Adeptican't Paint Contest: Part 1

I've hosted a lot of paint contests (11) but up until now I've never participated in one. So I've decided to journal about my process as I prepare for the AdeptiCan't single miniature painting contest hosted by Trident Wargaming on March 14th.

It probably sounds crazy to hear that the judge of a long running paint contest has never once participated in one himself. But I've competed in other art contests, have been a professional artist for the past 20 years, and have been an art instructor for the past 16 years, so I'm confident in my experience and knowledge when it comes to art. That said, this paint contest gave me a fun chance to flex some creative muscles in painting a high end competition miniature. It also gives me a great opportunity to share my process with all of you. So in this short series I'll be journaling about my AdeptiCan't competition piece.

Let's look at this process step by step starting with...

Model selection

Where I start my selection is by looking at the rules of the contest. This will give me the parameters of what model to choose and how I'll paint them. The rules summed up give me these guidelines for my choice:

• There are no size restrictions. 

• The deadline is March 14th.

• It needs to be a 40k model. 

• The theme of the contest is "Character".

• The contest is judged by a single judge.

So let's go over each of these guidelines to see how each one influences my decision.

'There are no size restrictions and the deadline is March 14th'

No size restrictions really opens up the field wildly and with it, a lot of considerations. However, I know I want to choose a model I already own, and one that I can paint separately from any of my pre-existing army colour schemes. So that narrows down the field to about 9 models, which are:

• Biosigns Terminated

• Janus Draik

• Amallyn Shadowguide

• Dahyak Grekh

• Da Red Gobbo

• Screamer Killer

• Neurothrope

• A custom converted Inquisitor

• My converted/hand sculpted Tuska Daemonkilla model

But from the time I became aware of the contest, the deadline gave me roughly 2 months to work on the model so I'd want to choose something small to give me the best chance at finishing on time. Knowing that, the field narrows down to 7 after I get rid of the Neurothrope and Screamer Killer.

'It needs to be a 40k character model'

Since it is a painting contest held at a 40k tournament I knew it needed to be a 40k model, but the judge further clarified for me that though conversions were allowed, the base model of the conversion would need to be a 40k model. This eliminated my converted Inquisitor and Tuska models. Plus knowing the theme was "Character" I could also eliminate Biosigns Terminated. Which left me with my final 4, all of whom were great choices.

The final four clockwise starting from the top;

Da Red Gobbo, Janus Draik, Dahyak Grekh, Amallyn Shadowguide

'There would be a single judge'

This was the part that ended up helping me make my final decision. Each of the remaining 4 had their own strengths and weaknesses. Da Red Gobbo was right in my wheelhouse. I knew I wanted to convert him to look like the non-Santa original Red Gobbo and I already had a colour palette for grotz that I was very comfortable with and that highlighted my strengths with bright saturated colours. The downside is I don't think this particular model offered me a lot of room for big flashy show-off techniques. Most of what I'd be doing would be subtle, so there was a risk it might get glossed over in the judging. Both the Janus and Dahyak models offered me a lot of varied materials, and neither were models I wanted to convert so they would be fast to the painting table. But the downside would also be not having a chance for converting which is a strength of mine. Amallyn offered me less interesting textures and materials, but her cloak was large enough to use some freehand skills to great effect. The biggest downside of her model was the fact that I hate her posing. It's awkward and unnatural, so I'd want to do a fair amount of converting to get the most out of the model while trying to improve the pose.

Assessing each of the 4 in that way I feel that Amallyn and Da Red Gobbo are my top two contenders. This where I used this last bit of information "the contest is judged by one person" as my tie-breaker. I know the judge's taste in armies and paint styles; I can use this to my advantage and play to his tastes. Our judge really loves all things elves, so Amallyn Shadowguide is our winner.

My winning selection, Amallyn Shadowguide.

Planning stage: Model composition

Now that I know my model I can begin planning things out. As I stated earlier, this model has awkward posing for me that I want to try and fix. The main problem I have is her body and legs are showing left moving momentum, while her arms and head read as static forward presenting. To fix this I'll be changing her head to reflect their movement her body is creating. I'm changing her head and not her arms, because I can accomplish what I want for the model with just that switch. It also keeps it very obvious I used a 40k model as my base by keeping so much of the original sculpt.

You can see the conflicting motion of the model as illustrated here.

The obvious posing would position her head turned to the left of the piece, continuing that left moving trajectory. But I'm going to have her looking back over her shoulder to the right of the piece instead. Most importantly this means we don't have her weirdly looking at her gun, but also this gives a nice flow of motion in our layout and should centralize our focus where I want.

With her head turned left the entire piece is off balance

and leaves her blade off by itself on the right awkwardly held behind her having no purpose.

Here we can start to see how much better this balances the piece.

The gun is held up out of the way as she moves and her blade is held up to guard her retreat.

The blue line highlights where I want to create my focal point for the piece and how this creates a lovely flow that keeps the viewer focused in the area that I want.

I'll also get rid of her hood and add a thick mane of hair to give me another added piece to show off on, both my sculpting and painting. Once I started picking out parts for this conversion I found a head that suited the calm expression I wanted for her. The head I chose had a bit of facial jewellery so I decided that she'd be an Aeldari Corsair, which would let me play around more with her outfit during the conversion.

After the main model was complete I needed a base that would elevate the piece. I wanted her to be standing on what was clearly an alien world and for it to add to the atmosphere. I found among my bits these weird pointy rocks, I then used plasti-card to create a rough shape I wanted her to stand on, before sculpted more pointy rocks. I made sure to pepper in tiny points of interest across the base, just enough that it doesn't overwhelm things.

With that our model is all finalized and I can now plan out my colours.

The final model after all my conversions and kitbashing.

Planning stage: Colours

For this model I started by basing it in White Scar primer, then photographing it 360° with my chosen lighting. This gives me a fantastic reference on how to shade the model later on when I get to painting. Then I uploaded the picture into Clip Studio Paint (CSP) so that I could test out my colour scheme to make sure the palette works the way I've envisioned it in my head.

My main reference image for lighting on this piece.

My focal points of this piece will be her face, hair and blade. The face is how we relate to the subject and it's important to connect to her since this is a 'character' themed contest. The hair through its motion directs you to her blade which is held up in a wary guard. This gives us a feeling of a sniper on the move in hostile territory, telling a small story which again builds on her character.

To assist in ensuring this is my focal point of the piece, I'll be using two contrasting methods to draw our eyes to this area. Her face, hair and blade will utilize high saturated colours with an emphasis on warmer colours, while the rest of her will be using cool desaturated colours. I'll be using a limited palette with magenta, oxford blue and a saffron yellow being my most prominent colours.

After some playing around in CSP you can see my proposed mock up here:

I'm very happy with the results as it gives me a lot to play around with and show off my skills. My main focal points will show off what I'm best at: faces and hair. I'm also going to try for bold makeup on her eyes to really draw you into her face. There's some non-metallic metal (NMM) in the gun and body armour, and ample opportunity for texture and freehanding on her jacket. I'll be using a desaturated mixture of my magenta and yellow for my basing, creating a dull orange with magenta shadows. This way the base works at framing her nicely while not pulling our attention away from my chosen focal points.

Now that I've planned out my piece I can begin painting. I'll do at least one other blog post after I've finished this piece to update you all on the results and how the contest went. If you liked this sort of 'show piece' break down, let me know in the comments. I had a lot of fun creating this post and would love to do it for a much larger piece.