Avatars of War Barbarian

I've taken a break from painting Bones miniatures, I still have a ton to work through but unfortunately there wasn't a figure that I felt represented this particular player's character.

Originally I wanted to paint Scibor's Extremely Barbaric Barbarian but Wayland Games couldn't get one even after weeks of trying so I had to come up with an alternative.  I didn't want one wearing a lot of armour as this is supposed to be a Level 1 Dungeons & Dragons character and one of the features of the class is 'Unarmoured Defense'.

I searched for quite a while to find the right model and finally whittled my options down to the Avatar's of War Barbarian and the Hasslefree's Akos the Scorned.  I was so tempted to get the Hasslefree miniature, its got a fantasticly dynamic pose, is of exceptional sculpting quality but in the end I felt Akos didn't fit in very well to the rest of the party.  I'll still be getting the Hasslefree miniature when I can though, its just too good a miniature to pass up.

This miniature has a lot of skin and I mixed a base coat of 50/50 Elf Flesh and Dwarf Flesh and built up layers of progressively lighter flesh tones over that.  I was tempted to paint the metal parts in a Non Metal Metallic technique but decided to keep it simple.  One trick I used which worked very well was with the eye.  I painted the white (only one eye is visible) and put the black pupil in the side of the eye.  This makes him look like he's suspiciously looking to his left.  If I had put it in the middle he would have looked a bit unfocussed I think.  

I hope you like him!