In place of a Dark Lord, you would have a Queen...

"...not dark, but beautiful..." etc. etc. and so on.

My entry for the One Ring August competition is finished. This was, without any doubt, the most confusing model I have ever tried to paint. Since the iconic look in the films was done mostly with intense lighting techniques, I began with no idea what colour her gown was supposed to be. This left several options to painting:
A) Paint her with grey/white cloth like it would have been in the films before they threw blue light at her.
B) Paint her with grey/white cloth, then throw OSL onto the model.
C) Paint her as if the gown was the blue/green/grey that it appeared after the lighting effects in the film.

I went with option C for the following reason:

For the most part, I exclusively use the layering technique when painting models, as I forever struggle to keep paint wet long enough to blend properly. However, on surfaces with a "high gradient" (ie. change in elevation on the model over a short distance), layering is very difficult, and on Galadriel, there is continuously high gradient across the vast majority of the surface of the model. Thus, C being the easiest of the three options, I chose it to allow me to focus on adaptation of my highlighting process, which ended up a funny combination of layering, edge highlighting, and letting natural light do its thing.

Another challenge was choosing the colours, and I spent several hours this morning figuring out what paints to use. Such an "unrealistic" colour scheme is just so alien to me.

I can't say I'm totally happy, but she'll do because I don't want to go back to her again.

The blueness in the second and third progress pictures is more accurate to the final product, and the background I was using messed that up a bit. Getting semi-decent pictures was tough because of all the shadows the model casts, so I won't be going and retaking them.

Until next time, may the wind under your wings bear you to where the sun sails and the moon walks!