Misaki, Warmaiden by Wren

Description	:	This was my entry to the Something Wyrd contest at Wyrd Miniatures. The frog is a Reaper familiar, and his paint is based on a real animal, the Chinese gliding frog. The rock came with the mini. The lilypads on my original entry did not have veins. Numerous viewers of the contest entries commented on this, so I went back in and added some in, and did a little more highlighting on the leaves themselves. So hopefully this version will better match people's ideas of what a lilypad should look like. :-> Although honestly I think I preferred them plain. The water is Future Floor Polish. I used Woodland Scenics Realistic Water on a previous mini and it has shrunk down to the point of ruining the effect. So far the Future is holding up better, but it will take some time to tell. The mini was painting with Reaper Master Series paints. I was trying to push myself to a higher level of contrast than is usual for me, I often get comments about having a natural style or things not having enough pop. I had to push myself to do the freehand. Although I appreciate visually complex work in other people, for things I paint myself I often prefer things plainer, as with the lilypads. In the case of the dragons, though, I do think that adds a little something the mini needed. I had a bit of a breakthrough in photography around this time also. The main change I made was simply to move from a white background to a neutral gray one. I'm really astonished at how much of a difference that one change makes, although the image still looks a little faded and diffuse straight out of the camera. I also had a clever friend explain a few simple photo editing steps I could use to help the image appear more as it does in the hand. I have been using PaintShopPro, and then tried PhotoShop Elements, but although all three programs have the same adjustment commands, I wasn't truly able to duplicate what my friend did until I downloaded a trial version of PhotoShop. The changes I made were to decrease the brightness and increase the contrast and saturation. Slight changes in all cases, with settings between +/- 8 to 12. An additional view and face shot are available at http://www.coolminiornot.com/134773.

Poll results:
Number 3 overall.
First Choice: 4 votes
Second Choice: 4 votes
Third Choice: 4 votes

From:	Philip Esterle (flynn)	(Sat 30 Sep 2006 11:22:37 PM CDT)
Beautiful work, Wren. I've always admired your style. Very smooth transitions on everything. Cheers!

From:	Martyn Dorey (Wargriffon)	(Mon 02 Oct 2006 06:03:26 AM CDT)
Wren I think you have done a fantastic job on this figure, I had one of these arrive in the post the other day and she is really dainty. The water around the rock looks very dark almost sort of muddy whereas I would have prefered to see something a little lighter maybe and she seems to have some light reflection/patches on her skin that do not look right but I think both of these may be down to the picture. Another contender in my top 3 pick for this month.

From:	Michael Stubbs` (LavronYor)	(Wed 04 Oct 2006 11:14:29 AM CDT)
Wren, beautiful job on the dress and I love the frog.