Neave Blacktalon & Faces

 No updates for a while sadly because depression & fatigue has been kicking my ass and I haven't had the energy to paint much for a couple of weeks. But I've got one little model finally done to show off.

Each new Stormcast model that I'm painting, I'm trying to add or develop a technique or skill that I would like to be better at. This way I can get through some of the more formulaic parts of the model painting that I have down to a level I'm happy with and still do something that's challenging and new. For Neave Blacktalon I decided to try to focus on the face a bit more than normal.

The first thing that was new is painting the head separately. I've seen people do this a lot before, but this is the first time I've ever done this myself. It was definitely a good thing in this case, not only did it let me prime the head white while I primed the rest of the model grey, but Neave has a long fancy hairstyle that would be difficult to paint around the back of her armour.

I didn't take too many pictures of the process this time because pausing to take lots of little snaps really breaks my flow, but here you can see a bit of the progress.

 

 

 

First thing was to base coat the head. As I said, I sprayed this white rather than the grey that I use for my Stormcast bodies, and that saved a lot of time from patiently layering corax white over a grey undercoat just to then cover it up. The skin is just a flesh tone wash directly over the white. I've been kind of a fan of this for a while because it gives a bit more of the look of an actual complexion than flesh toned paint. I'm sure that with practice I can mix the two together and really paint nice detailed faces but for now it's a quick way to get a decent looking base coat. I also base coated the hair black. You'll note I missed the little strand in front of her ear. Don't worry, that was deliberate! The one big disadvantage to the just a wash method is that it's much harder to paint over mistakes, and I was worried I would overspill, so I left that for later. The picture I took of that view of the head actually turned out really blurry so you'll just have to trust me on this one.

 

 

 

I really wish I had taken an in-between shot here but alas! This is the same face but with a few things added of course. Pale highlights on the cheekbones, hairline, nose, and brow. When it was just those, I thought it looked pretty awful to be honest but again it's one of those things that gets tied nicely into the rest of the details once you've finished them off. For the eyes, I also tried a slightly different technique suggested by the magazine tutorial. Rather than just starting with white straight over the top of the flesh tone, I first painted the socket with my usual dark brown. I was skeptical because the whites of the eyes were going to almost entirely cover it, but it does look a lot better than other attempts at eyes I have done in the past. One big benefit was that I went a bit too high with the white on one eye, and was able to cover it up with the same brown which blended in very nicely. Just dots of black for the pupils for now. Someday I will paint irises as well, but today is not that day!

A little subtle dark grey highlighting on the hair looked good, but I also decided to do a white streak to give the hair just a little more visual interest. Black is always a bit of a tricky colour for hair, so I think this helps make it look a bit less like one solid lump.

 

And here we have the final model with the head attached. The rest of the model is very much my standard Stormcast fare, plus a furry textured cape. Not my best effort on the body for sure, but I think it looks decent for a tabletop standard, and it really wasn't my focus. One thing of note that I'm quite satisfied with was the drybrushing on the cape, I was applying it quite a bit more purposefully here than I have done in the past, and as such there's a lot more depth for example in the big fold.

Overall, quite satisfied with how she turned out, and I will be trying to improve faces in the future. The next models I'm going to paint are more Stormcast Eternals, but fear not, as I'm going to paint my Aetherwings. They're colourful birdies, so you won't have to look at the same brass & jade colour scheme for a while.