While I was assembling the Crimson Court I remembered that I had another Soulblight Gravelord miniature that also needed assembling. And as you can probably guess from the title of this article, that miniature is the Vampire Lord Anasta Malkorian which I got for Warhammer Day 2021. 

Before I assembled the miniature itself, I first needed to sort out her base. I had intended to paint her in the same scheme that I used for the Crimson Court, so naturally she would need to have a matching base. I could have bought a pre-sculpted base or even used bluestuff to clone one of the Crimson Court bases, but I decided that I wanted a bit of practice using greenstuff. 

To do the base, I mixed up some greenstuff and spread it on the base as evenly and smoothly as I could. My first attempt I used too much greenstuff and Anasta ended up standing on a small hill. The second attempt went much better and I was able to get the greenstuff relatively thin and level. I then used rock from my garden to rough up the texture of the base and give it a more stony feel. Once that was done I used some sculpting tools to make grooves in the base for the paving stones. The ones on the Crimson Court bases aren’t uniform in shape but for Anasta I decided to stick with rectangular stones as it was easier. With the sculpting done, I left the base for twenty-four hours to fully cure.

Assembly of Anasta herself was fairly simple, you get the choice of her left arm either holding a bat or pointing (presumably towards a bat). I chose the bat arm but left it as a sub-assembly to make painting her torso easier. With that done, I used super glue to stick her to her base and primed her grey. 

I started with the skin, giving that a few thin coats of Ionrach Skin. For my previous vampires I have used a colder grey colour for the skin, but I wanted these ones to be a bit more colourful and ostentatious. WIth that in mind I painted her skirt with a couple of thin coats of Xereus Purple. The armour plates and sword hilt I painted with Scale75 Dwarven Gold, whilst the sword blade and skeletal armour around her torso I painted with Scale75 Thrash Metal. To offset all the bright colours, I painted the bat on her arm with a couple of thin coats of Corvus Black. The strap on the pendant around her wrist I painted with Mournfang Brown. 

The last thing I needed to do before all the washes was to give the gold armour plates a nice even coat of Blood Angels Red contrast paint. The gold basecoat really adds to the richness of the red paint, better than a silver or white undercoat could. 

In keeping with my scheme of warm colours, despite Anasta being an undead vampire, I decided to wash the skin with Reikland Fleshshade. The silver and purple details I washed with Nuln Oil. The sword hilt and leather details I washed with Army Painter Strong Tone. 

I started the layering process with the skin, layering Ionrach Skin on the raised areas. I then mixed Ionrach Skin with some Pallid Wych Flesh to create a lighter and slightly desaturated colour. I used this to highlight the highest areas of the skin. I undertook a similar process for the cloth areas of the model, first layering with Xereus Purple. In an attempt to not wash out too much of the colour, I mixed Xereus Purple with Vallejo Squid Pink for my first highlight colour. I then used pure Squid Pink on the very tips of the cloth. For the boots, I added small scratches with Skrag Brown to give it the appearance of aged and worn leather. To stop the bat on her arm looking too mono-chromatic, I decided to highlight him with Sotek Green. And for the final highlights, I gave the red armour an edge highlight with Scale75 Thrash Metal. Lastly, I painted her fangs with Army Painter Skeleton Bone and her eyes with Mephiston Red.

For the base I started by painting the skull with Army Painter Skeleton Bone. The flagstones I picked out randomly with one of Dark Slate Grey, Dark Gray, Cold Grey or Camouflage Medium Brown. All from the Vallejo Air range. I then washed the base with Army Painter Strong Tone, blending in a bit of Athonian Camoshade here and there. Once that was dry I layered the skull back up some Skeleton Bone and drybrushed the base with Dawnstone. I finished it off by painting the rim of the base with a matte black. 

Overall, this turned alright. The highlights on the boots and armour could have been better. The small scratch highlights work nicely on leather straps, so perhaps the larger area of the boots is why they haven’t turned out quite as good. The highlights on the armour were quite sloppy but there isn’t really a way to fix them without completely repainting whole armour plates. I suppose at this point I should probably finish painting The Crimson Court…