Luciana the Unwavering aka Yndrasta the Celestial Spear joins Sigmar's Children

This weekend I used a lot of hobby time to start 'halfway through' projects. More on that as (if) they are finished. One project I actually build, painted and finished over the course of two days was Luciana the Unwavering. Through sheer perfection reckoned the greatest swordmaster in the Realms as well as a stalwart companion that would never, ever, betray her friends (as opposed to old Lucius the Betrayer of course)...Others may know her as Yndrasta the Celestial Spear, but not in my stormhost!

I could've glued the stairs to one of those new chariots and made jokes about the Bluth family, but I didn't. I could have though...

The further I progress with Sigmar's Children, the comfortable I'm getting with pre-shading with blue and going in with a zenital pink afterwards. I find I'm getting sloppier covering up the blue as I like the effect of more 'shadows' showing. I had a lot of fun painting the wings too, which I kept separate on the model (I mostly followed the same recipe I used with Radukar). This is one of the newer snap-fit models which made puting the wings on after painting relatively easy. I find as I lean into this new-fangled snap-fit concept it has its advantages (for instance when gluing on a pair of carefully painted wings). I'm not fully sold on the whole snap-fit craze (for instance when the freshly painted wings don't quite want to fit on suddenly not entirely aptly named snap-fit bars), but I don't mind the concpet as much anymore, see its occasional advantage (and mostly just snip of the bars). Who would've thought I'd get behind a new concept at my ripe old age ;).

Leopard print? Check! Badass pose? Check! Hair metal riffs playing as she descends? You betcha!

Animal prints...sorry animal pelts will be one of the recurring themes on this stormhost. After a reasonably successful experiment on a Liberator's (green stuffed) cloak I couldn't wait to paint more leopard spots. I have to admit I'm beyond satisfied with the spots on this cloak (and the yellow color of the cloak itself). I base coated the cloak with Zandri Dust, then (carefully as the rest of the model was already painted) airbrushed a layer of Flayed One Flesh onto the Zandri Dust. When this was dry I airbrushed Tau Light Ochre on the center of the cloak to get that animal yellow look. Checking pictures of animal skins online, I painted the inside of the cloak Zandri Dust (it was on my palette) and then extremely carefully airbrushed Stonewall Grey (Vallejo Game Air) on top. Not sure if this is some kind of modern rubber non-slip coating on pelts or just the way animal pelts dry up in the wild (so to speak (assuming a wild tanner)), but they seem to be mostly grey on the underside. 

Jokes about stair cars aside, I am torn about these pre-made overtly full bases. On the one had they look awesome, on the other it keeps getting harder to tie models in with their friends as you collect them over the years (and the pre-made bases start varying). 

I followed (most of) this stone tutorial on Realm of Plastic to paint the stone wall and switched to greens (with the same tutorial) for the rotten tree. It was the first time I seriously stipled anything besides rust and I have to say I like the technique's result. Last, but not least, I cut of the snap fit clips on the base of the model (after all the nice words about snap-fit above, it had to happen of course). I then angled the model upwards by placing a leftover bit of sprue beneaht the front side of the stairs (so to speak). I found Luciana to be leaning down to much for my taste. Now she's looking up, shouting her 'loyalty' to the heavens. I filled the gap with (a hell of) a lot of Vallejo Dark Earth Paste. To be honest I no longer know how to base without that stuff :). 

Looking back at my post, I decided I had to add a close-up of my leopard spots. Just couldn't resist.

One small admission of a to-be-corrected error. Looking at the pictures I realize I forgot to paint the base rim. Unfortunately my daylight photography studio is no longer functional (due to it being daylight outside based and night having fallen as I type this). I've decided to just go ahead and post the damn thing as is. There is so much more to blather about in the coming weeks, I just want to post this now. I have a bunch more Stormcast sitting on my paint station (mostly in various stages of pink) and I've done a lot of work on the remaining models of Cursed City. Also (in completely unrelated news) I walked into a toy store for my sons birthday and chanced upon a forgotten copy of  Blackstone Fortress Deadly Alliance. What a joy, now all I need is the suddenly discontinued Blackstone Fortress Ascension to complete my set. But that's for a (number of) other blog posts.

As per request in the comments, a close-up of the figure itself.