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PAINTING The figure painting follows my well known method of  working from dark to light shaded up from a black  undercoat. This three or more colour painting method  uses successive tones of colour (shade, middle and  light) which are added to the model in layers, working up  from dark to light. This creates a bold three-dimensional  effect of shadows and highlights, the layers of colour  giving greater depth and subtlety to the model. For the  facial detail and for the eyes I used an Insane Detail  brush. For the rest of the model I used a Warpaints  Detail brush.  THE EMPRESS Although I didn’t have an illustration of The Empress to  work from, her style of clothing and headdress is very  reminiscent of a 19th century Mongolian Princess in  traditional robes (also not to dissimilar to a certain queen  in a galaxy far-far-away!). So I based her costume on  that, making sure I had lots of gold decoration and trying  to keep my colour palate for her very much Chinese in  style. EYES & FLESH The Empress, has a very smooth face as you would  expect, almost mask like, but she does have well defined  eyes and facial features.  I wanted the Chinese Company to have a noticeably  different skin tone from the Europeans and Egyptians so  planned my painting accordingly, the skin tone is slightly  exaggerated but I think it needs to be so that it is  noticeable, on such a tiny model on the tabletop. EYES 1. Her whites are AP-WP1102 - Matt White 2. The irises are pure AP-WP1124 - Oak Brown
FLESH 1. AP-WP1122 - Fur Brown 2. AP-WP1122 - Fur Brown plus AP-WP1121 - Desert Yellow 3. plus AP-WP1102 - Matt White 4. plus AP-WP1102 - Matt White 5. plus more AP-WP1102 - Matt White Cheeky I added a tiny amount of AP-WP1104 - Pure Red to the  final flesh mix and painted her cheeks in, just to give a  touch of rouged femininity, then added a touch more AP-  WP1104 - Pure Red and painted in her bottom lip to  finishe the face.  FINGERNAILS She does have very long and potentially poisoned  fingernails. But they are nicely done and easy to pick out  in your desired colour. I did consider doing them painted  in a bold colour, but I figured she had plenty of colours on  her already, so in the end went for “natural”.  1. AP-WP1122 - Fur Brown plus AP-WP1125 - Skeleton Bone 2. pure AP-WP1125 - Skeleton Bone 3. plus AP-WP1102 - Matt White 4. plus more AP-WP1102 - Matt White
“Few, even among the tong membership, can describe her appearance accurately or consistently – there are even rumours that she can change form. The most common description is of a statuesque woman of indeterminate age. “Few, even among the tong membership, can describe her appearance accurately or consistently – there are even rumours that she can change form. The most common description is of a statuesque woman of indeterminate age.