Entry 3 - Challenge - Bonus round: Cold

The first bonus round was themed: Cold.  These are each worth 50 points but, more importantly, are where you see some of the very best work in the challenge.  Competitors will often build dioramas and put extra love and attention into these entries.  I'm ahead of schedule this year so I had time to spend a bit more

This one was so obvious to me that I just had to go with it.  Villains and cold together made me think of a Dark Elf Cold One Knight.  The model is one of GW’s better efforts.  These are a huge improvement over the old models.  

I was nervous going into this task.  I didn’t really have a plan so I just started painting.  I prefer to figure out which colors will go where but I just couldn’t “see” the model so I had to wing it.  I primed it green and worked it up from there.

The knight was painted in straight forward metal but then I wanted to tie the rider in to the idea of cold a little bit more.  I washed his armor with a blue wash.  The colors of his cloth are the colors GW uses for their High Elves. 

The display base was supposed to be a cold landscape but the snow effect I ordered hasn’t arrived so I had to go the other way entirely on it.  It’s a sabot base for a single 50mm x 100m cavalry model.  The plants are aquarium plants with some washes here and there to make them look a little bit less plastic.  The only way this is going to get used in a game is if I’m playing a fantasy version of Hail Caesar or something similar (which is possible to be honest).

I have to say, I’m very proud of this lizard.  It may be one of my favorite figures that I’ve painted.  It’s a great model and I’m really happy with the way it came out.  I’m now intimidated at the thought of trying to re-create the paint job on the rest of the unit.

I’m also going to go out on a limb here and raise my goal from 650 to 1500.  I’m weeks ahead of schedule on my painting right now.  The push of the Challenge is working and I want to take full advantage of it.