Games Workshop "Special Edition" Skaven Warlord:

 This figure was painted for a local Games Workshop Hobby Center - the subject of some "Special Edition" Direct Order-only figures needing painting came up and I volunteered my services with this excellently sculpted Skaven Warlord figure. The amount of detail on this sculpt is amazing, and I found myself in continual glee as I painted at all the little things that I didn't notice at first study of the figure but became apparent once I started working on the painting itself - things like the little studs on his skull headdress, the bare belly and wart on one of the dangling rats, and simply the fact that the rats that he's holding all have their tails tied together!

 I decided to approach this figure more from the "European" school of painting with encouragement and suggestions from folks over on the Relicnews Painting & Modeling Forum - essentially it's a question of working from a white undercoat and painting with thinned layers of color from lightest to darkest, all the while adjusting the overall color balance of any particular area with contrasting washes, glazes, and tints of analogous, complementary, or "warm and cool" colors to accentuate or desaturate the area as needed. It was definitely a fun excercise, adding in all sorts of colors just from pure theory alone, and the finished figure is, I believe, one of the better end results I've yet painted. Just as an example on the use of color - the flesh tone was achieved by starting with GW Tallarn Flesh, adding in GW Dwarf Flesh and Codex Grey, and working up to pure highlights of VMC Deck Tan, all the while shading with various hues of reddish-brown and lastly glazing of a dark olive green drab. Likewise, the robes have yellow in the highlights and dark blue mixed into the deepest shadows, and were painted from start to finish with applications of thinned paints gradually focused into the shadows and recessions of the cloth.

 I decided to put more work into the figure and enter it into the 2008 Chicago Golden Demon painting competition. I essentially revisited all areas of the figure, working the highlights on his headdress skull up to pure white, deepening the contrast between his flesh tones and the dividing areas where they met with other parts and objects, bumping up the overall highlighting and shading a notch or two, and enriching the colors of the figure to darken down the fur and other areas to try and draw attention to the face as the focal point of the figure. I also added some decorative stuff, like Skaven runes painted in blood onto the various skulls and a "jungle plant" on the base. I also did a full scenic display base, with the overall theme being that he's in a clearing in a (Lustrian) jungle amidst a patch of ruined stonework - at least that was the effect I was going for. It was no end of fun painting up all the little bits of "leaf litter" scattered beneath the plants, really! It all worked out in the end, though - much to my surprise, I won a Bronze Demon for him in the Warhammer Single Figure category. (I had hoped to make First Cut at least, knowing the more competitive nature of the entry category and the overall quality of work that shows up - winning Bronze was just amazing!)