SHOWCASE: Dark Age: Painting Saint Mary Part 2

Time to finish painting Saint Mary.

First of all, catch up on part 1 here. This time we’re focusing on Mary herself. If her mace looks a little different from the official picture, its because I had to replace it. I had just primed Mary here outside, when a strong wind blew her over and broke her mace right off. It disappeared into a crack in my deck. Of course. I decided replacing her mace would be easier than tearing the whole thing up. Fortunately I’ve been a gamer for so long that finding something as simple as a mace head is no hard task. The tricky part was finding one small enough. In the end, I took a piece from a double Chaos Marauder Flail. It still seems just a little big. The “chain” for the flail is a piece of twisted wire I made using my pin vice drill. Ideally it will look like a braided steel cable.

As you can see, I’ve already begun on some of the armor. For more on this you’re going to want to check out the last article. Since I’ve already discussed those techniques, I want to look at the brown leather areas now. I’ve been really pleased with some of the results I’ve been getting lately from a three part leather mix. I start with a basecoat of Umbral Umber. Ryn Flesh is blended in as a highlight while the shading is done with a Thamar Black/Ordic Olive mix. Leather is shiny so keep the contrast pretty high. Make those shadows dark and the highlights smaller and stark.

I went with a pure Ordic Olive base for the pants. This is shaded with Exile Blue and highlighted with Rucksack Tan.

Now it’s time for different leather. The boots and gloves are given a basecoat of Coal Black. This is shaded with black mixed with some Bloodstone and Red Ink. This little bit of warmth will create some contrast with the cool blue of the Coal Black.

More highlighting is added by blending in some Underbelly Blue.

Now that I have a better feel for how some of the rest of the model is going to look, I finish off a lot more of the armor. I also start blocking off some of the steel trim with that same mix of Thamar Black, Bloodstone, and Red Ink I used earlier. Then I add some Greatcoat Grey as a midtone for the trim.

I highlight the trim with Underbelly blue. In a few places I add further highlights with Menoth White Highlight. I also start on the mace. While most of the colors for this metal piece are the same, darker shading is added with a mix of Exile Blue and Umbral Umber. These two colors combine nicely to create a desaturated navy blue. Some Bloodstone is also glazed on to a few areas of the mace to create the slightest hint of rust.

Saint Mary’s strange Nail Gun is painted with more colors from the same pallete. For its gas canisters I go with the copper palette I used in the last article. That means a basecoat of Bloodstone.

The Bloodstone is highlighted up to Menoth White highlight at the apex of each sphere. It is shaded with Coal Black. A thin line of Bloodstone is left along the bottom to represent reflected light on the metal surface.

The same copper palette is used on the mace handle.

Then it’s time to move on to the cloak. The basecoat of Beaten Purple is shaded with Exile Blue, and highlighted with Hammerfall Khaki. This is all done while everything is still wet, so the highlights barely show thorugh.

Here are all the same colors on top of the first layers – after they’d had a chance to dry. Some of the paint is on just a little bit thick, but usually a good spray sealant will render minor errors like this invisible.

Here is everything again after one final pass. All the colors are still the same, but with a few more layers to build everything up.

With everything else out of the way, it’s finally time to move on to Mary’s face. I start with a base of Umbral Umber, and add highlights of Idrian Flesh.

The Idrian Flesh is highlighted with Ryn Flesh, and in a few places some extra shading is added with a mix of Thamar Black and Ordic Olive. Since this is a sci-fi game after all, I give her some weird blue lipstick with Exile Blue mixed with Frostbite. The hair is Thamar Black, drybrushed with some of that Exile Blue/Umbral Umber navy I mentioned earlier. The hair is drybrushed next with just a bit of Frostbite to finish it off. Then I ink it with Nuln Oil (one of the few Citadel Colors) to even it out.

Then Mary is ready to be glued on to her loyal steed. For the base, I hollowed out the 90mm piece that came with Mary, and crammed a 60mm Scrapyard base from Micro Art Studios into the hole. I glued some sand around to fill in any gaps. I like how the base painted up but I feel like it needs just a little something more.

Here’s another angle.

And one from behinf.

While I was painting up Saint Mary, I also had to paint up some of her pals. Here are the Clergy Ann.

Here are the Flenses.

And here is the unmounted version of Mary. If you aren’t completely familiar with Dark Age, you might be wondering if this model is used when Mary’s mount is killed. That’s not how it works. When you build your Saint Mary Force, you pick whether you’ll be fielding mounted Saint Mary, or this version, on foot.

~Hope you enjoyed the article. Has anyone else been working on painting their Saint Mary forces lately?

Author: Ben Williams

Ben Willimans is a Professional Painter and Columnist at Bell of Lost Souls. He has been involved in the hobby and art side of miniatures and the tabletop gaming industry for over 20 years. He has won multiple national painting awards.