This mini is a bit dark in color scheme. I imagined her running through a rainy graveyard in the middle of the night or something, thus the glossy (rainy) base. I screwed up on the skull so many times, I just left it dark in the end because the paint buildup was starting to interfere with the detail… How hard can it be to paint a skull?
I painted this mini with golden armor, silver chainmail cape, and red shield. Then I splattered mud texture (Vallejo Earth Texture) all over it and put gloss varnish over it. The idea is that she is fighting in rain and mud. Now I wish I had kept her pristine, because the paint job on the armor and shield was really nice before the mud…
This is a Half-Orc Female Barbarian from Wiz Kids Deep Cuts range for Pathfinder. This line of plastic minis comes pre-coated with Vallejo primer. This is a nice touch, but it causes two issues for me. First, when something is bent and needs straightened, such as the pole she is holding, I dare not soak it in hot water to reshape it. Second, if you scrape off mold lines then you also scrape off the primer. The more I paint, the more mold lines bother me, so I had to reprime several parts of the mini. The same applies if you modify the sculpt, like I did when I chopped off the original axe head from the pole.
An old friend messaged me and asked if I could paint up this mini for his sister for Christmas. His family has a game going in which she plays one of these. I said sure. I asked if she had any color scheme in mind. No. What is her favorite color? She has no favorite but she kinda likes indigo. Oh and she uses a flail, not an axe. That’s all I had to go on.
The detail on her legs gave me some trouble. It wasn’t clear to me what was supposed to be on her legs. I finally decided that they were thigh armor plates with an array of throwing knives dangling from her belt.
The weapon was originally an axe. I chopped the blade off and used some paperclip and contour putty to fashion three ball-and-chain type attachments which I superglued to the top of the pole. Normally, I try to embed attachments like these into the existing material so that they are completely secure. In this case the pole was just too skinny.
Also, I don’t usually do blacklining, but I thought the pants and all their leather straps could use some extra definition. You see it best in the rear view photo below.
I finished it off with earth texture (Vallejo) on the base with some rocks, field grass, bushes (Woodland Scenics) , and lowland shrubs (Army Painter).
