Nocturna Models Akelarre Enchanment [Completed]; a proxy for Daenerys Targaryen, the Mother of Dragons

It has been an extremely long time, roughly more than a year since I started this Game of Thrones Daenerys Targaryen proxy project using the 70 mm Nocturna Models Akelarre Enchantment resin figurine. Although the miniature in no way resembled the popular character in George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire epic fantasy novel series, I had set out to at least capture the spirit of Daenerys in the Akelarre Enchantment figurine. This project is arguably a miniature conversion (I'm well aware most don't consider it a conversion unless parts of the miniature have been physically altered) in the sense that its original paint job has been modified to resemble the subject matter, a proxy if you will.  

Akelarre Enchantment, used here as a proxy for Daenerys Targaryen and her dragon Rhaegal

Scale of the 70 mm Nocturna Models resin miniature as compared with a paperclip and 5 Malaysian sen

Having a predominantly light pastel colour scheme is key to allowing a casual observer's focus to fall on both her face and the young dragon on her arm. This required very subtle blending of the shadows and highlights of her dress as is most noticeable on her light turquoise dress/head gear and light pink pants. When contrasted against her face/skin tone and the young dragon, the light pastel colour scheme actually made both look 'much more alive'. I'm not sure if I'm making much sense here but that is how I feel about the piece or at least wanted to convey through my painting.  

Nocturna Models Akelarre Enchantment [Completed]

Side view highlighting the main, non-neutral colours used - light turquoise, pink and green

Achieving smooth blends took many hours due to the pastel lightness of the overall colour scheme 

Nocturna Models Akelarre Enchantment [Completed], back view

One difficult part of this project was the ribbons on her head gear. Both ribbons were shaped in a straight line right out of the box and both needed a blast of hot air (using a hair dryer) to make them pliable enough to be reshaped or resculpted. In what was a perfect example of different art forms overlapping, I took what I had learned from my self-taught figure drawing lessons about "S-curves" to reshape the ribbons into a dynamic form. More on this little trick in a post on my other blog.

Two ribbon-like adornments attached to her head gear was the final pieces of the puzzle

A stance that befits a queen and the mother of dragons

Use of pink helped make the 'Princess Leia buns' more prominent

Focus of this piece centred around two conflicting elements i.e. her face and the dragon

In an interesting development, Daenerys Targaryen's overall colour scheme resulted in the miniature being well suited to having a video taken of it. For some reason - maybe I just got the lighting right this time - the 360 degree YouTube video I took of the Nocturna Models Akelarre Enchantment turned out really well. It was in fact the best video of a miniature I have taken so far. Do check it out below if you can and let me know what you think.  

360 view of Akelarre Enchantment
For a 360 degree view of the Nocturna Models Akelarre, please check out the YouTube video below. For videos of other select miniatures that I have painted, kindly visit my YouTube channel at FourEyedMonster Miniatures. Please choose high definition (HD) for the best video viewing option.

Nocturna Models resin model kits continue to play a huge part in my development as a miniature painter. This Spanish company's figurines always push me to a higher level artistically as is the case for any well sculpted miniature. But even as I feel genuinely pleased with what I have achieved with Akelarre Enchantment's paint job, I remain utterly convinced there were so many things I could have done better, and will try to do better in future projects. With this Daenerys proxy, a large chunk of my current project pipeline has now been completed. Another massive round of prep work, assembly and priming work lies ahead for a new set of miniatures for the pipeline. More on that in my next post but until then have a great week with your hobby or loved ones or even both. Cheers!   

Nocturna Models Enchantment [WIP - Base]

Painting cobblestones, for some reason, has always been on my bucket list of painting must-do's. The chance to tick this item off my list finally came in the form of the 70 mm Nocturna Models Akelarre Enchantment figurine's base. Details on the base is excellent as the shapes of the individual pieces of cobblestone are random enough to prevent it from looking like just another cookie cutter design.  

Akelarre Enchantment (as a proxy for Daenerys Targaryen) work-in-progress, cobblestone base

Daenerys as she looks now with a lot more hours pending on her head, eyes, lips, hair and accessories

One key consideration when painting the cobblestone base was to keep things as simple as possible. In other words, the steps involved in completing the base had to be minimal and easy to carry out. To kick things off, I applied a black wash (Citadel Badab Black/Nuln Oil) on the base which not only filled out all the crevices but also helped define individual cobblestones for easier painting.  

