Painting an assassin

Introduction

As before, for our first MAGUS group, I am painting this as a favor. As before, it is a miniature from Otherworld Miniatures which you can go and check out. They have awesome stuff.

Prime

In black, as I always do with "realistic" paint schemes.

Paint

Basecoat

The two dominant colors are black and brown. Black for the cloths (pants and cloak), brown for all the leather, skin hair and wood areas.

Yes, it's important to basecoat the black areas in black, even over a black primer, because black is the actual chosen color for these areas.

Black clothing

After looking at some tutorials, I decided on greyish highlights on black (the other variant was blue/green or turqoise, but I find that more natural on fur, and maybe metal). The trick here is to mix black with more and more bonewhite, then apply the resulting paint in smaller and smaller spots.

By the time I get to the 5th or so mix, I barely touch the ends on the folds in the cloth.

Leather

Highlight the leather areas (other than the armor) with leather brown.

I decided to make these areas all look subtly different (as they are made of different types of leather), so I went ahead and washed the boots with brown (Agrax Earthshade).

Other details

I decided to give the man a white-ish shirt, as if he'd avoid colored fabrics. So bonewhite base on the arms. Same for the arrows. Gunmetal base for the metallic areas - daggers and other decorative elements.

Ochre base for the crossbow string. Also some ochre highlighting on leather straps, looking as worn and frayed leather.

Detail: potion bottle

Although it might contain poison, or just good old fashioned booze. In any case, I decided on an old-time-y blue glass color, highlighted with light blue.

Detail: skin

Skintone basecoat.

Fleshtone wash (Reikland Fleshshade).

More washes

To give the cloth a bit more dirty look, I applied a sepia wash (Seraphim Sepia). The result turned out to be great.

Next up, black wash on whatever wasn't washed or highlighted until now. This includes metallics, the leather armor...

... the backpack and the crossbow.

Highlights

Bonewhite highlight on the shirt and arrowheads. Note that the effect is very different over the two different washes.

A second layer of leather brown highlights go over the leather areas. Metallic areas get highlighted as usual with a thick edge highlight of gunmetal, then a thin silver edge.

Detail: face

The face gets the usual treatment. With the skin was already washed, I wanted to keep the ruddy look, so I did not highlight it further. Just applied white to the eyes and bonewhite to the teeth.

Black wash on eyes and teeth.

Add the eyebrows, which I honestly forgot until now. Brown base, black wash.

Given the medieval state of dental hygiene, I left the teeth unhiglighted. I did apply white to the eyes, though.

A finally, brown irises and brown highlights on the hair.

Basing

I decided to go for the medieval urban environment, the cobblestones originally seen on the Knight.

Start with mutilating the base, so that I can fit cobblestones in between the feet.

Glue on the cobblestones, leaving room for the remains of the base.

Apply green stuff underneath and prime in black.

3 layers of successively lighter grey drybrushing.

Finished!