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.

Something a bit Wyrd

Wyrds are a powerful but limited psychic in the 40k universe. Whereas a fully trained and disciplined psyker can throw all kinds of powers about a Wyrd is good at only one thing. But very, very good at it...

What we have here is the last of the warband groups for the Inq28 commission, there is one inquisitor left but he is a treat for when I finally get those Eldar tanks finished. In the group there is a beastmaster wyrd with her snakes, a summoner with her conjoured spirit and a too-skinny pilot who photographed terribly and thus is now Lady Not-Appearing-In-This-Post. Lets start with snake lady.

I've no idea who makes this but with the exception of a slightly odd face it is a fun model to paint. Her whole demeanour, pose and outfit just screamed "Indonesia" at me so a quick search on the Googles brought me a colour palette and some make up (which never photographs well). The snakes in her hands and the loose one needed to be different species. Well, needed to be is a bit of a stretch... I love painting animals and having a chance to play with three snakes was too much fun to pass up. For those curious, the loose one is a rattlesnake, green is a constrictor and the little one around her left wrist is a coral snake. As normal with my animal work, reference material is essential and the colours tend to be custom mixes fiddled back and forth until just right. When doing animal markings do not skimp on the fiddly details. The darker green around the white on the constrictor, the dark edges and pale borders on the rattler "lozenges" on it's back. If you just do a dark brown shape or the pale markings without the dark it won't look "right". Take the time and be thoroughly rewarded.

The summoner and her spirit servitor I decided to handle in an almost monochrome. Blue tones across the whole thing with only the twinned gold blades (which I see as being her focus to command the spirit) and her hair providing spot colours. With her ridiculously complex robes I thus needed several colours of blue going on to separate the different elements of the garment. I wound up using all of GW's blue tones - including blue-grey The Fang - in order to paint her. I also "black-lined" the edges of the garments to strengthen the boundaries. Black lining is painting a very dark shade, sometimes black, usually almost as a wash along where you want the shadow. I used a mix of the blue and black washes to do this and it makes more difference than you might think.

Her spirit servitor was simplicity itself. Just blue highlighted through to white and glazed back down again. I deliberately didn't go fancy on it, I wanted it to look like a being made of pure energy with no personality other than what she bestows upon it. Where the energy "grounds" into the scenic base I put some limited object source lighting in. I had to keep it restrained as otherwise the base would just be, well, blue...

That's all for today folks, more soon!

TTFN