Showcase: Fiona and Taryn di la Rovissi

 It takes me a long time to get models painted.  It's not that I'm a slow painter.  In fact, I think that I paint models fairly quickly.  No, it's that I am obsessive about finishing the model and since that takes around 3-5 hours, and I have a job that consumes most of my time, that means that even when I get bit by the painting bug, I still can only get a couple of models done per week.  Last weekend I was inspired by my recent successes with Fiona the Black and I decided that I should just sit down and get painting.  The most daunting part for me, was trying to nail down a paint scheme.  Why was this so difficult?  It's because I have such a hodge-podge of models that I use with my Mercenaries, including the recent addition of the pSkarre theme list.  This means that I want my models to blend with Cryx, but I also want them to make sense if I want to play the Highborn Covenant mercenary contract.  This left me with some difficult decisions for my palette, but ultimately I decided to use two of my favorite colors: purple and green, accented by white.



I feel like this blend of colors, although reminiscent of the Joker from Batman, provides enough variation that I can vary the colors between models of certain affiliations while still allowing them to blend-in with the rest of the army.  For example, the Cryx that I end up painting will shift so that green becomes the primary color, while models that are more affiliated with the Highborn Covenant will shift so that purple becomes primary - all the while everything will have a cohesive look and it leaves me room to explore along the Mercenary faction lines in the future.

Without any further ado, I wish to present to you the first model I finished painting for my Mercenaries: Fiona the Black.

It was a lot of work, but I wanted Fiona to keep her Thamar
tattoo below her eye, and I think it came out great!

I always hate the 'cartoony' look that
some eyes have on models.  I like
how Fiona's turned out.

As a subtle nod to the Highborn Covenant, I decided that I
didn't like Fiona's long braid, and instead decided to make a
green stuff rose for her to tie her hair back into a fashionable
bun.  I think it's reminiscent of some hairstyles worn by
tango dancers, and I love the implications that carries!

Oh but wait!  There's MORE!  I also finished painting Taryn di la Rovissi!  She has been such a great character in my Fiona list and so I figured that she should be up next - especially since I wanted to do some converting on her outstretched magelock pistol!

I really like the colors on Taryn as I think the white provides
enough of a buffer so that they compliment instead of clash.

I'm pleased with the conversion of the magic rings coming
from the pistol!  Floral wire is your friend!

This picture showcases the bases the
best, I think.  They're 'Shiver me
Timbers' bases from Ironhalo.net.
I have some amazing old Reaper inks
that made these bases look like richly
stained wood!

So there you have it!  Next on my list is to get the Gun Mages painted up, as I'm really pleased with how they've been performing, and I think they'll look great in the colors that I've chosen, but I might jump ahead to paint the warjacks too.  I still haven't decided on a scheme for them yet.  I was going to go with purple as primary, but I might end up having the Freebooter be white as it's primary.  White always seems to show weathering effects the best, and I think the Freebooter is the best candidate to showcase that.