Something Wicked This Way Comes

The Iron Painter goes on and I'm still in. The theme of round three was "Something Wicked This Way Comes". It immediately made me think of one peculiar character from the world of Malifaux - Widow Weaver. She is a mysterious creature that wanders the world of dreams and is inexplicably drawn to the threads of fate. Legend has it that she visits children at night and feeds on their nightmares. Once she's had her fill of child's fears, she goes away to continue her seemingly pointless journey. What she happens to these negative emotions is not known, but the horrors she summons to her aid give an indication of what she does with them. 

Currently it's impossible to buy a model of Widow Weaver. She hasn't been released in plastic yet so the only way to play her is to use (now extremely rare) old metal version, or to make a conversion. Wyrd's release schedule hints at a chance of getting a plastic version of this model this summer but it's impossible to tell for sure with such things as Wyrd changes them often. I chose to make my own version of her. A couple of months ago I bought two blister packs, Freebooter's Queen of Shadows and WARMACHINE's Mortenebra with her Skarlock. You can see how these models look like painted in the picture below.

I thought that these three would give me enough parts to create a spider-like elegant Victorian lady. I used the body of Queen of Shadows, added some bits from Mortenebra and Skarlock and used some other plastic bits from Through the Breach male and female kits. I also did some sculpting on her face as I wanted to make it similar to the original model. The initial result looked like that:

I had an idea to present her from two angles. The first one would show an elegant lady walking along a path in the forest and the second would reveal her true nature. That meant I had to create trees, something I haven't done before. I had to make them from scratch so I looked online for some tutorials. I found some that showed how to make trees using thin metal wires. After reading a few I cut open a cable for my old mobile charger and, with a lot of Green Stuff, created something like that.

It still looked messy at that point but I had some way to go. I even added one Waldgeist as I thought it would help bring out the atmosphere of mystical forest better.After that it was a matter of combining the two pieces together, painting and choosing static grass/autumn flock to finish things off.

I started by painting the trees and the forest path. I used dry pigments for the latter. For the trees I used Gale Force nine Autumn flock that I glued onto the branches. I also mixed up standard bright green static grass with a darker one to create something that would look like early Autumn grass with some traces of Summer still visible.

The first shot shows an elegant lady walking along a path in the forest. I gave two small indications that something is wrong. The first one is a Waldgeist who wakes up to the presence of something wicked coming his way. You can see that by looking at his bright green eyes. Other than that, he is painted the same way the trees are and lends in with them. The second thing is the pattern on the umbrella. I wanted to paint something that would faintly resemble a cobweb. Cobwebs are easily associated with Widow Weaver but I wanted some subtlety here so I painted the pattern using bright shade of pink.

I also wanted to make sure I'd be able to use the model for playing Malifaux so I prepared  40 mm base for her (the bear pelt orphanage base insert). She's definitely going to come in handy for my slowly growing Dreamer crew. 

Her main job is to drop Web Markers, which she does as a (0) action. They lower enemy's Wp by 1 and stack if there are more markers. They also help with her ranged attacks, as they're resisted with WP. With an extra 2ss upgrade, she's capable of summoning a Teddy, which can be a game changer in later turns. She is Terrifying 11 to all, which can help but even with that she can go down fairly quickly if opponent really focuses on her

This project was a big challenge to finish for me as I now have a newborn baby at home. It meant that it was hard for me to find more than 20 minutes at a stretch to sit down and work on it. If I'd had more time, I would have probably done things differently but I'm pretty happy with the result anyway.