Super Dungeon Explore Deeproot Druid [WIP - Fur coat] and How to Paint Textured White Fur

My adventure with Super Dungeon Explore's board game miniatures begins with the Deeproot Druid. I choose the druid because it gave me the opportunity to try and paint a textured white fur like that of a polar bear. Now, colour schemes for chibi-style anime characters are usually rather flat with some contrast coming from colour combinations. Sometimes, slight differences in hue, saturation or tonal values in colours are applied thus serving to add more depth to the character. Adding texture is a big gamble on my part as it could (or already has) fail spectacularly and result in an awful looking mini.

Super Dungeon Explore Deeproot Druid - Work-in-Progress on polar bear fur coat

Super Dungeon Explore Deeproot Druid - Side views of polar bear fur coat

So far, self doubt has already arisen as to whether I made the correct choice in attempting to paint a textured white fur coat for a chibi-styled miniature. But being a stubborn old git, I am determined to see it through and hopefully it may still come together nicely. Although the druid's fur coat still looks a bit rough in places, I left further refinements for later because I want to first see how the textured white fur looks on the druid after his skin, beard and clothes have been fully painted.

Colour scheme reference used for Deeproot Druid

Choosing colours for the Deeproot Druid was easy as I wanted to paint the druid in the colour scheme shown in his Super Dungeon Explore board game playing card (see above). As I understand it, the fur coat that the druid is wearing belongs to a bear and the only white bear I know of is the polar bear.

How to Paint Textured White Fur (Quick and easy version)

It seems counter intuitive to prime the miniature black (Step 1) when you want to paint white fur. But I used a black primer in order to get an opaque dark brown basecoat layer above it (Step 2). Having some of the dark brown showing through at the final stage helps to give the white fur added depth. Following that, sequential steps are taken to paint random hair/fur-like strokes in increasingly lighter values from beige-like colours to light grey to white (Steps 3 to 6). These steps (see below) offer a quick way to get textured white fur but it's obviously not suitable if you plan to paint a competition piece. For that, more careful consideration is needed for the placement of individual paint strokes.

Step 1 - Prime with black

Step 2 - Basecoat with dark brown (Citadel Scorched Brown)

Step 3 - Paint strokes of a 50:50 mix of Citadel Khemri Brown and Dheneb Stone

Step 4 - Paint strokes of pure Citadel Dheneb Stone

Step 5 - Paint strokes of cool light grey (Citadel Astronomican Grey)

Step 6 - Highlight with pure white

So my journey into anime chibi-style miniatures is off to a rocky start. I have my fingers crossed it will all still turn out fine when the rest of the druid is painted up. At the very least, I will have an idea if painted textures and chibi-style miniatures are compatible. In fact, there are already a few ideas running through my head on how to make the white fur more chibi-like, for example ramping up the white highlights and touching up with more cool light grey colours. Next up is work on the druid's skin and hair, which will give me an inkling as to whether textured white fur is going to work.