Stormweaver on Unicorn (Part 4)

 

After getting the Unicorn to a point that I was happy with, I moved onto the rider. Back in the Marauder Miniatures days the Morrisons (Ali and Trish) sometimes teamed up on projects like these where Trish would work on the "monster" and Ali would work on the hero.  I feel like it didn't always work as Ali's elves always came off as having 'puffy' faces particularly when compared to Jess Goodwin's high cheeked and narrow faces. But I digress, the point is that there is definitely a contrast between the Unicorn and it's rider. The mage (now Stormweaver) was done prior to the strict uniformity of the High Elf range preceding the launch of WFB 4th Edition. Indeed, the painted example featured in the White Dwarf adverts at the time were colored in a technicolor palette more fitting for the Wood Elves of that era than High Elves. 

Images snipped from original Marauder ad. 

Forward to now, and I am trying to make the best of both worlds and have a scheme that matches my army but still perhaps calls back, if only a wee bit, to that old house advert. As I have been doing with my High Elves recently, I painted all of the basecoats using Contrast Paints. 

Next came the mid-tones, which really start to pull this closer to how I envisioned it. Polished Blue, my trusted old blue metallic paint from the '90s, went on most of the blue areas. Retributor Gold went onto the head of the staff. I painted the back of the cloak and her tunic/dress thing receding from black, to dark blue to a purple. 

Stormhost Silver was the highlight on anything metal, and this really kicked up the colors I think. Still photos such as these just do not convey the metallic sheen those areas have in reality. I liked the idea of keeping the staff wooded with a vine wrapped around it. I was tempted to just make the whole thing metallic but thought that this gave the staff a lot more character. There are, I guess we can call them ribbons, that flow off of the staff and the sheathed blade. I struggled a lot in trying to pick a suitable color for these ribbons. Ultimately decided to make them white to better tie her in with he rest of the High Elf army, while not distracting from the rest of the model's colors. 

After I added the grass tufts and fallen leaves, the rider was attached. Once everything from this step was done, I took the model outside to my deck and sprayed it with Model Master Lusterless (Flat) Lauer Overcoat to, hopefully, reduce paint chipping. 

Of course I took the opportunity for some natural lighting pics even though I would have preferred a more scenic view...

Oh, I forgot to mention the stars that I dotted onto the cloak and tunic/dress, which ties into the theme of the rest of my army. 

Anyway, this concludes the saga of this Stormweaver, I hope you enjoyed the end results.