Dark Sword just released 14 new miniatures into their web store, and I’m pleased to be able to share my work on one of them, an adventuring mage.
I was interested in painting this figure for a few different reasons. The main one is that she seemed like a great representation of the idea of what if you had a character concept that was kind of Gandalf, but as a woman, which is something we don’t see too much in fiction or in miniature. The sultry young sorceress, yes. The withered old crone, yes. But a wise and powerful older wizard who happens to be a woman, not so much. I get excited to see as wide array of character types as possible in all settings, and there are some great ones in this latest Dark Sword release.
One of the other reasons I was excited was that the way her cloak is sculpted was a great opportunity to try out the leather painting technique I’ve been experimenting with. I went into that in a bit more detail on a previous post about painting a Dark Sword archer. I learned the technique in a workshop with Fernando Ruiz. There aren’t too many in person workshops and classes happening right now since we all need to stay safe, but keep your eye out for online learning opportunities! ReaperCon is coming up and class registrations have opened. There are also a wealth of painting and sculpting live and recorded classes and sessions on platforms like Twitch, YouTube, and Patreon. (Or if you’re too exhausted to work on learning a skill right now, that is also an absolutely valid way to feel!)
A third thing that interested me was the opportunity to paint grey hair. I love painting hair, but I haven’t paint a lot of grey hair, particularly on a female miniature. (I did have fun painting a whole shades of grey miniature painting Maester Luwin for Dark Sword some years ago.) I don’t think I’ve painted a figure with this ringlet style hair, either, and that was fun!
I painted this miniature in late February/early March this year. 2019 was my ‘year of chaos’. Between planned renovations and unplanned renovations following a minor flood, our entire lives had been in upheaval for some time. It was all a blur of packing stuff away, moving it around, and rushing off to conventions. By the time I painted this figure things had settled down some and we were trying to get back on track, but convention season was already starting up, and then everyone in the world started experiencing upheaval.
Because of the upheaval I wasn’t able to take any work-in-progress pictures or document much of the process with this one. Jim asked if I could add a few grasses or plants to the base, and I would still like to do that. And as soon as I find the box I packed the grasses and vegetation basing supplies into I will! (I found the box with a lot of other basing supplies and I’ve even tried to organize it, but some things are still at large in our basement. We’re working on it!)
The very talented Jennifer Haley also painted this miniature, so if you head over to the product page you can compare two different visions for the same figure. And see why Jen remains one of my miniature painting idols!
Bird with a Brush 