Step by Step: Virago, Ilyad Barbarian Beauty

Hey Jungle Painters,

time for your last tutorial voting winner.
This time Roman talks about painting the Virago (Ilyad Games, Female Vorag Barbarian, a great model, but sad to the toe - very rare as the company Ilyad Games is no more. You can find some rare Ilyad Games Miniatures on ebay, sometimes and they are far from cheap.

 Let's hear what Roman has to say about this lady.

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FOREWORD
First of all I want to give thanks to my friend Rafael Garcia Marin who played a big part in getting me this miniature. Keep an eye on his blog, it is worth it: Volomir's blog.

Well, as I am selling most of my own works as I am freelance artist in miniature painting one day I decided to create a little special collection for myself, without selling the models after the paintwork. I decided to slowly get my fingers on some Ilyad Games Miniatures via ebay or other occasions. My collection is at three painted models at the moment and some unpainted resin in my drawer.

BASING / PRIMING
I also decided to create simple bases for them. So I went with some stones with superglue on her gaming base. Nothing too fency, but still nice. Primed her white with surface primer by Vallejo. Using the airbrush for that. Why? Well, it is definatly finer than using sprays out of the can.

Next step was the usual one, taking basic tones for every material and placing them as a preparation for further work. Using the brush here. As you can see in the fur I already included a little light situation sketch, using zenithal light theory while applying my first colour layers.

Next step was painting first gentle lights to every area. Base, skin, clothes, metals and leather. I even was in the mood to throw some sandy pigments to the base to make her boots look more dusty. Don't ask me why, I just did.

Well, I now got interested in working on the fur and the skin parts as those make most of the model. So far the skin was too yellowish, so I took some skintone that is more reddish or pink to work further on the skin. The fur recieved some detailed lights in a blue grey to seperate single hairs from eachother. Also her mohawk recieveda dark wash to have the different hair seperated from eachother.

After this I went for some details on the metal. Working with a brigher metal tone here to give the pieces volume. The skin also recieved some glazes of dark red-brown to make out the shadow situations even better.

You can see the red glazes really come into play on the following photos. Additional to that I did some darklining. That means I seperated different material from eachother by using a dark brown line between both of them. You can see that pretty good on her leg to the fabric, on the fur and leather parts to the skin.

Now it was time for final lights on the skin, fur and some blood effect. Using a a bright blue for some tribal paint. In this case I did not want to have it look like a tattoo. If I would have gone for the tattoo I would have mixed in some skintone into a darker blue to make it look more included in the skin. This time I wanted to have it look like paint, she painted on her skin before the battle.

The base recieved some edge highlights on the stones. Leather parts recieved some more light and as I decided to make these models of my collection decent ones I felt the end coming closer.

The blood string from the fresh severed head was made in this way: Blood & Gore and Blood Drops.
Instead of Raffa's hair I used a piece of clear plastic here, like one I have I used here to create waves or waterfalls.


She looked like this in my cabinet and I was already happy with the result.

Final photos of  her revelead what I was aiming for. By putting more work and time into the upper area, adding more details there her lower legs were not that important for me anymore. Click to enlarge the photo:

Well, this was not a very strong article. I know, but I do hope that some of you might find inspiration in it.

Keep on happy painting!
Best Wishes
Roman