Vote
Bloodthirster
This is my Bloodthirster painted nearly eight years ago (1999). For me it was a major transition in style. In the late 1990s, US painting competitions were heavily dominated by bright, clean but highly, stylistic miniatures exemplified by the mighty Mike McVey. Back then, we all wanted to be him and I too painted that way. However, this mini was the first of my minis to plunge into the dark side. I traded bright high contrasting cartoon colors for black primer and more natural tones. Exagerated McVey style highlights were replaced by more subtle, but more natural Jakob Nielsen style highlights--which were just then coming into fashion. I tossed the color "white" and it does not appear anywhere in the model except in one gem highlight--not even mixed with other colors. This mini is actually much darker in person than here or in previously published pictures. The concept was to create a bloodthirster that had been skinned (i.e. flayed flesh). The red and blue segments colors were chosen to emulate a blood vessel homoculus--you know the wicker-man thing that models the arteries and veins in the human body. I chose the blue because I didn't think a completely dark mini would go over well with U.S. Judges at that time. Today, I would use a much darker color. The mini has very tightly packed muscle striations. Each one consistists of seven highlights and two shadow layers. It took about 300 hours to complete. It won the 2000 North America Slayersword and appeared in the Hordes of Chaos for Warhammer Fantasy rulebook and the cover of the Citadel Journal. In the articles section find a an article that has a link to Jason Richard's website that has a reprint of the original Citadel Journal article for this mini.
Posted: 24 Dec 2006
10 comments
More by VictorHardy
