A brand new character is coming to the World of Legend this week, as Lady Élisse Duchaard fills the air with magic astride her lethal unicorn Ariandir. As one of the first totally new miniatures released for Warhammer: the Old World, she deserves a paint job fit for the Lady of the Lake, so we caught up with Ed from the Warhammer+ Painting Team to find out how his version of Lady Duchaard came to life.
Warhammer Community: How did you approach painting her?
Ed: Originally, we chose the miniature as the basis of the Citadel Colour Masterclass video ‘Equine Hair Techniques’ because the unicorn Ariandir has the physique of Bucephalus* himself and there is a huge amount of open space that lets us paint in our own texture as shown in the video.
After that, I found I just couldn’t stop, and the model almost painted itself! For special characters I like to try and replicate the superb ‘Eavy Metal schemes, and we can see when looking at the miniature that after using colder greys and desaturated colours for Ariandir the scheme is balanced with warmer colours across Lady Elisse.I used Wraithbone as a base for all of Élisse’s cloth, skin, and hair and relied entirely on glazing darker paints into each section to build up to the final colour before a few subtle highlights. For the cloth, I relied on mixing increasing amounts of XV-88 into Wraithbone and glazing this down into the recesses. For the skin tones, I repeated the same process by glazing into Cadian Fleshtone and then glazing down again with Doombull Brown, and for the purple flower pattern, I mixed in Barak-Nar Burgundy. Keeping this same bright, pale Wraithbone base lets us keep the surface looking soft and delicate.
The Staff Of The Elements gives us an opportunity to punch some really vivid cold colours onto the model, and I pre-painted the surface with Dawnstone glazed up to White Scar before glazing Temple Guard Blue and Sotek Green across the surface.
Painting true metallics follows the same principles as the rest of the model, and for our rich golds I started with a basecoat of Retributor Armour before glazing in Gore-Grunta Fur mixed with Reikland Fleshshade and some Rhinox Hide into the darkest recesses.
WarCom: That's quite intense, what was your favourite part of the process?
Ed: I find any form of glazing really relaxing and got into a good groove of spending long periods of time slowly shifting the warmer colours of the Lady down into darker colours, so really most of the model was a joy to paint! I think my very favourite part though was painting the flower patterned lower half of her dress as this was quite challenging to deep recess shade a solid line and then glaze with such a dark colour like Barak-Nar Burgundy directly over the pale finish of Wraithbone. I had to go in and tidy back up over several areas, but it was so rewarding when I finished that section.
WarCom: We imagine that quite a lot of paints were used in addition to those you’ve already mentioned, can you give us a breakdown of what you used?
Ed: Not a problem, I’ll break it down by each section to make it easier to see what was used where:
WarCom: That’s over 40 different paints across the model, do you have any tips to make painting the miniature easier?
Ed: I built almost the whole model but kept the upper body of Lady Élisse separate so that I could get my brush into the cloth around her stomach, as well as have full access to the staff and chalice. Mounting these on a Citadel Sub-Assembly Holder made it much easier to work with.
While not related to making the painting easier, I think a good way of tying Lady Elisse into your army, is to paint the shield detail swinging from the ivy in the relevant colours of your chosen Duchy.Finally, a top tip for using tufts is to lightly drybrush the tips with a brighter colour, again I opted for Wraithbone on both, so that there is some paint on them. This two-tone colour can look more realistic, and it also brings the surface finish of the plastic tufts closer to the painted surfaces around them.
Thanks Ed! Lady Élisse Duchaard will be available to pre-order this Saturday alongside a wide assortment of returning kits for the Kingdom of Bretonnia, Tomb Kings of Khemri, and Orc & Goblin Tribes. If you want to pick up a bunch of these paints at the same time, head into your local Warhammer store, where the Pick n Mix paint bundle gets you every tenth one free.
* The legendarily muscular mount of Alexander the Great.