Wyrd innit?

Hi folks, quick update for you today with the latest of the commission stuff to be finished (there's been a lot of assembly and other un-photographable work lately). A feral-world Wyrd:

I can't tell you who sells this (anyone enlighten me?) She is an Impact Miniatures Theja Doris, from their fantasy football range (thanks Christopher Sheets). Client had assigned this to the pool of random imperial agents as a Wyrd psyker. I can see why, it's debatable what else it could be? I sometimes think - and I'm afraid ladies that this is a problem mostly with the female figures - that sculptors just stop thinking on certain figures. This one had clearly been sculpted to be alluring but what else is she? [edit: turns out she has interchangable left arms including one holding a football to throw, how anyone thinks that right arm is "about to throw" is beyond me a little but hey ho!] However, she does make a more than passable psychic, from the passive pose probably a telepath subtly working her puppetry into the mind of an unwilling dupe rather than the more "Blaaagh!*" type of psyker.

But enough about the figure, painting! From the get go I knew I wanted to use Dwartist's lovely skin tone from his Hasslefree 'Giant' piece. Go check it out, you will not be sorry. My version of this boiled down to Vallejo Burnt Umber as a base coat, highlighted with Val Beige Brown, glazed down with Agrax Earthshade and rehighlighted with the Beige Brown. I'm pretty sure that by varying the starting point and shading that between these two colours and the Caucasian flesh tones already available I can do a fairly large array of different skin colours. Exciting! I do now know, however, why Caucasian seems to dominate the painting world, it is really, really hard to photograph subtle dark skin tones. I had to do a lot of jiggery pokery with levels and colour balance in photoshop to get this model looking even halfway as good as it does in real life. I suspect I will improve with practice. For now, tricky.

Shame-faced apologies for the horrible noisy image. Must improve my photography

To emphasise the "I'm totes a psychic" look I decided to paint the eyes in a faint turquoise glow. Usual method of layers of very thin washes for the cast out light with a strong colour on the eyes highlighted to very nearly white. You can also just about see here that the lips have been glazed with Carroberg Crimson in order to give them some definition. All in all a quick, fun figure. The client and I had discussed some Day of the Dead style body paint (google at your peril but some awesome work) for her but looking at images of the style, it's strength is all in the fine details around the large areas of white and this just vanishes at 28mm scale (or needs Golden Demon level chops which ain't me I'm afraid, sadface) so we figured let the clean lines speak for themselves. Until next time folks.

TTFN

*Blaaargh! evidently refers to any sort of psyker who just fountains energy at people. Definately a legit term. Yup.