The Dark Elf Sorceress from Games Workshop was an unpainted remnant from my Dark Elf days (I’ve seen the light and converted over to High Elves now). I had in the past (several years ago and when my painting skill was mediocre) tried my luck painting her but could never pull off an effective paint job that would make her stand out.
Fast forward to now. I’m in between commissions, something that seems to be a rarity and thought great time to work on my Ultramarine force. Considering I’ve done so many Space Marine commissions lately I just couldn’t bring myself around to it. Then I spotted my arch nemeses sitting unpainted on my shelf – the Dark Elf Sorceress and decided what the heck, i’ll give her a go.
I decided to paint her up to our Display Standard which would include NMM paint techniques, a decent base and any number of shades of color required for improved blending.
I’ve always thought that a navy blue, black and red color scheme was perfect for Dark Elves and this is what my old Dark Elf army used to use.
I won’t give a blow-by-blow painting tutorial here as i didn’t capture that many work in progress images. So I’ll provide a round-up of the highlights instead.
I wanted a lot of gold on her and decided to use the NMM style for it. It was painted on her crown, the rims of her chest plate and the staff head. As I was painting the navy blue coat on her I noted that there wasn’t too much area to apply gold to her cloak. I decided to put some runes (squiggle) of gold around the base of her cloak which would weave underneath the pointed purple rims.
I was going to keep her hair black, but even though Dark Elves are evil and dark, they are still elves who are predominantly blonde or light coloured hair. So I made her hair an ash blonde to lighten the miniature up a little as well.
Finally the base was built up using some cork painted like dark stone, added some spots for grass and a sprinkle of autumn leaves. Again, I didn’t wat to necessarily put muddy, dark or bloody bases – they are elves and certain parts of Naggoroth would still be beautiful with autumn leaves.
Here are some work in progress shots:
Here are the final results:
