Hags and Drow, evil RPG commission

Hi all, today we are crossing to the evil side of the street and working on an evil adventuring party for a client, starting with...

"Fascist!" (one for Hot Fuzz fans courtesy of Mrs PVP)

A Hag. A D&D creature that lives beneath the surface of the water and drags passers by to the clamourous depths of her lair where they can drown. They are based on the old legend of Jenny Greenteeth and Grindylows and are very nasty. This one is a Reaper Sea Hag model and is just splendid. I decided from the outset to have her skin be a muddy green, so breaking out the trusty Rakarth Flesh and mixing in a little Castellan Green gave her a nice green-flesh basecoat. Highlighting by adding Pallid Wych Flesh and then shading back down with Athonian Camoshade finished the deal.

I wanted her garments to look wet and clingy so after base coating the dress I "reverse highlighted" the raised areas (where the flesh pressed against the cloth) and the depths of the creases by adding the flesh colour to the cloth colour. By increasing the amount of flesh tone I mixed in I was able to make the cloth appear translucent and clinging. Not that a Hag is anything that you'd want to see beneath the dress! Her hair was Karak Stone shaded with Biel-Tan Green. The pondweed and kelp likewise a base of Elysian Green also shaded with Biel-Tan Green. Barnacles were just picked out in bone and shaded with Agrax Earthshade.

Say hello to my leetle friend

Something I had never spotted in the unpainted shots of this model was the octopus clinging to her upper arm! A familiar maybe or just a friend? Regardless, he was an opportunity for a spot of colour and warmth on a deliberately cold model. Checking out some reference photos I hit on the orangey one with a pale underbelly. No idea on specific genus and species, someone more versed in cephalopod biology care to help out? I first painted him Pallid Wych Flesh all over to give the pale underbelly and to serve as a bright base for the orange. Then mixing Wild Rider Red with the Pallid Wych Flesh gave me that coral-ey orange. Finally little dots of Pallid Wych Flesh on the... head? (I dunno octopus at all) Finished him off.

Then it was on to a Drow. He's originally a Privateer Press Mage Hunter, no changes made, just painted as a Drow. Well, I say no changes. The sharp bit of wood at the front of the crossbow is a plasticard brace that I made to hold up the bow of the crossbow. Privateer had done their normal trick of cutting a componant for casting at a tiny, tiny contact point. Guys, a relatively heavy metal componant will NOT easily stick with less than a square millimeter contact point. It is also too thin to pin. You can just get away with it in your weird resin/plastic hybrid as it is light. Metal will not tolerate it! Rant over. Anyway, I wanted this chap to be a collage of dark greys and greens. The Underdark is a lightless, joyless place and colour is not really their bag! To that end I used my usual trick of applying several different black highlight colours as a basecoat and then drabbing them all down with Nuln Oil. The dirt on the cloak was applied for three reasons, first, it makes him look like a tough, seasoned adventurer who comes from caves underground. Second, it added a splash of another colour than black! Third it balances the tiny amount of brown wood in the crossbow. Sorted. The black leather is Vallejo Leather Brown, mixed with a little black, washed in Nuln Oil and then rehighlighted with pure Leather Brown.

slightly fuzzy face, the autofocus on the camera struggles with subtle black tones

The skin needed to be really black. Not what we in our world call "black" which is really every shade of brown from caramel to burnt umber. No, Drow are black as midnight. To do this and still have it look like skin I used a simple trick that works with any unnatural skin tone. Use a light flesh tone as the highlight colour. In this case Black mixed with Kislev Flesh in increasing amounts for the highlights.

Remember this guy? Well he's a part of this group too. Hopefully tommorrow I'll give him two more friends in the form of a Gnoll and a Cambian adventurer. Until then.

TTFN