Solitaire... The Path of Damnation... Aenur Sword of Twilight conversion.

(This is a post that has been sat in limbo for a couple of months)

A little while ago I took part in a challenge on Facebook. The challenge was to take the Mordheim special character Aenur, The Sword of Twilight (which many people had knocking around due to him being a freebie on a white dwarf cover) and just get creative with the base miniature.

For my conversion I decided to make an Eldar Harlequin Solitaire. I love the tragic destiny of the Solitaire, their curse for playing the role of the Chaos God Slaanesh, that their own soul is forfeit to that same god upon their death unless The Laughing God can trick them out of that prize. A lonely wandering figure ostracized from their own people due to the path they tread.

I did have a bit of a problem after agreeing to take part in the challenge, during the course of the time I was supposed to work on the figure Nurgle blessed my household. We had a major head-cold circulate several times around the family and I ended up in a zombie like state unable to focus on anything for longer than a few minutes at a time. I ended up doing the conversion and sculpting in the week leading up to the deadline and through sheer force of will painted the miniature that very evening (actually I was 10 mins late for the deadline due to having to take pictures, but I was let off).

My main inspiration for the conversion was this piece of John Blanche artwork:

I wanted to stay away from the oft used purples and pinks that usually signify Slaanesh, but I still wanted something that looked opulent. So I thought referring back to the main inspiration of Blanche's art would be best and go for the tried and true red, black, white with some gold detailing that much of his work uses.

With that in mind I looked for a bit more inspiration and found this Jokers Card to my liking:

So, with some inspirational images, a general idea of what I wanted to makea a dip into my bitsbox and the Asslessbits box (guess the bits JB) and my limited mental faculties at the time here is what I was able to come up with:

The Harlequin's Kiss was from my bitsbox (actually a badly damaged classic solitaire), I carved away the original right arm and hair and sculpted the hood and some shoulder pads from greenstuff

I textured the inside of the cloak with liquid greenstuff to look something like velvet (great for texture on models, naff at gap filling), I sculpted a smock over the elven clothing retaining the original belt, the studs on the thigh boot were carefully placed little beads from a water filter; and you can make out the bangle I fit around the left ankle which was the finding from some fine chain.

The Eldar-like backpack was sculpted and built from bits. I really enjoyed building up this detailed base, cork tile, baking soda and a small amount of sand to build up the earthen parts, then clump foliage for the mossy areas I used some dried roots here and there for scrubby plants with a couple of leaves to finish off. 

The painting turned out better than I thought it would at the time. I tried to keep the colours clean and rich as befits the Eldar. I'm not completely happy with the gold flame pattern, that's something I could really improve on in future.

The diamonds... What can I say... Major pain in the backside... I find patterns difficult at the best of times, never mind when I can barely see straight. I would like to practice more with patterns though, they look really nice once done.

The photographs don't really show it but I gloss varnished all the bone/white armour parts, the mask and the Kiss to give them an organic/warithbone look.

Overall I'm happy with the finished model. Not 100%.. But happy under the circumstances it was made and painted.

Let me know what you think, I may go back to it and clean it up a little more at a later date.

Take care.