Mini No. 8

Another week and another mini that I am painting for a friend. This time this is for a friend who is in a long running Pathfinder game. His character is a badass half orc bard and I had the (almost) perfect mini for her. It needed a few modifications but otherwise sound.

This mini has nothing in her left hand and in her right wields a big big sword. Since my friends character doesn’t carry a sword and wields a quarter staff I had to do some modifying. I took a blade to the mini and cut the long sword down to a dagger. I had another mini lying around that was carrying a staff so I took it off him and added it to her. I kinda tried to greenstuff in a hand.

I primed her in white at first and then started to block in colours. I wish I had taken more pictures of this mini in progress but I guess I was just too engrossed. I picked purple for her pants, light blue for the underneath and turquoise for the top layer of clothes.

It took me several attempts to correctly shader her. Every wash was either too dark or an off colour or too much or too little. I spend several attempts painting, washing, repainting, washing, repainting, washing… Eventually I found the right combination. I think it was a light wash of a Secret Weapon blue gray wash and a light wash of black. I also added the detailing of the buckles, boots, skin and hair colour and grass. At least it was nice to get a rough idea of what the final mini would look like.

And here is the finished mini. The flocking and finishing up on shade and highlighting really pulls her together. But I wont lie, this was a toughy. I really struggled with shading and highlighting. Manually highlighting looked unnatural. The washes usually made the mini look “dirty” or “messy” rather than shaded areas. Having painted a little more since this mini I realize that it was just figuring out the right type of colour combination to use with what wash. I notice that as my stock of paints that I own grows the more options I have to get the combination right.