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The color scheme was easy since I was matching a pre-existing piece. I planned for the skirt to be purple, the chest-piece and arm bracers to be dark blue, her hair to be white, and her crown and armor to be gold. After painting the skirt purple (and sparing the folds as much as I could), I repeated the process of highlighting and shadowing. With the front skirt, the effect is too strong. I would like better blending - maybe thinning my paints would help the base to show through? I like the effect in back though, where it seems rather pebbled. The hair turned out amazing - I watered down my white and kept drybrushing, so that there are organic dark streaks throughout her hair. The effect was persistent because I painted over areas many times and still the dark lines remained (good thing I wanted them). I did a lot of work to protect her face. Like Alissa, the details of the sculpt were shallow and I could tell that my base wash was obscuring her features. I blotted my wash off multiple times, until color was built up without obliterating the contrast. Again, I used a stickpin to add red for the eyes.
There were some other details of note. I noticed some fine filigree around the neck and waist. These look like spider decorations and I decided they should be in silver, which differentiates the priestess from the rest of Drow society. There are lumps in her hand and on her foot. I decided that these are spiders, which I've painted black and added a red dot to each. I'm pretty sure that these were meant to be spiders, and with the right color and detail it is convincing, but really as blobs of plastic they're fairly indistinguishable.
The special aspect of the Archmage and Mistress of the Underdeep which I alluded to in a previous post is that they are a gift form my Magic friends, Rob and Julianna. They have been getting into boardgaming and own Legend of Drizz't. I thought they might enjoy having their own personalized player heroes. These are not the figures that represent player heroes in that game, but thematically they fit and using a different mini to represent your character has no effect on game mechanics. It was hard to let the Archmage and Mistress go, but they say that's the best kind of gift.