Falkar finished

Heureka,

last friday I managed to finish Falkar Wandering Sword from Andrea Miniatures. Having received several comments in the last days I would like to drop some words about Falkar.


Let's start with the facts:

Name: Falkar Wandering Sword
Manufacturer: Andrea Miniatures http://www.andrea-miniatures.com/
Material: all-tin
Parts: multipart model - torso, legs, (weird) base, arms, shield, cape, spear and crossbow
Size: 54 mm

Falkar is really massive and very heavy. The miniature is very well sculpted and perfectly casted. The dynamic pose and many details make him quite outstanding.

Nevertheless it often was a pain to paint him. You get tired due to the weight of the model very fast. Especially if you want to turn the model around if it comes to wet-in-wet blending. I learned the wet-in-wet technique at Goatmans workshop. Goatman turns the miniature and the brush faster than Lucky Luke.

I wanted to paint Falkar in a rather natural look. Therefore I mainly used desaturated colors. Adding a drop of grey or some washed with brown often does this job.

You will find a tutorial about my snow here and a tutorial about the self-made gras here.

The tree trunk is from a dried small bush. The tartan and the small armour plates are free-hand.

As usual you can vote for him at Cool Mini or Not.

Retrospectively the NMM of the crossbow and the sword are too clean and look more like comic style.

What I learned most painting this model is that it is all about global lightning and symphony. Often you lose yourself in details and concentrate on maximizing the dynamic range of a single blending. The conflict between focus and symphony (further reading: A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future).

In my opinion two further masters (beside Goatman) regarding symphony are Ben Komets and Jarhead (Roman). I learned at their workshops that it is not about technique (although technique is important) but about symphony.

Focus to learn from your mistakes but create a symphony when you are painting.

Now here is my "symphony" - not as good as Ben and neither as Jarhead but does that matter - no because it's better than the Old Grumbler ;).