Commission Work: Lady Inquisitor

Hi folks! Here's my latest creation, Lady Inquisitor of Ordo Xenos. I introduced this project to you in one of my previous posts in a form of a sketch, but after that I kept the process pretty much in the dark.

Here she now stands, proud and noble, armed to teeth with Xenos weapons of different origin, in her well-travelled and battle worn dress and tight corset-like body glove armour. She carries a small power generator on her back which is connected to a strange weapon of two tentacle-like needles. Capsules of different size and shape, filled liquids and poisons of different sort, stick out of her back like dark flowers. Her head is shaven (something nobles of her kind might do to show off their caste in where she comes from). She's very self-assured and knows what she wants. You can only guess what her entourage would look like...

The original sketch of the Lady Inquisitor (pencil on paper, edited in Photoshop)

It took me good three months to finish her. I kept pushing the project forward with small but sure steps, putting an hour in to it every now and then. The process wasn't all sing and sunshine as I did have some set-backs on the road. Just when I had one piece ready and sculpted, the other parts looked odd or off-place. I had to sculpt the dress twice as I wasn't satisfied by the way it looked like. It was way too light build and was sculpted to look too rough and unnatural.

She also had her head swapped once. The first one was Slaaneshi Daemonette's but I didn't like it that much so decided to get one from the Dark Elf Sorceress. The new head was much better, more femine. But there was a new problem to be solved; her mouth. The original head had it's mouth wide open, like if she was roaring out some loud commands or something. It really didn't fit in as her body language spoke very much different language – very static and noble. So to solve this new problem I had to cut off her jaw and re-sculpt the whole lower part of her head, to make her look more like in the sketch. No easy task for me as I'm used to sculpt ugly men with rough shapes. But I think I managed to pull it off.

Her colours – as so often in my case – are very much in the style of Blanchitsu; reds, oranges and dirty white. She actually blends in the Rogues Malus and could very well be one of them. I gave an extra effort to her face as I wanted it to be perfect. Painted the damn eyes three times to make them look the way I wanted to – piercing and precise! When the head piece was done, the rest of the painting went like clockwork.

Hope you like the outcome as much I liked making the piece! Now it is time to look for a suitable package for her to make her journey to Spain safe... Adiós!

- Kari

Countess

My water colour exercise, the one that got a spark from very random situation couple of months ago, has suddenly evolved into series of 40k inspirated illustrations. The process has been very educative, giving me new perspectives to my hobby and teaching some new tricks on the way.

I was visiting my parents last weekend with my family and had a nice freefloating time to sketch another member to my Inquisitor posse, this time something little bit more elegant to stand beside those previously drawn grotesque male figures...

Countess (water colours, W&N inks, white acrylic paint and black ink pencil)

When I started sketching the Countess, I had one red line that I wanted to grab from; Femme Militants, the ones John Blanche visualized couple years ago. I saw some of the paintings live last summer and damn they were fierce! I wanted to draw something a bit similar to them, but with my own twist and touch.

There are some obvious references to Mikko's Captain Gaga sculpt too, though the similarity came by accident (sub-concious stuff I'd assume). Anyways, it gave a nice final flavour to the final piece and now she stands like another incarnation of the Lady.

So, the Countess was the fifth illustrated member of the Inquisitor posse. My long term aim is to do couple of more drawings and then start to figure out how to collect all the pieces together and build a miniature version from each one of them. In the meanwhile it's time to familiarize myself with the =I=Munda......

Moodboarding Gaga

I've finally settled in my new apartment. I hate moving, it's one of the most irritating thing I know. This was the fifth time in the past two years, so in some pesky way I've got used to it. Me and my fiancee tend to joke that maybe we should start our own business that handles moving.

Amidst the chaos me and okkiW have changed a couple of phone calls and talked for long hours, mainly about our current projects and the hobby in general.

Mikko is a bit occupied with his latest sculpting project, The Lemminkäinen, so there's very little time for his other projects. His latest sculpt, Pirato Captain Gaga, has been standing in the undercoat for a good time now, so I thought to lend my helping hand to okkiW and asked him if I could paint this beauty.

To tell you the truth, I've secretly been raring to get my hands on that sculpt, after all, it's the best one from okkiW so far. Lucky me, Mikko told me that it would be nice if I could paint her, so the deal was on!

I thought to start my task with a moodboard. Doing so I started gathering images around the web, pictures of things that will inspire me when painting the Captain.

I have a bit of a bad habit to pick up shots of painted miniatures when making moodboards. In this case, I took couple of pictures of John Blanche's Femme Militants painted by Jakob Rune Nielsen. Nielsen's painting style is something I really like, it's very clean and harmonic, but still somehow very edgy - I love those Chaos Warrior regiments! I'm aiming to have the same kind of colour scheme Nielsen has used in his Femmes, so it was natural for me to put those ladies in my source of inspiration.

Lady Gaga's picture is there to remind me of what is the seed of this projects. I'm not a big fan of her (my son is), but I think I can manage my daemons. That picture of Gaga is great though, I really like the pose and her shoes, which remind me of the captain's high heels.

But what is Marilyn Manson's face doing there??? Well. his make-up and eyes will be giving some edge for the Pirato Captain.

So there we go. The overall feeling of the Captain is going to be murky, grim and edgy (as usual). I'm really looking forward for the painting process, so without further words, to the painting station!