Severus: 'Renewal'

This is the second figure I painted for Auscon 2011 earlier this year. It was my main entry for the competition.

First of all, a huge thanks to Bistra Atanassova for the photos, they are really excellent...! All I've done is cut them out and put them on a blue background. Thanks again Bistra :)

Here are some of the thoughts behind the creation of the figure:

I wanted to use some different colours to usual on this one, and I wanted the mini to stand out, so I decided to go for a colour scheme built around bright orange robes. I haven't used much bright orange like this before, and it's not a colour I often see other people using on these sorts of figures, so I thought it might be fun to use it as a bit of a 'wild' choice.

The idea with this figure was to push the theory of 'colour echoes' as far as I could. What I mean, is that I wanted to use a clear and strong colour scheme, which would be both echoed throughout the figure and also on the base. The colour scheme I've used on the figure is a tetradic balanced scheme: the dominant (strongest) colours are orange and its complement cyan; the secondary colour pairing is yellow-green and the complement red-purple (violet).

All the colours on the figure are based around these 4 colour hues, and also all the colours on the base incorporate one of these hues. The idea is to complement and support the colour scheme of the figure with the base, forming a complete 'whole' - a composition of figure and base/environment that looks like it should all belong together.

All the stonework on the base is sculpted with super sculpey firm, and milliput for the rocks - I've put some pics underneath that show the WIP process. The tree is made from a root, with those leaves stuck on individually (yes, I did almost go crazy!).

I was very honoured to win a gold medal in the competition, and the 'best of show' award against some very stiff opposition.

Guild Artisan,
Sebastian.