Painting Gloomhaven – The Scoundrel

The second of my Gloomhaven retirees. I really enjoyed playing the Scoundrel, who turned out to be very, well, selfish!

When it came to loot she would often put the party second, which resulted in a few close shaves. At the end of the day, though, she became a stalwart for getting them out of sticky situations with her manoeuvrability and ranged weapons. That’s part of the beauty of Gloomhaven; there are so many ways of adapting and playing each character, so someone else’s version of the Scoundrel will in all likelihood be quite different from mine.

Her personal quest was quite apt: she had to acquire a certain amount of loot and it was this that made me play her the way I did, never looking the other way when a treasure chest was on the board!

Anyway, on retirement she earned the right to advance to the painting table and here’s the result…

To paint the Scoundrel I did take a good look at how Sorastro had painted his (Patreon only post I’m afraid!), and I did use a few of his ideas, mainly the basic colour scheme, though this closely follows the card art, the technique he used for the sword, and how he did the base.

As usual I started with her zenithal primed – Black, Grey, White – I then basecoated and highlighted.

Here are the colours and techniques I used…

The flesh was basecoated in Tan (VGC – key at end of post) and then layered up by adding increments of Pale Flesh (VGC). Finally a little white was added to the mix for the final highlights.

Her green leather armour was based with Cayman Green (VGC) then washed with a mix of Tharka Green (GWO) and Nuln Oil (GW). Camouflage Green (VGC) was slowly added to the Cayman for highlighting and for the final highlight a tiny amount of Orange Fire was added.

All the brown parts were based with a 50/50 mix of Beauty Brown (VGC) and Snakebite Leather (GWO). All bar the leggings was washed over with Umber Wash (VGCW). I then added Orange Fire (VGC) to the original mix along with a tiny amount of Gold Yellow and started highlighting. I kept increasing the amount of Yellow for each pass.

For the leggings I used Tharka Green (GWO) as a wash to make it look as though they were wrapped over her green armour. I then restored the original colour where needed.

For some reason I missed writing down how I did her hair, but from memory and looking at her I think I started with a base of Charred Brown (VGC), which was washed over with Nuln Oil (GW). I think I used Snakebite Leather (GWO) next, giving it a light dry brush over to pull out the detail. Then I started adding Gold Yellow into it and highlighted it up, adding more Yellow as I went.

The golden armour bits were just Glorious Gold (VGC) washed over with Flesh Wash (VGCW) and edged with Polished Gold (VGC).

There are a few ‘glowing’ items on the card art, her eyes, daggers, and sword. For the eyes and daggers (on her left leg) I coated the areas I wanted either glowing or catching the light with Dead White (VGC). I then made a thin glaze fly adding Glaze Medium and water to Camouflage Green (VGC) and glazing over the White.

The sword started off Escorpena Green (VGC). Then Gold Yellow (VGC) was added to it with a little White and highlights added. I played around with varying the quantities of Yellow and White until I though it had a bit of a glowing look about it.

I’d tried to replicate Sorastro’s base when I did the Brute, but failed miserably and ended up going in a different direction. I tried again here and though it isn’t a patch on what he did it was good enough for me to keep it. I’m sure with more practice it will get better.

So, that’s the Scoundrel. It will probably be sometime until I do another from Gloomhaven, foe even though I have two more characters that are close to retirement, what they have to achieve isn’t so easy and I have new characters to break in and explore, so don’t expect anything soon!

Key

• VGC – Vallejo Game Colour
• VGCW – Vallejo Game Colour Wash
• GW – Games Workshop Citadel range
• GWO – Games Workshop Old Citadel range