Heresy & Heroes

Well, it’s been a while since I tried to work on anything like this, so I’m happy to show it off to you here today. It’s nice to know that I can still get some real joy out of this kind of painting after some time away from it working on armies and fun little projects.

Rather than try and take on the awesome yet intimidating Triumph of Saint Katherine, I decided to try and paint a version of Saint Katherine after her triumph. Striding into battle in holy armour, hefting an ornate shield and her mighty blade and going to kick some heretic arse.

Honestly, it’s the hair and face I’m happiest with on this mini. I like that some holy light is bursting out of her eyes because that meant I didn’t have to paint any pupils on those peepers and that’s great with me. Just a faint blue glow. And I was a bit worried about painting white hair but I knew it would stand out agains the red and black really nicely. It turned out really nicely so that’s great with me.

The sword was a bit of a cop out – I went with a weathered bronze look and it’s fine, but very low tech. I was going to do glowing blue but I thought the verdigris would work out ok. It’s fine, but I think I was a little lazy going in that route. And the weathering goes between relatively well done and lazy too – getting green/grey dust on red armoured feet is tricky.

And yes, there’s the shield. I had a couple of hours free this afternoon, so after shaving off the design that’s on there, I just decided to go for it and paint Canoness Veridyan on there, based on the classic John Blanche artwork. It’s not perfect, but hopefully at least recognisable. It’s a relatively tricky painting to work with because it is rather stylised and that can make it hard to get the proportions right at the end of your brush, but I reckon it’s decent enough.

There’s a whole bunch I could improve on this miniature but I’m going to give myself a C+ here. Definitely a pass, and hopefully a good jumping of point for the next piece. I’m quite happy to be back painting like this, so let’s see where this mood takes me. Until the next one, be excellent to everyone, enjoy your painting, and have fun. Onwards.