Harrowhark Nonagesimus, from The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir. Resin print sourced from an Etsy seller.
A wife's-gift commission that turned into one of the biggest models I've painted.
Why I painted it
My wife has been a fan of the series, and when she showed me the book art I thought it was rather amazing. So when she later showed me that there were folks on Etsy selling really well-done resin prints of the main character, I said I'd be willing to paint one for her.
Bigger than expected
I didn't know at the time that it was actually way bigger than the standard miniature size. Most miniatures you paint for tabletop role-playing games are no bigger than an inch and a half tall, or around 40mm. This thing came in at 8 inches tall, more like 200mm.
The challenge there was that I was accustomed to using speedpaints at the time, and they don't do well over large flat surfaces; they can tend to be a little splotchy. I ended up starting with a drybrush method, then went forward with the speedpaints, and a little drybrush over the top (especially on the pants) dulled the paint and smoothed it out in a way that worked wonderfully.
Assembly and green stuff
The biggest challenge on the whole figure was that the top half, bottom half, arms, and head all started out separate. The section right above the waistband on the pant line ended up needing to be smoothed over after I superglued the two pieces together, because they didn't quite fit right. I had to use this putty called green stuff to fill in the gaps at the waistline. That was the first time I've ever worked with that material, and I think if you zoom in you can still see some of my fingerprints lol.
What I'm proud of
What I really like about this model is how well the eyes turned out. Eyes are typically very difficult to paint, because humans are so good at discerning facial expressions and reading eyes that if they aren't just perfect, it ends up looking really bad. I think in this case the size of the model actually worked to my advantage; I didn't have to be so precise with the brush to get the eyes painted correctly. It helped a lot that this model matched illustrations from the novel, so there were plenty of reference pieces I could follow to get the coloring and the facial paint correct.
Still one of the largest models I've painted, but absolutely one of the best.
Tidbits
The original illustration showed the bones as about as white as the cape, but I opted for the Pallid Bone speedpaint from Army Painter's 2.0 series; I liked the older bone look it rendered.
Also, she's supposed to have a bracelet on her other wrist. The hand that's pointed downwards has a circular bracelet on it that was actually free floating, but when I got the model from the Etsy seller, the other bangle was missing.
