The White Dwarf - Part I

 

Angry dwarf with beer.

Just as something completely different I opened a very old blister pack of a metal model of the White Dwarf. The main reason is that I wanted something of a "palette" (palate) cleanser before going back to more red armour and Space Marines, and I figured this miniature wouldn't take weeks to paint - assuming I actually have the spare time to paint it.

Initially I was going to prime the model black and then give a Zentihal spray with white to make it easier to see. Then I realised I could just use a different primer. I have a couple of other old rattle cans that are very rarely used, so I picked out The Fang and primed everything. This was somewhat fortunate for later.

There really isn't much in the way of painting done yet. I painted up the face with Two Thin Coats:

• Barbarian Brawn base coat.
• Dwarven Skin highlight.
• Elven Skin (the irony) for a further highlight.

I also had some old Mephiston Red on the palette and mixed that in with the latter two paints to give a subtle red cheeks and nose - either from the cold or from more than a few beers. I used Trooper White on the teeth and the eyes, and the eyes I've already fixed up slightly (although they could use a little more fixing still) from the photo above. That's not a gap in his teeth, that's just the shadows from the lighting, but I may need to correct for it in future too.

Next up is the hair and beard. These obviously need to be white (hence the name of White Dwarf). Painting hair is a tricky thing at the best of times, and white hair is a skill I'm still very much learning. I was at least competent enough to know not to use black or grey tones as the base. I made this mistake on Mephiston (the hair was painted really bad back then, I've learned a thing or two since). I'm actually wanting to go with cooler tones for the most part, framed perhaps by a green cloak, and so it struck me that perhaps a tint of blue as the shadow colour - almost as if perhaps The Fang would be about right. That was lucky!

I painted the hair in The Fang again to cover some areas the primer had missed, and then inspected my paint pots and picked out Celestra Grey. That paint has since turned into a dry paint, but I managed to salvage just enough and with an older Citadel small layer brush-turned-drybrush have coloured it as pictured. I think it's worked well enough so far, but I do need to now turn to more desaturated colours and begin volumetric highlights of the general hair shapes. Painting volume shapes instead of individual hair strands gives a better result I find, just like when (pencil) drawing.

This is an old sculpt, and yet from a painting perspective it feels like the sculptor knew so much more about mini painting and design than anything done today on a computer. The shapes are exaggerated just the right amount to give the right impression at this scale and there's an organic nature to the face, hair, and cloth that just can't be captured with anything more modern. This model is really enjoyable to paint.

-- silly painter.