marron Rouge (sorry, I'm French :) ). The armor was basecoated the same Marron Rouge and highlighted to yellow. Similarly, the outside of the coat was basecoated black then moved up to Gris Sombre (which is the Vallejo equivalent of GW Shadow Grey - I like the blueish hue it has), while the freehand was basecoated Gris Sombre, up to white. So as you see, lots of color recycling :). I intentionally left the highlighting rather toned-down to contrast with the armor. Remember how I said that I blocked out the freehand during basecoating in order to avoid any screw-ups on carefully blended surfaces (and the subsequent painstaking touch-ups) ? Well, it worked - more or less. I mean, I did avoid the biggest mistakes, because the lines were already set ; however, I still had to correct minor occurrences of painting outside the lines. Furthermore, having a design in the middle of the folds of the coat made highlighting them a rather strange experience, having to cut the brush strokes off when near the design and pick them up again on the other side (if that makes any sense). The armor wasn't too hard to highlight, but I had trouble with the face - she had an ongoing case of crossed eyes, as it were. After some amount of tries, and careful scraping off of the paint (it builds up layer after layer until the mini has bulging eyes, which is not cool), I got them straight. Then I finished with the sword, going for the magical icy feel, with all sorts of different blues (namely, Royal Blue, Deep Sky Blue, and Turquoise), highlighted to white, though the picture seems to lack some contrast in that respect. Finally, since I don't like building bases that detract from the mini (I mean, I can understand dioramas, but I'm not fond of minis with a disproportionate base, like "Frodo overlooking the Niagara Falls" or something), I just went for a consistent and undistracting "snow-swept plains" look, which is a sure win with all Khador minis. And there you have it. 15-20 hours' worth of work condensed in less than 750 words. Feel free to liberally grace this mini with comments and advice :D.
Posted: 1 Jun 2004
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