Malifaux: Painting Colette Du Bois

Bonsure!

In 2006, I finished painting my first 5-man squad of Space Wolves, namely Grey Hunters. After that, I shortly left Fort Lewis, WA. Now that I am back in Washington, I feel the painting bug again.

Recently, I have discovered Malifaux. It is a wonderful freighting world of magicians and 'things that go bump in the dark.' The core of Malifaux is based around skirmishes with a max of 20 models per side, maybe more or less depending on what "crew" you decide to play. Due to the low model count to play this interestingly different game--compared to Warhammer 40K--I decided to play a "crew" based around a burlesque troupe utilizing magic tricks, womanly charm, and deceit to drive home the well placed hits to your enemy to achieve victory.

To get back on topic, I started painting Colette Du Bois first because she is the leader of her gang of Showgirls. I figured that my variant of Colette's crew would be based on Princesses of Disney Cartoon films. Colette's styling is based on Snow White and the soon to be complete Cassandra will be painted like Cinderella. The others will be a similar to Tinker Bell, Sleeping Beauty...or some other female Disney characters. I do have Mannequins and Coryphi to paint but I think I am going to paint them in shades much like Luigi, Mario, Wario, and Waluigi.

Most of my painting experience comes from painting Space Marines and Tanks...I will tell you that this model was a B!#Most of my painting experience comes from painting Space Marines and Tanks...I will tell you that this model was a B!%#(.

Since female models generally don't have many of recesses and muscle tone like male miniatures, you have to paint on everything and it you never painted on effects before you are going to travel down the learning curve. I have to say I spent 6 hours on the leggings alone and you'd figure that painting "lady lumps" would be easy...they are not. I essentially painted this whole model backwards from conventional "Marine" painting methods...meaning I painted from light to dark with some highlighting touch-up at the end.

Once completing this model, I feel like a better painter. The suggestions from members on the DFM! Forum that posted in the thread I started for these gals really helped. I'll just give a quick warning about Krylon Satin Clear Coat...it is gummy and you need to spray both sides of the model quickly because if you wait a few seconds to hit the model again from all angles you increase your change of trapping air bubbles on the model. Yeah, I learned this with Colette.

C'est la vie.

Ta-da, finished! Next is Cassandra.