Step 0: Base primed with Tamiya Fine Surface Primer

Add black wash to the base ...

Step 1: Base after a few layers of black wash

To prevent the base from taking centre stage, as it were, I kept the colour scheme dark and fairly dull with grey being the dominant colour. Even some of the blues had hints of grey while others had a greenish tint to tie in with the light turquoise colours on her dress. To further dull (and dirty up) the colour scheme, another layer of black wash was applied after the cobblestones were painted.

Colour scheme for cobblestones comprised primarily of greenish- and greyish-blues as well as greys

Step 2: Base after individual tiles are randomly painted with the above colour scheme

As a finishing touch, I glued on tufts of grass in the crevices at strategic points on the cobblestone base. This I did because the base looked a bit bare as it is. Dead grass as opposed to fresh green grass was chosen with the overall dull colour scheme in mind. Moreover, having healthy bright green grass growing in the crevices of a cobblestone street didn't make sense if realism was the target.

Glue on some winter/static grass on the cracks between the cobblestones

Step 3: Base after finishing touch of the glued-on grass

Based on the second photo from top, it kinda looks like there doesn't seem much left to do for the Nocturna Models miniature. But nothing could be further from the truth. For starters, I will have to resculpt the two head ribbons (not shown here) to be attached to her headgear so that it looks dynamic i.e. as if the ribbons are waving in the air and paint them. In addition, there is more work to be done on her headgear itself as well as her hair, eyes, lips and the many tiny clothing accessories (e.g. necklace on her neck, tiny metal chain on her right thigh, etc). In short, she is far from finished.

Nocturna Models Enchantment [WIP - Skin tone]

Slowly but surely, solid progress is being made on my Daenerys Targaryen proxy or the Nocturna Models Akelarre Enchantment 70-mm figure. When I first started working on her I had my doubts seeing that the light pastel dress colours looked a tad off in isolation. But as first the dragon then her skin tone was more clearly defined, it looks like the overall colour scheme I envisioned is starting to take shape. Planning colours in advance and in detail is a good habit I'm happy to have acquired.

Nocturna Models Akelarre Enchantment, work-in-progress (WIP) on skin tone

She is currently my proxy for Daenerys of House Targaryen

Light skin tone selected to complement the pastel hues of her dress

A light skin tone was the obvious choice with the Akelarre Enchantment figure being a proxy for the Mother of Dragons. Her skin may require a few more thin layers of blending to further smooth out the transitions but for now they allow me to see an overall picture of how the colours are 'reacting' to each other. And as is the case when an idea anyone has slowly comes to fruition, I'm loving it so far.

A full-on view of the WIP Nocturna Models Akelarre Enchantment

Face only has skin tones defined; her eyes, eyebrows and lips have yet to be painted

Side view (left) of the Nocturna Models Akelarre Enchantment WIP figure

Subtle contrasts on her pink pants and light turquoise dress are holding up so far against the dragon and skin

Even as I paint her skin tone, I am noticing stuff that a short lay off has made obvious. For one, the contrast in her headgear is woefully inadequate. This is shown up even more as other colours around it are painted in namely the greens of the dragon and the light hues of her skin tone. So that is one thing I will have to rectify in the days to come. Each part of a miniature is never truly done at any one stage because the next colour you put on is going to move the goal posts. However, if you have carefully planned out the colour scheme, any corrections you would have to do should be minimal.   

Back view of the Nocturna Models Akelarre Enchantment WIP figure

This angle shows up the lack of contrast in her headgear which will have to be rectified

Side view (right) shows the main colours all lined up in a row

Many little clothing accessories/adornments have yet to be fleshed out through paint

Because the many little details on her clothing accessories/adornments have yet to be painted, there is a certain emptiness to her clothes. There is so much detail (and in such small sizes too) that I will have to take the time to analyze how I plan to go about painting them. Initial observations point to a lot of careful, time consuming lining work. Not something I am particularly looking forward to; moreover it's something I should have done before painting her clothing. Duh ... face palm.    

