Happhyia Siddence, lord of wyrms

 

Here's my November submission for the odds and sods painting challenge, a high elf now wood elf lord on a forest wyrm.

The rider is probably the most-painted model in my collection since to my reckoning he has been stripped twice and now painted three times. He's one of the few figures I kept in my collection from when I bought him new from Games Workshop in probably the late 90s. I have fond memories of going with my grandmother to buy him from the Basingstoke store having seen him in White Dwarf. On the way back I got to watch my grandad pilot his beloved RC boat around the duck pond, a rare outing indeed- as an engineer he spent much more time working on it than actually driving it. In his time this model has been a high elf general and a vampire count (painted in gold armour with fangs) and has now found middle ground as the army standard for my wood elf force. I still have his horse although it was chopped about a bit for use with my undead, it's getting a rebuild for a future odds and sods month. 

The mighty dragon will be instantly recognisable I'm sure as Kargos the Despoiler. I picked him up cheap as his wings and a back leg were missing whilst the right front leg was broken. No great problem as I don't necessarily rate wings for a forest-dwelling dragon. The rear leg was replaced by one of the dragon ogre alternative limbs I sculpted a few years back, this just took a bit of chopping and the addition of some scales. I raised the right limb to make it look like he's about to cuff some enemy and bent the left to bear his weight. I puttied scales over where the wings would have been and moved the rider to sit on his back rather than his neck, a much more suitable place to ride a beast that walks on all fours.

There's a significance to the dragon choice as well here. I remember seeing a photo of a 'firedrake' with an elf rider in a friend's 'old' (in the nineties) copy of White Dwarf. This image was imprinted on my mind, but looking through my own collection now I can't find it and have come to the conclusion from pose and subject matter that it must have been this dragon and his rider. The official paint job doesn't match the image from my mind, in my head what I saw was an earthy, brown-scaled dragon and I don't remember it having wings. A dragon without wings was somewhat novel in my young mind and lodged there because of it, in fact my love of wyrms may well stem from that image. I'm not a fan of the Marauder elf lord, really sorry, it looks lumpy and chunky. That could just be the obscenely bright colour scheme the original is painted in. Once again the picture in my mind was of a refined, slender elf perched atop his steed. Ah well, there you go, memories play you false. If anyone does know of the picture I am trying to describe let me know, it would be great to know I didn't make it up! Perhaps it was a Golden Demon entry using Kargos? I have tried to strike a balance with my painting and make him definitely a red dragon (to complement the green of the army) but mute the colours to make him look a bit more natural than the 'official' scheme.

Originally the model was going to be my wood elf general, however the theme of the odds and sods challenge this month is 'Grandeur' and so I decided it would be even more grand to make him the army banner. I didn't realise just how massive his sword was until I cut it off and slung it by his waist! Good job he isn't lugging it around on foot. I mapped out an intricate celtic knot design on photoshop but when I printed it out realised there was no way it was going to be possible for me to paint it at scale. Instead I had another brainwave. You'll probably know I am a bit of a massive Bob Ross fan. There's one episode ( a 1-hour special no less, on YouTube so check it out) called 'The Grandeur of Summer' so I thought that it would be entertaining to try that in miniature. A bit of extra Grandeur! That's the mountain side by the way, I tried a different, foresty image on the reverse. Pretty happy with how it turned out, especially against the Ted Nasmith mountain backdrop (see above).

The view of the dragon you'd want to see, versus the view you definitely wouldn't! The banner pole has proved to be a complete pain in the backside. It's a cast lead banner pole and is really bend. Although I drilled the hand out to receive it and added the leafy hand guard (some little jewellery pieces I had kicking around) it still isn't sitting straight. I have also just noticed in the photographs that the bottom part of the pole seems to be missing, not sure when that fell out! It should be below where the sword pommel would be to avoid the banner looking overbalanced at the top. I will have to hunt around on the floor to find where it has fallen...