Friday Showcase - Elven Ranger Mage

I know I am late with this post. Ran into more games of WHQ then I expected to play last week, which of course required the mini to play, then also coming down sick sure didn't help me have any more motivation.

Anyhow, there he is. Looks decent enough I think, shiny as all get out thanks to the dip, but I've learned to live with that.

As I am more of a fan of Warhammer when it was very gritty, but not so 'skull-ified' as it is today, I made the Elven Ranger Mage very dark. I know that the Elven Range Mage is always supposed to use his scale mail armor he starts the game with, but the term Ranger just screams leathers to me. Also, the fluff behind the Elven Ranger Mage says they are more or less Wood Elves that refuse to accept they are Wood Elves (Like the Elves from the novel Gilead's Blood)

The Sword came out interesting looking. I used the same basic technique as I used on my Retribution Halberdiers, with less blue wash used. Gave the sword just enough color to look like it is a special, but not over the top special. Other then the sword though, I tried my best to keep the figure pretty much dark toned. The sword is a nice eye catching part of the figure.

The demon/summon/spell/thing came out a bit more tame then I envisioned at first. When I first starter, I was going to do a blue hot fire with a white core. It quickly became apparent to me as I painted the figure that I have no clue how to accomplish such a painting job. I know that I didn't want to use basic fire, as I expected the Elven Ranger Mage would use something so eye catching if he's supposed to be zipping in and out of combat keeping a low profile, but it should still be something that could be intimidating.

I won't lie, another reason I think I made it the way it turned out is the fact I already did the phoenix on my other Elven Hero figure I recently painted, and wanted to try another painting style. He still came out decent looking enough that I think I accomplished the overall goal. It might not be made of fire, but certainly doesn't look like anything from the mortal world.

The cape came out looking pretty amazing I think. The highlights and shading, ignoring those given by the dip, just seemed to click. Was really happy with everything here it was just bright enough to add some flourish to the figure, and yet look dark enough to fit in with the rest of the figure. When I first painted it, I tried to do a custom red highlight, but the red came out pink for some reason, so once that shade was dried went back over it with the standard red. That light pink color helped the normal red though by making it far more vibrant and 'right'. In the end it came out pretty much exactly how I was expecting it too.

I think the part that turned out the worse on this figure was actually the hair. If you look at the face and chest, those skins tones turned out really well, and the shadow were just right and gave the Elven Ranger Mage a very dark tone to him. I can't really complain about this at all, as it just came together with little effort.

The hair however, the hair I am just not happy with, and no matter what I did I couldn't get it any better. For me hair has always been a weakness of mine. There is a reason why many of my figures I paint tend to have minimum hair expose if possible. It's obvious that I tried to go for the greyed/white hair style, but for some reason I simply could not get the highlighting to work right. You can tell that I just can't do white in general if you look at the Elven Hero I painted up last, as the fur on the top of his cloak apears to have almost no shading although I really did try to give it some. The hair doesn't look bad by any means, but it didn't come anywhere close to what I wanted. In the end, I settled for the best I could do and moved on with picking out details.

So there is Kelarion, the Elven Ranger Mage I am hoping he sees a long and glorious life on the tabletop.