Saeryn, Omen of Everblight

This model was actually completed a couple weeks ago, but due to extended visitors I wasn't able to reassemble my photo area. So finally I'm getting back into the painting swing and getting caught up on projects that were partially started. Tomorrow there's a 25pt tier tournament at the LGS, so I'm in a bit of a scramble to have things ready for that as well. I've been working on Anyssa the last couple days and just finally got her in enough of a state that I can use her on the table. I'll have pics of her in a couple more days when I finish painting her. For now though, I want to ramble on about Saeryn and where my head has been in regards to painting lately.

Overall Saeryn was a pretty enjoyable model to paint. After my feeling of moderate success with Vayl, I wanted to spend some extra time on this warlock as well.

What worked well:
* Black armor - I spent a lot of time on the black armor pieces, and despite them being a bit washed out in the photos, the highlighting worked out pretty much to my liking.
* Green cloth - Using the colors from Vayl as a template, I again spent a lot of time focused on the green cloth parts of the model. My real goal is practicing my color theory, so it does look a little "overdone" in contrast to the rest of the model.
* Leather straps - I'm not sure what I did on these, but overall I like how most of them turned out.
* Base - For some reason, the basing material turned out great, looking like broken layers of slate. No skill. Just random luck on this one.

What could have been better:
* Skin - The shading on the skin was hit and miss though. The outstretched arm was a little odd to work through and I'm still not comfortable with the end result.
* Metals - As usual, I'm not completely happy with the metals. It's not that I'm unhappy with them, I just feel like they could have been so much better. I suspect it's because I don't shade them down enough and the highlights are just too bright of metallic.

Time for some rambling thoughts... So lately, in addition to being busy, I've been in a bit of a painting funk. I'm working on Anyssa right now and it's hard to focus on maximum quality. I'll elaborate more about that particular model when I post the final pictures. In general though, it's been hard lately to sit down and paint for more than an hour or so, which really undermines my focus on quality. Honestly I need to re-frame how I go about painting probably, especially in light of my goal to paint the War Hog for KublaCon this year. It's a big multifaceted model that will require a lot of hours of work. If I'm ever going to pull it off, I need to be able to summon a high focus on quality on a routine basis.

Ok, enough rambling. Time to sleep and dream of winning tomorrow's tournament!