Arclight

Wouldn’t you like to see some magic? No smoke, no mirrors, no cheap tricks! Just silently say the magical words and behold! A creatures appears, straight out of Nowhere! And one more. And more, more, more… It would be a good time to run. Too bad time is meaningless for them.

Carving out, texturing and painting a ruined castle's courtyard out of a conviniently shaped polystirol piece. This thing ate away one week of my time and almost 70 ml of white paint. And, in the end, the result is far from what's intended. I really underestimated the surface, size and drying time, so there was simply no time for final finishing. There were supposed to be ivy, dust and decent sand and rubble... Sadly, there was no time to add those.

The final layout, position and look. The courtyard is too far from what I initially hoped to do. I'll probably will rework it all once I deal with sleep deprivation. The position of all miniatures in the scene is almost as I wanted. Except Hans, perhaps - he is standing at somewhat awkward angle... But what risk one is willing to take to look good on photos!

I'm not sure why I decided to paint not one, not wven two but four miniatures this time. Probably I thought I'll have time to do it. I was VERY wrong. In any case, painting miniatures this round was relatively fast and straightforward task. And, on the plus side, I have some painted Outcasts now!

Bringing guns to the sword duel is surely dirty. Bringing Hans with his sniper rifle is even worse. Still the dirtiest trick is to bring along a personal resurrectionist…

While Lord Chompy Bits was an obvious pick for the theme, I was not sure how exactly to paint him till today. Thankfully, a helpful rule of thumb came to mind – “if you can paint anything to look like Alucard – do so”. And so I did. This piece took lots, lots of freehand to complete.

And finally, after a day of panicked painting and rushed freehand, two Alucard cosplayers chill together on the table while I try to figure out what to do with the base for the Chompy. Sadly, there is too little time to make anything… So I'll have to go with just black “shadowy” ground and few different color options for a backdrop. Taking photos is the most difficult part once again. It is dark outside already and both my camera and I struggle with the limited light setup.

Why not mash together a tyrant named Nytemare with Alucard, my favorite monsters with so many faces?

While I always wanted to paint Titania, the thing that stopped me was lack of the proper way to paint her wings. No paint I had could make it! So I kept looking for material that can show off her royal splendor for almost year and a half. Due to lack of retail fairy dust or any reasonable substitute of thereof, I finally went with thin metallic sheets with chromatic effect glued on top of the black base color. It took some proof-of-concept before I was sure it could even work. Chromatic switches between shades of red and yellow, depending on the lighting angle and intensity. The colors are incredibly bright, mesmerizing and fit the Autumn Queen perfectly! It took a layer of varnish and couple matte washes on top to tone the shine down. It was almost a shame to darken them, but the fae in Malifaux nowadays are not only about magic, but also about withering and decay.

The hem of the dress was assembled with obvious seam, and, while trying my best to cover it, I also fiddled with the shape of folds a little. I hoped to make the dress more tattered as well. Most of the painting was done to the partially assembled miniature, missing wings and left hand. The plan for wings was clear before I even started and it required them to be painted separately. The left hand, on the other hand, was a source of doubt and indecision for me. Whatever magical special effect the queen is holding – it had to emanate light, and that leads to OSL… While I really did want to keep things simple. As a result, I postponed fitting and priming the hand till the very last moment, until everything was primed and base-colored… Only at the very last moment, I realized I had a better alternative - instead of original left hand, I used left hand from Alt Titania, which fitted almost perfectly. Well, almost. The painting itself was relatively straightforward. The palette I used was very simple - about 5 colors and 3 washes in total. And an important life lesson was learned - painting white dress requires much much better lighting than I thought. Fixing too high contrast with deadline looming is not fun. With all of this I worried that color highlights on hair were too bright, but they suited the wings nicely.

"...fairy queen Lifts her sad eye to heaven’s foreboding scene. From her pale cheek the withering roses fell, While bath'd in tears she stood, and saw, and read. She calls her elves with mournful accent dread, To view what ills malignant fates design, And how in aspećt dire the stars combine..." from Oberon, poem by Christoph Martin Wieland

"Burn it all. This is fine." The Alp is okay with how events are unfolding currently. Round 1 time was rather chaotic for me. When in the middle of it I saw this meme yet again, it was inspiring beyond measure. After all, art reflects the inner state of the artist, in a way… P.S. A disclaimer, just in case. All credit for the meme itself goes to the http://gunshowcomic.com/648. I did not create it, merely gained inspiration from it.

I’ve never done a diorama or anything on the similar scale before. Surprisingly, assembly and base painting of the scene took longer than the actual setting it ablaze. Vallejo water makes beautiful fire, but it takes a while to dry and become translucent. I did most of the larger flames to let them dry over the week. Another issue was the gloss on the fire, especially on the walls. Two layers of Lamiah medium took care of this, in most cases at least. I’m not very good with cameras and in the end, the main problem for me was setting light for a photo. Adding clouds of smoke (hastily made out of cotton because “D*mn, there supposed to be the smoke too?!”) blocks most of the overhead lighting. So it’s a tradeoff between decent light on the model and overall mood of the scene. But this is fine.

Well, my time on week one was practically wasted. The only contest-related thing I did was testing the concept of making fire out of Vallejo water. It worked and it was relatively easy… But I still had no idea how do I plan to use it. Week two begun with the crystallization of the concept. After that, things became more streamlined. Assembly and priming was the easy part. Then construction of the scene began. In parallel, I did some furniture and a watercolor artwork of the original meme and a green frame. The Alp had to go through few “rehearsals” for me to figure out the lightning on him. All in all, I’d say he’s fine with how events are unfolding for him.