“In High Spirit’s” (Saga’tember)

Week two of Saga’tember and I don’t know if it was the constraints put on me by having to match the colours of my figures to the illustrations on the character cards last week or what, but I went a little mad this week!! Now I knew time was going to be tight, so I decided to pull the three “ghostly” figures from my pile of “Dungeon Saga” miniatures. Now one of them “Elshara” the banshee, has a character card herself, and even though the figure itself isn’t that close a rendition of the card illustration, my colours here were going to have to be in the “ball park” at least, whereas the two “Ghost’s”, I had free range to express myself upon!

I decided I was going to paint all three of them up using my “wet in wet” technique, this is basically a posh way of saying that blocks of colour are painted on and then while wet these are blended together. So after they were given my customary spray coat of matt black, I painted them as follows…

Elshara, when it came to my banshee I decided that I wanted her a) slightly more grey than the illustration and b) to have a bit more variation between her dress and skin. So using the “wet in wet” principle I added a thin line of black above and below her belt, then a thick line of blue grey next to these above and below, and finally the bottom of her “top” skirt in cream, these were then “run” into each other using a No2 paintbrush, adding more of each of these colours along with some dark grey and a blob of water, from a pallet (an old Pringles lid!), thin washes of black were also added in the recesses of her dress at the same time and blended in. You have to work reasonably quickly, and once you are happy..walk away, over working can turn the whole thing into a “muddy mess”. I then repeated this process on the two lower “under” ruffles of her dress, and her long gloves. The rest of her painting followed a much more conventional pattern, so turning next to her flesh it was all painted in light turquoise, and then after her eyes were added in citrus orange with lemon yellow, along with the hole in her cheek and her mouth in black with white teeth, her flesh was highlighted with more light turquoise with some cream added to lighten it. More cream was used as the undercoat for her hair with white highlights added once this was dry. Lastly her belt, necklace, and tiara were painted in chainmail, and I used blue steel to add the pale blue jewels on each of these.

Ghost’s, these are basically the classic disembodied “sheet type” that appear to be tethered to the ground by large balls and chains. So using the same technique as above some black, dark grey, khaki, coffee and cream were blobbed out onto my pallet, along with a drop of water, and then the khaki, coffee and cream were painted in wide stripes around the figures, going darkest to lightest top to bottom. These were then brushed into each other like Elshara above, then taking the dark grey and black these were painted on along with a touch of water into any areas that would be shaded (like a reverse highlight), and the whole lot was worked together, adding more of the other three colours where I felt it was appropriate (like a touch of cream around the edge of the hood, and the edges of the sheet at the front, blended back into the rest of course). Where you can see the inside of the sheet at the bottom of the figure I repeated the process but using black at the top to form the shadow, then grey and finally coffee and cream at the bottom edge. Once this was all fray I painted in the holes and inner hood along with the ball and chains in black, before dry-brushing the “iron appendages” in chainmail and rust.

All three figures then had their flagstone bases dry-brushed in successive ever lighter layers of dark grey, light grey and white. Then were given a coat of “Quickshade” strong tone, that once dry had the usual spray coat of matt varnish.

Till next week, cheers Roger.