A Sacred Mountain Avatar rolls off the hill to proxy the Spirit of the Mountain

Considering beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I have to admit at least one of my eye stalks is not vibing with the Spirit of the Mountain model GW made for the new High Elf line (also known as the Lumineth Realm Lords). Luckily we live in an age of many alternatives. And as a recent convert to the 3D-printing community I looked and found a more suitable model called the 'Sacred Mountain Avatar' by a gaming company on MyMiniFactory called Ghamak. Here's my painted version.

This Sacred Mountain Avatar makes a nice proxy for the Spirit of the Mountain.

I rather liked a number of models in this company's line-up (there's some awesome looking Skaven I should really try someday soon) so I recently joined their Patreon. This model was part of the March release. A February release also featured better alternatives to the guys taking suicidal helmet horns to a whole new level of stupid. Sadly I rather like those models, but now I don't have to look for replacement heads as I have another choice for High Elf with big hammer. More on those some other time.

Making the rocks on his back look good, took quite a lot of color (and a lot of drybrushing as well).

Anyway. the Spirit of the Mountain within AoS lore is worhshipped from Alartih temples. It literally embodies the mountain the temple is build on and occasionally pops up to help out in battle. I have to admit I rather like that direction of thinking. It reminds me of the old Wood Elves having their tree-kin over to help them in battle (now if there was a nice line of classic looking Wood Elves to paint I'd be on it in a minute, but alas, Skarloc will have to moonlight as a High Elf for the foreseeable future). Where was I? Oh yes the spirit of the mountain. I like the Avatar sculpt Ghamak made. It has a wise mountain lion vibe going and looks to have ripped itself out of the mountain's side to give some sage advice (and a few well-places hammer blows). I took my time getting his face painted to a reasonable standard (I think). As to the color I used a base of Dunkel Gelb (Dark Yellow) by Vallejo and added some Ivory to it for highlights. 

Painting patterns on robes is something I've been meaning to do a lot more. I'm quite happy I took the time for it on these robes. 

The robes where painted with GW Squig Orange to make it fit in with the rank and file of my Lumineth. After airbrushing on highlights and adding a few brushed on edge highlights (just added white) I decided to paint on a relatively easy to accomplish flower pattern in yellow. It is subtle from a distance, but really makes the robes look fancy. I'm quite happy with that. Happy enough to risk a close-up :).

My compulsion to read and view every face (and eye) painting tutorial I find is starting to pay off (I think).

Here's another risky close-up of the face. I'm very happy that my eye painting skills keep improving as I think having pupils help make a model look interesting. I should talk a little bit about the rocks on his back (sorry about this ill-placed bit of text as the rocks are only properly visible two pictures up). I painted these VMA Cement Grey and then drowned them in Nuln Oil followed by a bath of Agrax Earthshade. Next (after drying) I went for a drybrush with GW Celestra Grey. After this dried I painted some rocks with Contrast Guilliman Flesh, Militarum Green or Plaguebearer Flesh. I added some random brown Contrast paint to the branches sticking out of the rocks. After the paints dried I poured on yet more Agrax and gave the lot a fresh grey drybrush (except the branches). I added a choice pink (Vallejo Mecha Magenta) to the leafy cones on top, because High Elves just demand a lot of color (actually everyone does, I'm one of those 'taste the rainbow' kind of tabletop warriors). 

That's quite a nice scale for a centerpiece model. Also: why don't I ever touch up base rims before taking pictures? (Answer: sheer enthusiasm ;)

Just for scale here's a picture of the mountainous avatar with a happy little friend. It's going to be a blast placing him on the table. Especially against those naughty flying dwarves (Kharadron) that recently crushed my Lumineth in a battle over mysterious artifacts (greedy little....+++ REDACTED BY ORDER OF HIS MOST HOLY INQUISITION +++).

They should call these 3D-printers backlog printers, I need more time to get all this stuff painted. Also I need to find more storage space ;).

To finish up, I thought let's not make every other post an apology about being slow in posting. My time is being consumed mostly by work and for another large part by learning how (not to) 3D-print. While silent I've printed a replacement for my poor dead Warhound Titan. I've made (a rather sloppy) print of a Thunderhawk and I'm currently in the process of printing something even larger (center bottom of the picture above :D). With apologies for the lack of updates, I'm still happily hobbying along. Here's to hoping I'll find more time to blab about it on this blog.