Thorgrim, Dwarven Cleric
Thorgrim is the second of the Castle Ravenloft heroes to be painted. I played a game of Castle Ravenloft last night with my wife using Allisa and Thorgrim and having painted miniatures was very helpful in figuring out which character is which (with old-people vision, they're just blue blobs). Thorgrim is a cleric, a smiter of evil, and a follower of the dwarven deities. He uses divine magic to heal his allies and destroy his enemies, particularly the undead. He has good armor and good health, but his attacks are weaker; healing and protecting are his specializations. He is effective at soaking up damage and fighting the undead (which, coincidentally, there are a lot of in the catacombs of Castle Ravenloft). |
![Picture](/uploads/1/1/2/6/11261556/2650526.jpg)
I've decided that I like color-coding the bases to match the card color, so Thorgrim will have a yellow color scheme. I do want a yellow cloak and yellow trim, but it's hard to touch up later when mixing your own color, so I will be sticking to plain yellow. I like the bright silver armor that both these designs have, although I went for a tarnished silver appearance for a different dwarf piece. I don't think of Thorgrim as being old (well, 100 is middle-aged for a dwarf) so I will go with a youthful hair color. Originally I wanted Thorgrim to have a dark skin tone and brown hair, but that didn't work out and I made some other choices to improve the look later on.
I did a post reviewing this iteration, looking for flaws to correct before the final detailing. In the close-up of the face, you can see gray pits next to the nose; Thorgrim's nose and cheeks have so much relief that there are areas where paint did not fill. The sculpted eyes may have been obscured by the eyebrows and cheeks, so I've left these pits unpainted as his eyes. The effect is the same squinchy-eyed face that anime characters have when expressing happiness... at least that's what I see. I was torn about keeping the look but I was afraid of another eye debacle so I left it be. The armor has less detail than intended because the silver I used was too thick. I've realized that I must thin it down a little, so that it flows into the pits rather than fill them in.
![Picture](/uploads/1/1/2/6/11261556/1373135874.jpg)
In the place where his sleeves gather, I painted a thick black and then edged with yellow, which nicely gives the appearance of depth. In the middle picture below, you can see what looks like a stole down the edge of his cloak; I didn't paint it at the time because I couldn't figure out what it was. Finally, I painted the base a mustard yellow, but the color was too similar to the cloak, so I darkened it in a second coat with more bronze. Although I intended the bases to be bright colors related to the character card of each, this brass color most resembles the actual color on Thorgrim's card.