The Lady of the Woods

[...] and she grew to be tall beyond the measure even of the women of the Noldor; she was strong of body, mind, and will [...] Even among the Eldar she was accounted beautiful, and her hair was held a marvel unmatched. It was golden like the hair of her father and of her foremother Indis, but richer and more radiant, for its gold was touched by some memory of the starlike silver of her mother; and the Eldar said that the light of the Two Trees, Laurelin and Telperion, had been snared in her tresses.
—Unfinished Tales, "The History of Galadriel and Celeborn"

I popped into Vapnartak before the current strangeness - which everyone seems to have agreed, in a very British way, to refer to as 'all this' - started and picked up a couple of Middle earth miniatures at the Bring and Buy. One of them was Galadriel, the lady of the woods.

I decided to paint her up between other projects - basically as something to fiddle with while waiting for bits of Titan armour to dry - and as a result decided to experiment. Would it be possible, I wondered, to paint a miniature using nothing but Contrast paints to a good standard in less than 30 minutes?

Here she is.

White undercoat, one splash of contrast in each area - only three colours used - as a tiny bit of gold for the circlet. 30 minutes. It's a pretty good result, I think you'll agree.

Here she is with the other members of the White Council I have; quality wise it's difficult to spot the difference between her and the one of them that took nearlty six hours of patient layering or the one than required painstaking wet blending.

Guardians of the Forest

I wanted to experiment properly with the contrast paints while I was still countering away on the Napoleonics. So a quick warband was in order.

There are only five paints (6 if you include the nedium) in use here. All the variations in tone and colour were done by either wet blending the paints - much easier with these thick, heavily pigmented paints - or layering them one over the other. The skin and hair were done using Nighthaunt Gloom (which is basically a grey blue contrast paint and is one of the most useful shades I have).

Some moss effect was added on the bases to finish them off.

The biggest advantage of these paints is, of course, speed. These four figures took about an hour and a half from start to finish including drying time.

Next up: more Nappies and some 3d printed scenery.

The Mistweaver

Nothing fancy on this one. No conversions, no new techniques, just a straight go at completing another character from the Warhammer Quest game; this time an Elf.