Aeldari Voidscarred Corsair, Part Four

Painting and repainting the Shade Runner

 

With forty six years of mini painting experience I should know better than to rush a paint job in order to meet a deadline! After all, my No.1 personal painting rule is ‘take as much time as I need to paint a model to my satisfaction’. But alas, my most recent Corsair fell foul of short cuts and I didn’t even realize it at the time!

The Corsair in question is the Shade Runner and I’ve been working on her since August last year. However, I‘d put her on aside in late October and didn’t get to work on her again until late January. The deadline in question was the Hammerhead Painting competition on February 28th and I had four weeks to get into gear and finish the model. I quite like the occasional tight deadline because it energizes my painting and keeps me on my toes. I do, however, have to be very careful as I never do my best work at speed. But I thought I had just enough time to finish the model properly.

This was, after all, the third of my Corsairs so I was familiar with my colour palette and scheme. Indeed part of the reason for the hiatus was a touch of boredom as I started to get that ‘been there, done that’ feeling about the paint scheme. One solution was to shake things up a bit. I’d always planned to vary the armour colour of my Corsairs within the overall scheme. Those with higher status would feature more gold armour and the rest would feature more red and black with less gold. 

I decided to figure out what the lower end of the range would look like and apply this to the Shade Runner. The black armour is not, in fact, a true black but rather an extremely dark grey green. I think of it as a soft black and Dark Sea Blue from Vallejo once again proved itself an invaluable part of my colour palette. I decided to restrict gold to the knees, vambraces, buckles and helmet. All the Corsairs will have gold helmets. The red was kept fairly minimal by restricting it to the belts, holster and one pauldron. In order to test this scheme out I made a quick sketch using the colours from my palette which was an incredibly useful step to help consolidate my plans.

As a result the painting of the miniature was pretty straightforward and enjoyable. The dark armour gave me an opportunity to introduce colours into it from the overall palette and experiment with reflections from other areas of the mini and the wider environment. Black armour can be uninteresting but I think these reflections added a lot of nuance.

One other thing that I thought would add some variety was my choice of head for the Shade Runner. The ‘standard’ head for this model has a hood over the helmet giving it an assassin like vibe. I went with this option but modified it by adding the ‘tail’ from the hood of the Harlequin Solitaire model. This played into the ‘over the top’ aesthetic I wanted for my Corsairs.

By this time I’d been painting between four and six hours every day for over a month. This had been an incredibly productive period but a little bit of mental fatigue had started to set in!  I’d constructed a base at the start of the project and had it primed, base coated and ready to go. This was just as well because I only had a couple of weeks left to paint it. This was simply a matter of repeating my scheme so I forged ahead. I would normally spend almost as much time thinking about painting as doing it but that was a luxury I didn’t have time for. However, the model was finished with a couple of days spare and I was happy with the result … mostly.

Something bothered me about the overall scheme and it took a while for me to pin it down to the head. I’d spent a lot of time converting the hooded head and liked the result. In itself the miniature was fine but not as a part of a larger unit. I came to realize that the hood skewed the colour scheme of the Shade Runner away from that of the planned unit. It introduced a dominant bright blue element to the front of the model. In addition the helmet, showing only it’s faceplate, did not have the same bold impact as the other models with their tall gold helmets. I decided that for the sake of my long-term plan I would have to replace the helmet. That, however, would be after the competition.

It felt strange to enter a competition with a model that I knew I was going to change. But I was pleased with the Shade Runner as a stand alone model. I was even more pleased when it was given gold in the Sci-Fi Single Miniature category!

After the comp, I had the chance to chat with the Judge Matt Parks. Matt had some incredibly helpful feed back for me. In short my basing ‘was not up to my usual standard’. I really hadn’t seen this and even when pointed out it took a bit of time for it to sink in. After all the model had just won Gold but what I came to realise was that, although okay, the base was very basic! This was not as disappointing as it might have been because I already intended to rework the model. This time I would work at a more considered pace.

Removing the head was a nasty job with the potential to cause some damage but I thought through the process and worked cautiously. I realised that the safest way was to sacrifice the hooded head and remove it in pieces. This was a shame but I had a bigger picture to concentrate on. I had cut a small notch out of the blink pack when I fitted the hood so that also had to be repaired and repainted. Milliput was the filler of choice here as it could be sanded more easily than green stuff. The job was certainly fiddly but the area was easily accessible so I was able to make the repair with no slip ups.

For the new head I selected a helmet from the Drukhari Raider kit. It had a set of ‘fins’ running down either side that helped to give it some visual impact. I painted the helmet and then glued it onto the body. It made a huge difference to the appearance of the model! It had been a drastic step to remove a perfectly good head and replace it but the new version of the Shade Runner feels far more in keeping with the overall scheme I’m creating.

It was then time to scrutinize the base. It was indeed rather basic and that wouldn’t do at all. I decided to add some fallen statuary and rubble to create a bit more interest. This was done with minimal disruption to the existing work so then all I had to do was paint it. Or so I thought because once I started painting I realised just how right Matt was about the base not being up to standard!

Studying my earlier work, I discovered that I’d missed many stages of layers, glazes, washes and highlights. The Shade Runner’s base matched my earlier work on a superficial level but lacked depth and nuance in it’s painting. So I set about repainting the entire base. This time I would not be cutting any corners. 

Even when fully painted to my satisfaction I felt that the base and the figure needed something more to tie them together involving the colour scheme. So I added a green trophy/trinket to the models belt (as I had on the Felarch) and some blue ferns to the base. With that I’m now far more satisfied with my Shade Runner. The model and it’s base feel visually cohesive and painted to the same standard.   

Feedback can be difficult to accept but it’s always worth considering. Matt Parks’ advice saved me from failing to do my best and I’m very grateful for it!