"Away with the Fairies" - Descent: Legends of the Dark - Fae - Part 1

Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world,
for I would ride with you upon the wind
and dance upon the mountains like a flame.

- W.B. Yeats

Hello hello!! Welcome to 2024, and to a whole new year of The Art of Caesura, the internet's favourite weekly hobby blog* (your mileage may vary)

It's been a rip-roaring season, what with many minis from the past year coming out to wish us well a few weeks ago, and then last week we had a little peak at some of the things that might be coming to the blog in the year ahead. 

Today we're picking up right where we left off a few weeks ago - back into the realm of Terrinoth with more enemies from Descent: Legends of the Dark. Before we get into it, if you'd like to read some of my thoughts about this game and its aesthetic, you can check them out here. 

The Fae in focus today, are some of the early enemies you meet in Descent and the miniatures are totally crazy! I have read many dissenters online (see what I did there) who aren't fans of these models - finding them busy and hard to paint. My experience was the opposite. 

I mentioned before that I'm trying to paint most of these minis by airbrush (these were actually painted before I got my new airbrush) and it was a joy loosely experimenting with crazy colours through the airbrush on these fantastical creatures. 

Over a zenithal undercoat, I painted their faces Contrast Guilliman Flesh.

I then painted the rest of their skin with Contrast Aethermatic Blue. 

Next, came Kimera's Magenta and then Violet on their ethereal wisps. 

Before putting away the airbrush, I gave the mystical sigils in their hands a little puff of white and then a puff of Contrast Bad Moon Yellow. I was so in the zone that I neglected to take photos of these last few steps, but you shall see them in all their glory in next week's post. 

I then busted out the hairy brush (or I think Warrick, from Harder and Steenbeck, calls it a "hand brush", which I kind of like) to get into some of those high-yield details. 

I painted very minor highlights on the faces, and details of the teeth and further illuminated the sigils. I painted the ears, and tongues and then dabbed the stars in the wisps with white. 

Because they are so otherworldly, I found them quite relaxing to paint. It didn't really matter if some of the colours blended together unnaturally - in fact, with these fae, that's a feature not a bug! As a bonus, I got to paint cute little toadstools on the bases. 

And there we have the blog's first minis of 2024! Tune in next week to see them under some atmospheric lighting right here on The Art of Caesura!

Gaming: Warhammer 40 000: Rogue Trader

Reading: Lessons in Chemistry - Bonnie Garmus

Listening: Away with the Fairies - Saw Doctors

Next Week:

Fae in the shade...