Painting Massive Darkness: Warrior Priests vs. the Spearmaiden Cyclops

It was a rough academic year. Even knowing that material goods cannot bring true happiness, I found myself excited to see that some Massive Darkness expansions showed up at Miniature Market. One that I picked up was Warrior Priests vs. the Spearmaiden Cyclops, and that is the set I just finished painting. I was in one of my periodic painting droughts, and this was a fun set for getting back into the swing of things.

Interested readers are welcome to check out my other Massive Darkness painting posts:

• Base set heroes
• Kickstarter extra heroes
• Base set mobs

This set, then, contains the first Monster that I have painted: the Spearmaiden Cyclops. All those unpainted monsters in the Lightbringer box are going to be quite jealous!

First, the three heroes.

Moira

Moira

The first one I painted was this sorceress. It is the one I was most excited to paint due to the evocative character art. If I recall correctly, her artwork was used not only for the original Massive Darkness, but also in some of the promotional material or updates for Massive Darkness 2. I was disappointed to unpack the figure and see that she has a really strange pose. Rather than standing powerfully with her flaming staff, she is sort of leaning forward from the hips. It does not look heroic or menacing, but like she's getting ready for yoga. The face was also pretty badly cast. Despite my initial disappointment, I had fun painting her, and I like the warm purples, reds, and magentas. I opted against doing OSL with the flame.

Malleus

Malleus

Here's Malleus. He was a pretty straightforward paint job, and I used the opportunity to tinker with some of the inks-and-metallics techniques that Dr. Faust recently discussed. None of the techniques in his video were new to me, but sometimes it's good to be reminded of fundamentals. One significant difference I found, though, is that where he says he is just thinning the inks with water, I had a hard time getting a useful consistency with just tap water. I doped mine with matte medium, and that made it behave better on the brush and the miniature.

There are two different tones used on Malleus, following the subtle distinction in the card art. You can see it most prominently in his left leg, where the top of the knee is the toned down, greyer color and the rest is a more silver, more metallic. It's easier to see the difference in person since the light reflects differently off of the more matte parts vs. specular metallics. It adds a nice contrast.

Also, he was a reminder that all the Massive Darkness gang is addicted to fanny pack chains. 

Ostara

Ostara

I puzzled over Ostara for a bit. The cart art makes the armor look more yellow than gold, and so that's what I decided to do. I remember at the time being very happy with my mix of paints and mediums that I used to get this color... I wish I had written down what it was. I'll give you my best guess later on. The result, though, is nice: a bright yellow armor in contrast with vibrant purple cloth. I'm glad I spent some time putting a little extra dark lining around the armor panels, because that really makes it pop whereas originally it was too starkly yellow.

And here's the Monster, which is really monstrous.

Spearmaiden Cyclops

Spearmaiden Cyclops

Spearmaiden Cyclops

This is a big, heavy miniature.

I started with the flesh tone, but my first approach was too Caucasian compared to her card art, which has a similar purple tone to Moira. I spent a lot of time on the skin since, clearly, she is mostly skin. My first reaction was excitement, and when I looked at it the next day, I worried that I had taken the contrast too far. I suspected that this fear would diminish as I painted the rest of the figure, but it actually got worse. Looking at it now, I'm happy with it as an exercise in contrast. I don't think I took it too far, but it definitely has a kind of cartooniness. Incidentally, if I recall correctly, the base flesh tone is a mix of Vallejo's Flat Flesh, Buff, Magenta, and Neutral Grey, which I am jotting down in case I need to reference it should I get to painting the Stonebreaker Cyclops monster. The hair is Sorastro's famous blend of Vallejo Dark Sea Blue and Black. I was worried it might be too blue, but with the purplish skin tone, I think it's a good fit.

When I got to the yellow features on her pauldron and shield, I figured I could approach it as I did Ostara. Unfortunately, by this point, I had forgotten what I had done. I mixed up some test batches of metallics and inks, and the one that looked the best was a mix of Vallejo Lemon Yellow, White, and Vallejo Metal Medium. There's a very good chance that this is what I used on Ostara as well. Once again, I used inks to add some depth to the metallic parts.

Here's the whole crew:

I had a lot of fun painting this, although now I have to figure out where to store one painted Massive Darkness monster. As I mentioned above, the unpainted ones are happily jostling around in a cardboard box, but I don't think I can do that with the Spearmaiden Cyclops. That's a problem for another day.

Thanks for reading, and happy painting!