Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Weekly Update: The Emerald Eye

This week's update of the Emerald Eye is kind of special. This week I want to discuss a model I have completed but consider a failure and/or disappointment.

I have been eager to paint a fiend of Slaanesh since I traded for four of them over the fall. I thought the design of the model was rather interesting and felt I could do a decent job with them. The model painted above was my first attempt at one. I thought I could use the same skin tones that I used for the daemonettes, but the end results are not as striking as I could have hoped for with the model.

The next issue with the model was the tongue. When I received the model, the tongue was missing. I decided to create a new one from green stuff that was much more "impressive". The problem with the tongue is that it broke off three times during painting. At this point, I have decided to leave it one and just paint it. From certain positions, the repeated reattachment and touch-up is obvious.

Along the lines of the tongue, I wish I would have pinned the model to the base. The base was designed to rest on a square base (pictures next week) so that it can be used in WFB. The problem is that the weight of the model causes it to break from the base if held in the wrong position. This was a clear oversight on my part and something I will correct with the next one.

Returning to the painting, the green shoulder marks are terrible looking. I liked what I had done with the one daemonette and thought it would work here. The mistake I made was spacing the birthmarks to far away from the green claws. I should have painted less of the claws green in retrospect.
The basing also didn't come out like I had hoped. I had created an engraved eldar symbol out of green stuff, but the final paint job is lacking and may be touched up over the weekend.
At the end of the day, I will keep the model as is for the moment, as I need it for the tournament in April. I am not sure how I will approach the other three fiends at this point. I believe I need to reconsider the paint scheme I had for them. Maybe the body should be green and the claws purple. I honestly don't know at this point.

1 comment:

  1. I received some great feedback from my friend Ernie that I wanted to share about this model.

    "I think the green claws and scales and skin spots work well and bind it to the Deamonettes on color theme. The major difference I find between the Fiend and Deamonettes is the balance of colors. They are pretty close to evenly balanced on the Deamonettes whereas on the Fiend the fleshtone far surpasses the purple and green. Perhaps finding ways to adjust the color balance (tail maybe?) might help. Or tinting the fleshtone or washes that hint at the other colors. I've no idea how that would work, or if it could work at all."

    Taking into account his feedback, I am thinking of refining the tail by painting it green like the claws. My other thought is to maybe add some depth to the skin by going with more highlights.

    I am interested in hearing more feedback on how others would improve upon this effort.

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