New Year's Hobby Resolutions

And with the painting of the elves, this year's hobbying is all done!

Of course, a hobbyist's work is never complete. Here's what I'm looking forward to in the new year:

• Dungeons and Dragons:
• 4 out of 9 player characters have finished miniatures. I want to re-base the sorceress onto something more impressive than the rough patch of grass she came with. I also want to convert and paint miniatures for the rest of the players.
• I want to assemble and paint miniatures representing important antagonists of the campaign.
• I want to complete the chronicles of our 4E adventure.
• I want to start publishing the chronicles of our current 5E adventure.
• MAGUS:
• I've painted the rest of the party, with only my own character remaining. I'm the GM right now, so that will come in only later.
• I want to continue chronicling our adventures.
• Warhammer Fantasy:
• Yes, it's coming back! The guys I've been playing Age of Sigmar with decided to embrace movement trays.
• Speaking of which, I need to manufacture more movement trays. This will imply a variety of trays, such as skirmisher and flying bases for playing, as well as more trays for just transport and storage to accommodate my growing collection of miniatures.
• Warhammer 40k:
• I've been pretty much ignoring 40k since the tournament. Frankly, I've had my fill for a while. I do plan on getting back into it with the start of the new year.
• I have some Chaos Space Marines in my collection, so I want to give the Word Bearers a try to help out the daemons.
• Age of Sigmar, X-wing and other games:
• I'll probably get some games in from time to time, but no promises here.
• Miniature painting:
• Yes. Lots of it. But this depends on some other points from this list, such as tallying and display. Priority goes to DnD here, but I've also got lots of daemons in the backlog.
• Hobby management:
• Due to some real life issues, my unpainted miniatures currently reside in cardboard boxes. I honestly have no idea how much of what I actually have.
• First order of business: tally the miniatures and store them in a better way (ideally on magnetized movement trays).
• Second order of business: acquire a display cabinet!

Painting elf archers

Introduction

While painting the elf druid, I decided to get all the lively green out of the way, so I also started working on the rest of the elves from the  Magic the Gathering: Arena of the Planeswalkers board game.

Prime

Prime in black.

Painting

Basecoat

Green basecoat for the cloth areas: capes, pants, trousers.

Brown basecoat for all the wood, leather and skin areas (everything else).

Skintone for the faces. Leather brown to pick out some details. On the quivers I just painted over the sculpted details. On the pieces of armor, I applied a thick edge highlight.

Bonewhite arrows.

Lastly, for the two guys without hoods, ochre hair.

Washes

I applied what I learned on the female elf archer and gave a sepia wash (Seraphim Sepia) to the green areas for some soft shadows.

Black wash on the arrows and the armored skirts. Basically any area that won't get a brown wash later on.

Fleshtone wash (Reikland Fleshshade) on the faces.

Brown wash (Agrax Earthshade) over the remaining leather and wood areas.

Highlights

In retrospect I wasn't completely happy with the way the sepia wash affected the green cloak of the female elf, so I decided to try out some edge highlighting to increase contrast. I think it looks much better now.

Carefully edge highlight the face and the bonewhite arrow fletching.

Overbrush the hair with yellow. This gives it a blonde aspect.

Thin edge highlight with leather brown the areas that were painted with the same in the basecoating phase.

To pop out the details of the armor/skirt, I applied dots of brown to the center of each individual segment. A little time consuming, but it always pays off.

Basing

I decided to modify a bit my woodland basing technique (again). This time I settled halfway between the original look and the wildflowers on the base of the druid.

Start with the soil/grass combination.

Then apply the ornaments. I gave the bases a mix of bushes created from flocking using PVA glue, out-of-the-box artificial bushes, and wildflowers.

Finished!

Painting an elf druid

Introduction

My DnD group includes an elf druid. I painted this miniature for her, originally representing the planeswalker Nissa from Magic the Gathering: Arena of the Planeswalkers board game. Her other form is the black panther.

Prime

Prime in black. 

Painting

Painting the cape

I went with the same scheme as for the this red cape, only this time in green.

Basecoat with a solid green color.

Mix the same green with black, paint the recesses, then feather out towards the ridges.

Mix the same green with a lighter green. Paint the ridges, then feather out towards the recesses.

Highlight the ridges with light green for full effect.

Basecoat everything

Being a woodland creature herself, I imagined the druid dressed in mostly leather. As such, she got an overall brown basecoat.

Thick leather brown highlights on the gloves and boots.

Cloth shirt basecoated in bonewhite.

Ochre basecoat on the pants, for a different leather effect.

Washes

Brown wash (Agrax Earthshade) on brown leather surfaces (boots, pants, gloves).

Sepia wash (Seraphim Sepia) on the cloth shirt.

Highlights

Highlight the leathery parts and the shirt with the original base colors.

Black leather jacket

I decided on a black leather jacket for some color variation. I used the same technique as for this black cape.

Face

Her face is the only part showing skin. As usual, I started with a skintone basecoat.

Fleshtone wash (Reikland Fleshshade).

Skintone edge highlight.
Notice how the wash created those deep shadows around her eyes. That was not my full intent and was probably caused by the lack of detail in the face. Nevertheless, I find that awesome, as it mimics shadows or tattoos often found on a druid.

White basecoat for the eyes.

Black wash around the eyes (also on the hair and staff).

White highlight and brown iris for the eyes. Brown highlights on the hair.

Sash and gem

The green does not offer much of a contrast with brown, so I decided on red details both in front and back. 

In the front, she has a subdued red sash (dark red washed with black).

In the back, she has a gem in the middle of the cape. 

I went with the usual red color transition, from dark red washed with black...

... to dark red, to bright red ...

... to a white spot on the top.

Staff

I took advantage of the pattern of the staff's head. I colored the swirls along the length white, then on each side I drew a dark and light green streak.

Base

I wanted to go with my woodland basing technique, then decided to give it a twist. Instead of bushes, she'll stand among wildflowers.

Start with the classic soil and grass covering.

Apply the PVA glue sealant. At this step also throw on some wildflower flocking, then apply more PVA glue to seal them in.

Finished!