WFB Empire Amethyst Wizard

 Lately I've been painting with and helping out Brandt of Toadkiller Miniatures. Looking through my collection of figures I could work on in a similar manner to sell online or locally, it put me in mind of a way-old GW Empire Wizard I basecoated 'round about 2007 along with a way-old plan to work on this guy, sell him, and post the results as I went along. He's painted as a member of the Amethyst College of Magic, according to Warhammer Fantasy background.

Without further ado, here's my current progress:

 I can't really write up what I've done because in the past few days I've had a flurry of activity working on it. I can say that I have tried the recently-released GW color range, and that the roses have benefited from highlights with GW Emperor's Children layer paint and glazes/washes/lining in with GW Druchii Violet shade color in addition to the old GW Baal Red Wash.

 The skin was highlighted up with a mixture of 1:1:1 Reaper MS Bright Skin Highlight/Vallejo Model Color Deck Tan/Vallejo Game Color Skin Wash ink thinned to a 1:4 paint/thinner consistency, and then having a few drops of GW Skull White added and then suitably thinned - I went up a few steps in color on the skin, adding more skull white until I got to the final highlights on tip of nose, knuckles, etc.

 The cloth strips and hood had previously been colored and shaded a dirty cream color, and overall just weren't working in terms of the overall scheme. I went back over them with a mixture of thinned Vallejo GC Hexed Lichen, Hexed Lichen with a few drops of GW Bleached Bone as a next layer, and then with Emperor's Children added to the mix in a separate palette well with additional drops of Bleached Bone. I went back and forth with these three thinned colors for a while until I had gotten shaded areas darker purple, mid-tone areas the second color set, and highlights a combination of the 2nd/3rd color sets with pure Emperor's Children/Bleached Bone as sparse edge highlighting.

 The next biggest change was switching the color of the liquid in the vial from my original purple to an unhealthy green - I actually had the liquid fully painted using similar colors to what I used on the cloth and hood, but all the purple on the figure seemed all too close together and too similar in shade. I decided (well, mostly my wife suggested and I agreed) to go with a poisonous green color for the liquid so as to not have things too monochromatic, as well as balance out the green of the vines on the scythe and a presumed green something-or-other on the base when all's said and done to have a spot color "triad."

 Oh, and since my painting skill has improved over the past while, I'm going to try for a "glass" appearance on the non-liquidy part of the flask. I'd also like to put some minimal freehand work on him somewhere, but am undecided as to exactly where and exactly what - I'm not really as familiar with GW's Warhammer Fantasy game as I am with Warhammer 40K.

Feedback would be greatly appreciated! Moreso, since I'd ideally like to sell/auction this guy off without a specific commission for him, which is something I've not actually done for any of my painted figures yet, surprisingly enough.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

 I've gotten back into painting again after another absence (been working a 60hr up-at-4am-every-morning job since last September, but am now laid off) and am motivated to get some sort of 40K army painted, even if a small one, that I can game with. I came to the realization that out of all the half-finished projects, a Necron force I've had shelved since 2008 was the furthest along and, more importantly, the easiest to really get cracking with in terms of cutting corners and just getting them done! I've not really done "army style" painting before, but with these Warriors I did one step at a time on each figure on the batch of 5 until I got 'em done to move on to the next step.

 This current batch of Warriors have now all been painted over the base color with shading, several layers of highlight, and the glow effects more or less fleshed out. I'm normally better at writing down color recipes so I can go back to things after the fact, but for some reason I never jotted notes on doing the glow color or the greenish physical corrosion on these guys. I've had to reinvent a painting recipe and color progression for both of those, and made a few other tweaks besides since I've picked up new colors - and, um, additional painting skills - since I last set brush to these guys almost 4 years ago. I'm planning a replacement for the one hand of the guy with the spiky growths from his upper left body - I decided I just wasn't happy with the closed fist made from the hand sawn off from a gauss glayer stock - I just need to figger out what would look good in its place, since the other arm is angled out slightly.

 Although painted in advance of the rest of the troops, the Necron Lord pretty much follows the same scheme but has had a bit more conversion. I'm aiming to have the wrappings on his staff and his cloak painted to resemble flayed skin. Oh, and he's also magnetized, so I can swap out the Ressurection Orb in his hand and both ends of his staff in case I want to change his equipment for a 40K game. He has has had some revisions recently, primarily since the magnetized hand holding the Resurrection Orb wouldn't stay pinned/glued on and kept snapping off. I drilled deeper/thinner pin holes, swapped out the metal forearm for a plastic Necron one, and then drilled/pinned the other end with the hand as well. I like the end result, because his arm is now slightly exaggerated in length in addition to having the corrupted claws.

 I did pick up the new GW Necron Codex, but haven't really read through it much or done much research on quality/competitive units with which to game. At this point, I'm just going for the basic Lord w/ Res. Orb, Staff of Light and two(?) squads of Warriors. I'd ideally like to hit 500 points, so I can at least start with small games. I'm also working on accompanying Scarabs, but need 3 more finished bases before I can field those as a valid unit under the newest rules.

 I'd greatly appreciate feedback, in that I'm thinking the (unfinished) Lord looks a little bland - maybe I need to do something more with the claw arm to play it up a bit? The Orb and Staff of Light are going to get a green glowy effect so I'm not so worried about those, but he otherwise just seems kinda "flat" to me and I don't know what to do about it.