Theodore Bruckner on Reaper.

SOLD

This is one of those miniatures that I wanted to paint from the first time that I saw it and no matter what one day or another I will do. As soon as I had the possibility I bought and started working on it on the same day that it arrived. The sense of power and fear that Reaper the demi griffin Theodore is riding really shows and I wanted to capture this feeling with my painting and also try Snow leopard fur paint on Reaper.

Cleaning: Cleaning was quite a straight forward and easy process except for the sword on the foot Theodore which arrived broken and was very hard to repair.

Pre-assembly: It took a bit of time and test fitting to get the parts to fit right this time, something not so usual from a Games Workshop miniature. In the end I opted to have Reaper fully assembled. The foot Theodore was also fully assembled with the helmet less head. Also The mounted Theodore was fully assembled except for the arm holding the lance and the helmeted head.

Painting: The main difficulties I saw for this painting and the things I most wanted to get right were Reaper's Snow Leopard fur and Eagle's beak and Claws which would fade in the Leopard's fur. This time i decided to paint the figure one section at a time. That is totally finishing the area I want before starting on the next.
I first started with the Leopard's white fur. The area in question was first given a base coat a a light grey. This was then carefully highlighted from that light grey to pure white leaving the grey as a very ligh shading. Spost of darker grey were painted all over the white area. These were then very carefully surrounded with a black circle which resulted in the Leopards cammo pattern.
Second arear of interest were the front eagle claws. A basic coat of of yellow base painted but it was then blended to grey and white before the end of both legs that contacted with the main leopard body. At least 5 coats of a darke mix of yellow and grey were applied all before the other before dried. This to blend the yellow with the white as perfectely as possible. The rest was a matter of careful shading and highlighting to give a natural look.
Third came the beak. I might look easy but blending black and yellow and most of all try to keep an natural look resulted in hours of work and patient waiting for colours and tones to dry out. I kept a photo of a hawk infornt of me of for reference. I started with a pure yellow base coat with has then shaded with flash in especially around the eyes. The rest was a layer after layer of of yellow and black mixes which were shaded with black in till the beak points resulted in pure black. I had to wait for each layer to dry becasue useing a hair dryer resulted in the paint's movment so thinned down were the layers. It was all worthed though since the final result can be eaisly comoared to the real thing.
The rest of the painting especially the amrour plates took it time but it was all finished to the tiniest detail to my complete satisfaction.
Specials: This miniature is already a special by itself so I did nothing to alter it in any way. Still I had to add a personal touch to it. I did so in the usual manner by giving it a special base. Crossing the dead velly base. The base was constructed to give the impression that Theodore and Reaper and crossing a valley full of dead corps from as many races as possible. You can see at least 3, orks, humans and beastmen.