A angled top down view ... eyes up top sailor

Yet another milestone was reached during work on the Nocturna Models Akelarre Enchantment's skin tone namely my first use of a Raphael 3/0 Kolinsky Sable brush. My previous experience with Raphael was with its 6/0 brushes which I used on eyes. I used the 6/0 together with a normal Nylon brush to paint the skin on my proxy for Daenerys Targaryen. I find that the Kolinsky Sable brush's sharp point allowed me to easily paint the highlights and in some cases the shadows. For the most part, blending transitions between the shadows/midtones/highlights is still easier with a Nylon brush.

A recent bout of flu closely followed by a mild case of viral fever - the period of recovery in between allowed me to work on the skin tone - has forced me to slow down my more artistic pursuits of drawing and painting. But I did catch up on my reading again. On this front, I have rather ambitiously set forth on The Night's Dawn Trilogy by Peter Hamilton. Just four chapters in, I'm enjoying the fact that this book isn't dumbed-down. It's a hardcore Science Fiction novel and unabashedly so. And now, I have three huge tomes to plough through in between grappling with pencils and brushes.


P.S. I have taken some shots of another Nocturna Models figure i.e. the Battle Chick. She has been assembled but have yet to receive any primer coating let alone acrylic paint layers. If you want check out the latest photographs of her, please click on the following link => http://bit.ly/1CLos9z    

Nocturna Models Enchantment [WIP - Dragon Rhaegal]

At this stage of my Daenerys Targaryen project, it's all about using colors to convey textures. Using different colour combinations as well as variations in the respective hue's values, I wanted to convey a heightened sense of 'softness' on her clothes in contrast to a dragon's tough scale-like exterior. Part of this Game of Thrones character's inherent political power is projected through her three dragons hence I wanted the one perched on her arm to feature prominently in the overall scheme of things. 

Rhaegal, one of three dragons belonging to Daenerys Targaryen

Rhaegal easily chose itself as the dragon of choice to be painted out of the three dragons associated with Daenerys Targaryen - the other two being Drogon (black with red markings) and Viserion (creamy white with gold markings). Described as having largely green scales with bronze markings made Rhaegal as the most suitable, in terms of colour combination, to be placed on top of her light turquoise blue sleeves. To me at least, it made for a more harmonious (yin and yang) pairing.

A green dragon made sense when paired with her clothes overall colour scheme

Orange/bronze markings in the folds of the dragons wings are what defines it as Rhaegal

Greens had an olive and lime vibe to them, if colours were food that is

It's only now that the light pastel colours on Daenerys Targaryen's clothes begin to make sense and starts to take a life of its own. I am hoping that when clothing accessories and skin tones are applied, her clothes will start to look even better as every colour is characterised by the hue(s) next to it.   

Sculpted curves on her body contrasts well against the jagged edges of the dragon wings

Best angle to view the contrast in colours between dragon and clothes

Details on the dragon were well sculpted

Darker green hues on the inside folds of the dragon's wings

Taken as a whole, I am very happy with how the girl and dragon is coming along. It wasn't easy to stick to my own convictions during the initial stages as I was constantly plagued with doubts as to whether I had made the right choice in choosing light pastel colours. The urge to darken and increase contrast was overwhelming and remains so even now. As mentioned earlier, I retain hope that when more work is done on the skin and clothing accessories, my choice will be further justified.   

Work-in-progress, Nocturna Models Enchantment as Daenerys of House Targaryen

Clothing accessories have yet to be painted ... still waiting for inspiration to hit me

Side view gives a snapshot of the main colours used so far

Contrast within the clothes were less stark than on the dragon's skin

Work on both the clothes and dragon is not wholly complete as I am still open to future modifications as and when other parts are painted. Not all outcomes can be fully anticipated which is what makes art so much fun. Sometimes you end up somewhere you never intended to go to in the first place. Everything is still pretty much how I expected it to turn out but I am always wary of the unexpected.  

Work-in-progress, Nocturna Models Enchantment (back view)

Painting of the Nocturna Models Enchantment figure remains a long way from completion

Appreciation of how well sculpted this figurine is grows with each painting session

There is still a long way to go before the paint work for the Nocturna Models Enchantment miniature is finished. Currently, I would place it at around 50% completed. I am going to take my own sweet time with her as the high quality of this sculpture demands it. I hope you will continue to join me as further progress is made on my interpretation of Daenerys Targaryen of the Game of Thrones series.