In early 2006 I was getting pretty burned out on painting Protectorate colors over and over and over and over again. There really wasn’t as much experimenting with new models as there was putting the same colors in the same locations on the same miniatures repeatedly and I needed a break. So after one of our weekly gaming sessions I told one of the players that if he left his Bokur behind I’d paint it for him.
The skin was pretty basic, being primarily the Vallejo Brown Rose I usually use to undercoat any flesh tones I do. I washed the skin with black then highlighted it back up and slightly past the base color. The contours of the Bokur’s face really took to the washing well and lent themselves to easy highlighting, resulting in what I think is an interesting skin tone.
The green armor plated were my first real success at the NMM style of highlighting. I had tried regular NMM in the past but have had little success. However with the application of a little wet blending, these plates came out much better than my previous attempts. I think that can be attributed to these areas being a color other than grey. Painting a chrome plate in gray requires you to exactly match the reflections to real life, but when you’re using another color all you have to do is convince the brain of what you’re trying to paint and it can help fill in the details for the viewer. In my opinion painting a non-standard flesh tone results in the same effect – because the brain doesn’t know what a blue elf should look like it’s easier to take the painter’s word for it.
Painting this model was a great break from my Menites, but was also annoying for two reasons. One, that I had to give it back and two, that as much as I liked painting the sculpt the Bokur wouldn’t work for my army so I wasn’t going to get another one for myself. If I have one regret looking back at the figure, it’s that I didn’t do a wood grain on the shaft of the pole arm. Doing so probably would have broken it up a bit and made the weapon look less stark.