Jain Zar - Part II (Showcase)

 

That's an impressive pony tail.

It's been a little while since I was last intending to post, but things keep getting in the way right now. I'm having to restructure routines a little bit, so I suspect for the rest of the year painting will be sporadic again, but it certainly won't stop. And despite not getting much else done, I have at least managed to complete Jain Zar.

(note: forgive many spelling and grammar mistakes that will no doubt exist - I need sleep!)

I'll admit that I lost some motivation part way through this model and it took a bit of a change of perspective to get that back and complete it. I basically decided not to care so much about painting precision (which is very much Golden Demon style) and care more about the "feel" of everything. That's not to say I'm unhappy with the model, quite the opposite, but it's not competition level.

Last time I had some trouble deciding on how to paint the various "red" material (cloth, streamers, grips, etc). One of the differences between materials that gives visual clues to how hard the surfaces is, comes from reflections: strong edge highlights, value contrast, bright points, all give an impression of a hardened surface reflecting light. Keeping midtones and shadows, but without much in the way of highlights, will give more of a cloth impression and is exactly what I did for the loincloth. Deepened the shadows with blue mixed with burgundy, increased some areas with Mephiston Red added instead, and that was about it. The hairband increases the light/shadow contrast and has a Druchii Violet wash to help give definition, but the extremes aren't like edge highlights on armour. The streamers are just glaze highlighted with Mephiston Red and not much else.

The handles I thought worked well enough that I might start to use something similar on future models:

• Barak-Nar Bugundy
• Druchii Violet
• Word Bearers Red, focusing more on surfaces facing any light source.
• Tuskgor Fur, and more prominent highlights.

The hair I like the least, mostly because black hair is difficult enough at the best of times and yet I wanted it distinct from some of the armour. I ended up with:

• Daemonette Hide lightly brushed over the upper areas.
• Night Lords Blue mixed in and the lightly brushed over lower areas that still received highlights.
• Mephiston Red / Dryad Bark (1:1) mixed in again and sparingly added to shaded areas.
• Nuln Oil to add some depth around where the hair meets other surfaces, e.g around the mask, hairband.

Black armour is semi-NMM heavily influenced from Juan Hidalgo's tutorials:

• Skavenblight Dinge to place some reflection points and highlights.
• Stormvermin Fur glazed to increase the value of those points.
• Administratum Grey for more extreme edges.
• White for dots of the brights points.
• Black glazed as appropriate to smooth transitions or darken areas.

The real difference is that the armour is more black than steel. The weapon uses the same colours as I use for Blood Angels black armour, while a little Dark Reaper and Thunderhawk Blue (glazed back where necessary) give the shaft minor visual interest.

The eyes are very simple: Ulthuan Grey, White Scar, and then Aethermatic Blue. It's not enough to really bring focus to the face too much (at least not from the angle the photo is taken), but I'm not entirely sure I want that - I want the miniature as a whole to be the focus, not one individual part of it; it's difficult to get an impression of fluid motion if all the attention is on the mask.

Spirit stones are Mephiston red and Yriel Yellow mixed in various proportions, with the usual black darkened area and a white spot highlight (and then gloss varnish at the very end).

The blades I tried some NMM with. Very similar to the black armour, but swap out Administratum Grey for Ulthuan Grey and shifting everything into the bright grey spectrum rather than black. I played with inks a fair bit as they're very useful for glazing: black for the black areas of course, but a little crimson to reflect the streamers, and green (with a blue tint) for the tri-blades. I also had some of the Night Lords Blue on the palette and so mixed that with Ulthuan Grey and very (very) lightly glazed that on top of the other weapon as a sky reflection. That glaze is really the keystone to it all. There are of course glazes and glazes and glazes to try get some blending going on, during which I realised that very shiny metal quite often doesn't have smooth blends because it's reflecting solid objects with defined borders.

Am I happy with the blade NMM? No, not really, but I can myself starting to understand it more and with practice I'll probably be semi-decent at it one day.

With Jain Zar done, the could should be at 13, however I bought some Assault Intercessors and old-school jump packs while the latter are still available. I just think that combination looks better than the newer design, personal preference. That effectively brings the count back down to just 3. This makes me want to finish the Terminators next while I look around for motivation to get back onto the Dreadnoughts.

-- silly painter.