This miniature was I think originally produced by Spyglass as a limited edition freebie for a fantasy book club. A number of them made their way to discount seconds shop The Works, and a nice chap on the Lead Adventure Forum was nice enough to pick one up for me (as my local branch didn't get any, boo). So, I undercoated it, painted the flesh (using a Foundry triad) and then didn't touch it again for a few years.
Digging through my project box for a few things to paint before getting sorted and actually working on project related miniatures (I know, I know, the same old story), I came across her and thought she'd be a nice mini to get finished.
I think my original plan for her was to have her in gleaming silver armour, but decided instead she might look nice in gold (which would help her stand out amongst every other silver armoured miniature I own), and would likely look a lot better doing it now with the paints I have than if I'd have tried it when I first got the miniature and only had a pot of Shining Gold to my name! Extrapolating from this, I imagined her as some sort of Paladin for a sun god, her unusual (compared to the rest of my Cadian Flesh toned miniatures) complexion suggested maybe she's far from home, spreading the word of her God and taking its light into the darkened places of the world. This line of thinking also influenced the colour of her cloak, as I thought it might be thematically appropriate for a paladin serving a sun god to have a cloak the colour of a clear sky...
The cloak was base coated Fenris grey, then layered up from Caledor Sky to Ice blue and out the other side with the addition of increasing amount of white...
(Looking at this picture, I've just seen a splash of blue on the rock, which I'll fix with an extreme Bleached Bone edge highlight before posting!)
That's as far as the considered symbolism goes though - for the colour of her hair and the gem on her shield, I just asked my wife to choose! I originally highlighted the hair much lighter, but it just looked... wrong, so I glazed it with the original colour to knock it back a bit.
I even tried the Kev Dallimore tip of painting the bottom lip a shade of red on female miniatures, which in my mind I imagined would look a bit harlot-ish, but in reality looks quite nice!
Finishing this pious elf maiden takes the Tally to:
21 vs 333 = -312
(I sold 37 orks, hence the reduced total on the acquired side of the equation!)
This is probably the last miniature I'll paint and post before moving house in a fortnight, as everything will be getting packed up (one of these days) - this also includes everything on offer in my previous Trade Post, so if you want anything get in quick before they get packed up!
Well that's rather lovely.
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