"She Lightly Fled on Dancing Feet" - Seli

The leaves were long, the grass was green,

The hemlock-umbels tall and fair,

And in the glade a light was seen

Of stars in shadow shimmering.

Tinuviel was dancing there

To music of a pipe unseen,

And light of stars was in her hair,

And in her raiment glimmering.

- Song of Beren and Lúthien, J.R.R. Tolkein

Welcome back survivors to another week of The Art of Caesura!

We're getting deep into the overrun villages of Zombicide: Green Horde. We've seen an overview of the game and last week we looked at the first survivor (well, unfortunately, survivor no more) the barbarian, Rolf. Today, we're looking at a miniature that, aesthetically, couldn't be much more different from the crude, muscle-bound barbarian. Today, we're looking at the elf of the gang, Seli.

When I am planning to paint a model, I like to look at the model, really examining it, and decide the themes / narrative that the sculpt invokes. I then roughly imagine my colour palette based on that and launch in. I obviously look at the box art when I first buy the model, but I don't usually use it for inspiration unless I'm feeling a bit stuck, or unless I'm purposefully trying to emulate the box art.

Rolf, for example is a muscle-bound Conan-like barbarian likely dressed in clothes made from animals he's killed and driven by a brutal passion. Thus, I painted his skin-tone bronzed, his hair black (like Conan), his rags brown like animal pelts and his loincloth red (the colour of passion / rage / aggression - a warning colour). 

Seli, on the other hand, has a lot of nice elf tropes: she is lean, fluid, and with almost an ethereal quality. Like a fairy war-princess. I knew I wanted to paint the hair and skin pale to conjure up the ethereal nature. With pale skin I could either make the clothes dark in contrast (though sometimes pale skin + dark clothes make us think of evil characters) or pale and pastel to really lean into the airy quality. I decided on the latter, and went for greens to call to mind the forest, with which elves are often associated. 

On the box art they've painted Seli's hair red, which heightens a Celtic theme, but would have contrasted my green paint scheme more than I wanted. So I brought the red in in other ways: by painting her sword and dagger in rich red coppery tones. 

Seli has a lot of other fine details on her clothes - beads and bangles and such. I usually stick to one shade of coloured metal (aside from silver tones - which are basically neutral) on a miniature so as not to cause a gaudy clash. For Seli, however, I wanted to elevate her clothing (hearkening back to the "warrior-princess" vibe) so I painted the fine details gold. In terms of hue, you can think of the metal weapons as orange or red and the metal details as yellow, so they kind of created a nice vernal (green clothes) vs autumnal (red/yellow metal) tone. 

Currently, the only green paint I own is Warboss Green - a nice neutral mid-tone green. For Seli's lighter fabric, I mixed Warboss Green with Ushabti Bone and for her darker fabric I mixed the green with Steel Legion Drab. For the darker green I washed it with my own version of Coelia Greenshade (i.e. Agrax Earthshade + Biel Tan Green)

For Seli's hair, I used Averland Sunset mixed again with Ushabti Bone and then with a bit of S75's Pale Skin added. 

Overall, I'm really happy with how Seli turned out. The pale pastels make a different colour palette than I usually lean towards, but I think they suit her character. 

She is also epic in the game. In our last game, her skills "Jump" and "Hit and Run" allowed her to flip over a hedge into a river filled with a horde of zombie orcs, slice and dice many of them before leaping down river to safety. It was awesome!

I hope you're enjoying our look at Zombicide: Green Horde. See you next week for more on The Art of Caesura!

Watching: VEEP - Season 2
Gaming: Doom Eternal

Next Week:

And my axe!