Alabaster Automata

 

  I've finally gotten the entire 2-player starter kit painted and it is time to paint more models and play larger games.  Because my wife likes to play the Void side, I focus on getting those painted first for her.  And the Void models, like all of the Relic Knights line that I've dealt with so far, area beautiful!  This model is of a female, getting choked by some magical chain-collar that's attached to a huge, broken sword that she's wind-surfing on.  Like, whoa!

  Admittedly, I couldn't tell what the heck was going on with this model.  The resin used to cast these definitely holds detail, but there's no artwork or even painted examples to really clarify how she's supposed to look.  So I slapped on the appropriate contrast paints where I though they should go and worked from there.  The card art helped but 'discovery' was certainly more necessary.  

  After figuring some things out, I worked on the flesh.  She had surprisingly less flesh than some of the other models in the starter forces, and that was surprise considering how much fun the geometry can be to paint and highlight (if you know what I mean).  Alabaster has an exposed rear-end, so that was something, but I'm focused on the front and top ('zenithal' concept).  

  It became very necessary, after an embarassing number of repaints for the flesh, to paint up all the leather and body-armour that she wears.  Again, the model's details are crisp, but there's so much layered leather and techy-plates that it was hard to find all the detail.  And it's all black.  I hate painting black so much.  Highlighting black can make a person go crazy and now I was having to do an embarassing amount of repaint and touch-up on both the flesh and the body armour.  After some frustration, I finally relented and abandoned those.  

  Then came the opposite experience- the purple cloth wrapped around her!  A second layer of contrast paint, then a very fast layer and highlight saw that flowing accessory done in record time and perfectly framing all the non-metal stuff.  I went from frustrated to happy in seconds.

  I absolutely adore painting non-metal metallics as it uses my old pencil-art skills from ages long gone.  I'm not great at it but I did learn from the best (RIP Wappels!) and really enjoy using my paintbrush like a pencil to 'draw' highlights and shadows.  Alabaster's chains were the first to get the quick version and then the flat of the huge blade received more attention to get that NMM silver- wash zenithal primed parts with Nuln Oil, then wash with watered-down Night Blue, glaze with Turquiose, follow-up by watering down a light gray (bluish tone if you have) to build up, and create crisp reflections and shapes with white.  It's no Giraldez, but it's good enough relative to the enjoyment.  My goodness do I enjoy non-metals sometimes!

  By now, I'm happy enough with the results, so I put the pink glow on the blade and gloves, painted the hair with Basic Skin Tone and White mix to get that platinum-blonde colour, and based her up.  She's done!  These models are so much fun to paint and trying out these new techniques makes this game rather neat.  Now back to painting!