Hordebloods: Lanyssa Sylvanas

I haven't been super active on the blog, I know... I need to take my own advice. But while I wasn't posting, I have still been painting. I've been trying something new for my works in progress - posting stuff to Facebook as I work. So to start, a quick reminder,

Follow Wargaming Tradecraft on Facebook.

You can see what I'm working on as I'm painting and ask questions for your own works. Meanwhile, I plan on ramping content creation back up here.


Now, lets take a look at Lanyssa Ryssyll, who I've painted with inspiration from Sylvanis Windrunner.

Side note - I love the close up on the left.

As usual, I started with the skin, starting with deep blues and brightening things up to turquoise and menoth white.

Not finding the skin quite the colour I was after, I went over everything with a thinned out green to shift the tone, then highlighted with a few light shades of green to finish it off. Had to go back and do her ears after.. thought they were hair decorations but realized after "Oh yeah, pointy elf ears." Always sucks painting something like this after the bulk because you lose a little consistency.

For her hair, I wanted a dirty, decayed look but still being attractive. Starting with greys as a base, I add some browns and dark yellows as a mid range and finish off with an uneven touch of brighter and lighter yellows.

The rest is pretty self explanatory... purples and greys for her armour, brown for straps and the lower parts of her legs.

I want to point out the black upper legs though, because black is always a tough thing to paint without it looking grey. Used Charadon Granite (deep grey / brown) for the bulk of the highlights and brought it into a mix of the granite and a light grey for wrinkles.

I used some greys mixed with deep blues for her sword sheath, using streaking to add some texture. Little bit of metallics thrown in to add some contrast.

Had a lot of trouble deciding how I wanted to paint the cloak, so I ended up layering until I got it the way I liked it. The benefit of layering like this is the final product's appearance shifts and is inconsistent - more real.

Some of the methods I used were:

• Thick washing of multiple shades of purple while they're still wet, so it blends naturally.
• Painting dark / black into crevices to create deep shadows and push up the brights.
• Covering with pigments to shift the texture and colour.
• Painting water into the crevices to activate the pigments, again to darken shadows.

After covering the ground with some flock and other brush, I use a bright green to highlight both the ground and lower regions of her cloak and feet / legs. Kind of a diseased fog sort of thing.

And here she is:

I think I captured her essence...