At once Madam Commissar!

Greetings all! I'm back from holiday and all sorts of rested, Mulder seemed to throw the switches as planned so hope you all enjoyed the holiday content. I'm back to work and have shiny things to show you:

The next commission I have on the desk is Imperial Guard again, more of these lads in fact. Along with these is another female commissar for the client's collection. She'll join her previously painted partner. The model in question is a War Forge - Viktoria Skivlana, haven't worked with any War Forge models before (to be honest, hadn't heard of them before the commission landed on my desk) so I can't say how it compares with the rest of their range.

For the most part the sculpt is nice, good strong, dramatic pose, little bit "pin-up" on the uniform front and guilty of the usual problem of sculpting fairly large breasts (not comedic this time thankfully) on slender women. An accident of genetics that occurs very rarely and tends to make the model look like they have implants and thus a slightly vain air. The only real problem I have with the sculpt is the face. Looks great from the profile - i.e. the front of the model - but from head on...

Tiny bit lopsided. Lets forget we ever saw that though and talk about painting! The majority of the model's colour scheme is fairly straightforward to say the least. My usual trick of one colour for the leather (Val Leather Brown and black mix) and one for the cloth (Stormvermin Dinge) shaded down with Val Black Wash in order to differentiate the fabrics. To help this I gave the leather a coat of satin varnish to further emphasise the different textures. Green sections were basecoated in Caliban Green and highlighted by gradually adding Warpstone Glow to the mix until the highlight was pure Warpstone Glow. Then I glazed the coat lining with Coelia Greenshade and the sash with Biel-Tan Green. This gave the green areas similar but distinct colours.

The flesh was just my usual feathered layers of lightening skin tones. I do really like having the new Flayed One Flesh edge paint though, really gives a nice top highlight when mixed in with the Kislev Flesh, I used to use bone for this but the Flayed One Flesh is better. I decided that the epaulettes and other braid elements would look best in my not-quite-non-metallic-metal rather than an actual metal tone.

The ammo box gave me a chance for some nice battered contrast to the otherwise clean colours and lines of the model. Usual method of first sponging on chips, scratches and dings in Nurgling Green over the Castellan Green basecoat, a black brown mix for dark chips is painted into the centre of the biggest chips and the edges then further highlighted with AP Plate Mail Metal.

All in all a fun model to paint - despite face issues - and a finish that I'm happy with. Looking forward to ploughing into the next 55 Fecktarn Guard!

Until next time folks.

TTFN