Commission 4, Episode 1: The Story of Medieval Thingamajig

It was time.

I took out my brushes, my hobby knife and cutting board, paints and a new batch of paint water. I looked at the guy I came to call the Medieval Thingamajig. And I was lost. I had no idea how to make him look good without moving out of the paint scheme I was commissioned to do. I don't have anything against paint schemes per sé, but the guys in Descent: Journeys in the Dark (2nd edition) all seem to have the same thing in common - they are all a different hue of gray, gold or the mix of the two. Or at least the ones I've seen so far.

I was given two pictures as a reference:

BRUTAL

The first picture looked like something you would find on a character card in most dungeon crawler games. It wasn't much, but I could work with that. The second picture though. THAT one blew me away:

Second picture, ORIGINAL SIZE.

Now, if you know anything about painting commissioned miniatures, you know that good reference pictures are always cool to have. but trying to look at this tiny pic (the URL even says ..._expansion_pack_xl.jpg) made my eyes hurt all over. Trying to ignore it, I got to work.

If you don't know anything about painting commissioned miniatures and want someone to paint one for you "like that one on the internet", PLEASE find them good reference pictures. 360 degrees is the way to go.

Now jokes aside (two high-res pictures of a miniature paint scheme is more than enough), I liked how this guy looked. And since I was lacking reference pics, I asked my customer for some backstory on THE DUDE IN THE ARMOR (that's a partial quote of my question). The answer, and I quote, word for word, was this:

Dude was a good dude. Fought some bad guys and died. Got ressed (ressurrected) by brother (the guy with flames, aka The Human I Torched my Extremities), who was turned evil by the vampire chick

*sigh* Time to go to work! 

Having all the extra information about Alric Farrow (I'm still calling him the Medieval Thingamajig), I started making him look the part. Step one was a base coat of a lighter metallic shade:

The most literate meaning of METAL

Now some of you (mostly the guys and girls who paint miniatures from time to time) are asking yourselves - why a lighter shade of metallic? Simple - after a couple of coats of wash, the lighter shade becomes darker, but still keeps the shine in some places.


For the not so literate in miniature painting - a wash is a special watered-down paint that flows into the cracks, creases and crevices of the figure.

Obviously, before starting with a wash, I had to paint the darker "chain mail" spots with a darker metal shade and add the gold coloring as well. Since I am a bit special today, I didn't take any pictures of the miniature sans wash, so here you go, gold color added and wash applied:

The wash gives the miniature a bit more depth. To see the difference, look at the differences between the breastplate in the earlier picture.

Pro tip for beginners: to achieve the worn down, dirty look, use a brown wash instead of a black one. Black washes tend to leave glossy marks on metallic paint, which make it look oily.

Now that I was semi finished with the armor, it was time to make the cloak pop. I achieved this by using three different shades of red and the same brown wash, seen in the pictures above:

First coat is a base paint, Citadel Khorne Red

I then painted the wrinkle edges with a ultra bright Evil Sunz Scarlet and painted over that with a darker tint Red Gore, which makes the edges look just a little bit lighter

With this done Alric was starting to look alive (alive-er?). With a few highlights on the edges of the metal shoulderpads, gauntlets (seen above) and breastplate (seen below) it was time to finish.

Breastplate, greaves, gauntlets and kneepads highlited with the initial base color, Mithrill Silver

But then I looked closer at this great Medieval Thingamajig. He looked... Generic. Now, I like to see myself as an artist, and artists always leave something to their imagination. This is when it hit me - his armor was in dire need of a little non metallic, non red detail. Enter the breast gem:

Breast gem was painted using two colors, Sotek Green for base and Temple Guard Blue for highlight. Note - my fingers are not THAT huge.

And then I was hit by another idea, that was minute, but made perfect sense. In the snippet of lore I got, Alric was ressurrected. HE WAS DEAD, GOD DAMN IT. I don't know how long he was dead for, but since his armor was looking all worn out and rusty, why should his sword look any different?

With a technique called stifling (taking an old, preferably almost destroyed brush and dabbing the color on the part to look like it's random spots of rust/dirt/whatever) I made his weapon look the part as well.

Pro tip for beginners: do NOT use your favourite brush for this.

And there he is, Alric The Medieval Thingamajig Farrow was all painted and fancy.

Red horns'n'all

All that's left is the base, but I shall leave it for the next post.

Till then,
Banshee Legend
The Painter

TFCTBY!