Monday 2 January 2017

Colony 87: High Priestess Cardinia of the Benevolent Motherhood

Happy New Year! Whatever your circumstance, here's hoping your 2017 is better than your 2016 was.

As part of my ongoing improvement as a painter, a friend suggested a 90-minute challenge. It's as simple as it sounds - paint a figure, not including priming or basing, in ... 90 minutes. That's it! The aim is to complete at least one of these 90-minute challenges each month and then, in December, review my progress to see how well I've done at improving speed for figures.

Looking at some of the figures top painters can produce in a couple of hours is inspiring stuff (check this from Andy Wardle), and this is a small step toward that as a long-term goal.

To start things off, here's High Priestess Cardinia of the Benevolent Motherhood, from the Return to Colony 87 Kickstarter. She's also now known as "Cardie" to her friends ... because I won't be typing that out every time I refer to her.



Colour scheme on Cardie was quite straight forward, and kept in line with the previous Colony 87 figures I've painted. Greys, blues with green as a spot colour and tied to the scheme of Lord & Lady Greiss from 2015. I opted for a red tinge to the bottom half of the face to offer a nod that something terrible could be under the neckline.

One thing I don't like about the figures in general is fur. This is no exception, and the cat creature wasn't fun to paint, but it does look suitably sinister with red eyes with an attempt at a glow around them. To be honest, I feel the figure would have been better without the pet but such is life.

Minor touch up to the black base and Cardie's finished. Overall I think this came in around 90-100 minutes but close enough. Without a cloak repaint at the halfway point, this would have been on time.