Painting Player Characters for D&D: Wood Elf Archer with Scenic Base

Warhammer Wood Elf Archer

My West Wind Zombies arrived today but its raining so I couldn't get them prepared and primed.

TSR Gnoll from 1985

So I went looking for a model that i'd already prepared but hadn't gotten around to painting.  I normally have a few miniatures like this and today I narrowed it down to a really nice TSR 1985 Gnoll Warrior I picked up at a car boot sale or a converted Archer from the rather ancient Warhammer Wood Elf Chariot that i'd pinned to a piece of rock.  I had also put on a wire bowstring which I have wanted to try for quite a while.

I've also recently received some lipped 30mm bases so I decided i'd rebase the Gnoll and paint the Elf.  The Elf's pose is really nice and fitted the rock i'd found perfectly and i'd been meaning to paint it for ages.  I always wanted it to represent one of my favourite characters from a Dungeons & Dragons game 

If your anything like me you probably invest a lot of time into your tabletop characters. Whether its a heroic Paladin with a dirty little secret in his past, a Pious Cleric with delusions of grandeur or a solitary Elven Archer with a real passion for killing humans we exert our creativity to develop a three dimensional personality to be our avatar in a shared world of adventure, horror or action.

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For me its very satisfying to put some effort into painting the miniatures that represent our characters so I painted this one in a slightly different way to the Zombies I did in the last post.  Most of the steps are the same but I rely less on black washes and shade more subtly.

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I used Vallejo 70.873 on the boots and Vallejo 70.924 on the leggings, these paints give a muted earthy tone quite different to the Citadel paints I normally use.  Eldar Flesh was the base coat for the skin areas but I wanted him to look a bit outdoorsy so I used a very watered down Citadel Bestial Brown as a wash.  I wanted the bow to be white and its deceptively hard to make that look deliberate, shading with light grey and highlighting with pure white was effective and picking out the bow string with Shining Gold got the effect I wanted.

I was tempted to leave the rock unpainted but that just didn't work.  When you paint miniatures you over emphasise things and an unpainted rock would hav elooked realy odd.  I settled with a basic Citadel Fortress Grey base coat with a black wash and white dry brush layer over the top.  Some standard green flock did a nice job as mountain lichen to bring some colour into the base and draw it together with the greens in the miniature.

I'd be interested in your comments.