King Earindil of the Elves

As an active member of the online Reaper Miniatures Forum, myself and others thought it would be a cool idea to all try to work on the same figure and roughly follow the same steps, as if we were sitting around a large table! Of course, this is difficult over the internet, but with lots of pictures, questions and write-ups, I think we can help each other out with a ton of ideas and possibly learn some new techniques and skills! The process will take several weeks to be sure, but this is where I will chronical my development with the figure. We have chosen King Earindil of the Elves (#2581 sculpted by Werner Klocke) as the subject, due to the fact that he has some cloth to work with, lots of armor and fiddly bits, and a great facial expression to boot! This is what he starts out looking like:

Now I have added a pic here of my very messy workspace! This is the terrible light setting I am using for all of these pics, so bear with the so so picture quality! Yes, my guitar is flourescent yellow....

 

Stage 1 - Trimming and Preparation

The figure is fully trimmed up and almost all the seam lines are smoothed and any excess flash is removed before the figure can be primed.

Now, I am using a special base from the Dark Age line as it is a nice looking show base. The problem is that the King is on a metal base and I don't want to have to start hacking this off. The round base has a slight indentation, so I found that with minimal trimming, the metal base would fit right inside snug, and I used some kneadatite to sculpt a smooth transition between the two. Later on, I will add some flocking such as gravel and grass.

 

Stage 2 - Priming

I tend to prime all of my minis black for secret personal reasons. Lets just say I belong to a certain cult.... At any rate, I use brush on black paint that is thinned around 50/50 with a Future/water mix. I apply several thin layers to ensure coverage, though I tend to worry less about the obvious metal bits.... The thinning makes the task a bit more painstaking, but no little details are obscured at this early stage due to globbed on paint!

 

Stage 3 - Face and Hair

First thing I have done is the eyes. Now these pics are not great but what I did was paint all the eye white to start with.

Then I cleaned up around the eyes with some thin black and proceeded to paint blue dots on the eyes with Polly Scale Dragon Blue. Next I butchered them by using my micron pen and dotting the blue, but that is life! Too much to do and too little time to really worry. I attempt to fix them a bit, then move on :D

These are the colors I tend to use from base color on the left and my mixing colors on the right. Generally, all of my mixes are thinned down a good 50/50 with the Future/water mix and applied as thin as possible. The first pic shows a progression from base color up to about half done.

In the first pic, I have only the base color added over the black prime. The second shows soem addition of the middle color. I go over almost the entire face with it as it is thin, so the darkest spots still are dark. Next, I do the teeth and I also mixed a touch of red ink in with the flesh to do the tongue. I wanted to do this early on so I could fix the face colors easily if I make a mistake. Just seems logical! Hard to see in the pics, but eventually, you will see the details :D The fourth pic shows further addition of the middle color.Less area is covered than before, leaving the furthest in and most undersided parts as is.

Now the colro starts to pop out. These four pics show the progression as I add more white and start painting smaller and smaller areas, and more to the point, the areas that would be the brightest if lit from above his face. It is the easiest way right now to do lighting sources, so that is what we will do! Again, sorry for the colors, but hopefully, you get the idea!

Ignore the messy eyebrows for now! Okay, now that that is out of the way, I started out by doing several layers of thinned Blazing Orange for the hair. The eyebrows, incidentally, were done with chestnut ink, and it looks surprisingly similar to the orange when put over black. The second pic shows some Sunburst yellow added to the orange, and most of the hair is covered with it. Notice though, that as I apply lighter shades to the hair, I try to follow the strands as opposed to go across them like in dry brushing. Otherwise, you could have very hard transitions that will look bad when complete. The third pic shows some highlights after adding white AND yellow to the mix.

Now the 4th pic shows the eyebrow fixed up somewhat, and more white has been added. At this point, I start limiting my highlighting to the raised parts to give a sheen to the hair. Picture 5 shows what I mean, as The very top along either side of the part is much lighter, and the part of the hair that is pushed out from the armor is also much lighter. Picture six simply show the rear when complete.

 

Stage 4 - Scale Armor Details

I really wanted to go with a three color "leafy" style pattern here. I also wanted to do this next to add some color to him and because the scales are generally "deep" in the mini.

I went with a cool pine green for the most part, and added a lighter green and warmer rust at sort of random places.

Next, adding white, I started to lighten the scales up. Bit by bit, and mostly on the bottom half say.

After about 3 levels of highlights, I come up with this :D The pic is not quite doing it justice, but you get the general idea. The last highlights are very small generally, just to make the leaves pop out at you.

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