My entry for September's Finger Painters Challenge is now finished. For this month, the theme was all about revisiting old projects that were left unfinished or old models in need of repainting.
For mine, I decided to repaint the Reaper Miniatures vampire, Rafael Maladoni.
I've had this guy for a very long time. In fact, if I remember correctly, I bought him along with a bunch of other Reaper Miniatures vampires in one big batch. Also, this was back in the days of mail order from their actual catalog book, Casketworks.
I believe this had to have been somewhere in the late 90s. Probably '97-'98, but maybe as early as '96. I can't remember. I do remember that I painted him after I discovered Games Workshop's Citadel paints. But that's not a very good gauge of when I bought the miniature itself, since I tend to stockpile models for a long time before they get touched.
Anyway, after a bath in some Simple Green it was time to bring him up to date. Unfortunately, I tossed him in the bath on a whim and didn't snap any before pictures of the original paint job.
Normally, I would paint all of the skin tones first. But due to the way the model is designed, with the woman in his arms, I decided to paint his chest and arms first and work outwards.
I wanted him to have a regal look, so I painted shirt on his chest with Citadel Screamer Pink followed by a Druchii Violet wash and highlighted up with Reaper MSP pink. The "buttons" were painted with Citadel Averland Sunset and highlighted up a touch with Citadel Flash Gitz Yellow before being washed with Seraphim Sepia.
The sleeves were base coated with Vallejo Neutral Grey, washed with Nuln Oil and then highlighted up to
while. I tried to keep them more on the dark side though, since they are under the cloak and light wouldn't be hitting them directly.
With the shirt done, I moved on to the cloak and painted the inside with Khorne Red, Agrax Earthshade, Mephiston Red, Evil Sunz Scarlet and Wild Rider Red. I tried to pay attention to where light hits and played with the different shades of red to help reinforce the shadows and highlighting.
The red interior of the cloak was the easy part.
The black on the other hand, kept giving me problems and I repainted it a couple times. Usually with black I either end up with way to much or too little contrast, and it's usually too much. I'm mostly happy with how it turned out, but it still could be better.
Rafael's skin tone was painted by base coating him in Reaper MSP Fair Shadow. Then from there I brought it up a little with Reaper MSP Fair Skin. This was then washed with a mix of Fair Shadow and Drakenhof Nightshade to bring the warmness out of the flesh and give it a colder feel. After that was dry, I kept adding brighter skin tones to the mix and highlighting it up, keeping the blue in the flesh.
The female's skin tone also started with Fair Shadow as the base. But instead of mixing in Drakenhof Nightshade, I mixed in Seraphim Sepia. The skin was first highlighted with the rest of the Reaper MSP Fair Skin triad and I began adding in areas of Rosy Shadow.
The Rosy Shadow was placed on her upper cheeks, neck, around the knees and her feet. I then mixed in some Rosy Skin and then Fair Skin to get the colors to blend nicely into each other. The shadowy areas under her legs, inside her palm and under her chin were painted with a mix of Rosy Shadow and Drakenhof Nightshade to deepen the shadows and give her skin more color variation.
For her dress, I wanted to try my hand at sheer clothing and I decided to go with green, namly Warpstone Green. The first attempt ended up being only OK and the next day I decided to try it again. The second attempt looks much better, but I can tell that I have a lot to learn before I master this technique. Perhaps I'll order up some more females in dresses so I play a bit more.
But for now, that's all. Rafael Maladoni is all finished. Until next time, you can catch me on Twitter or Instagram.