That Cold-Hearted Birch

I like Drycha. She's one of the few unashamedly nasty characters in the Wood Elf fluff. So also plays a role in resurrecting Nagash (more out of spite than a deep-lying scheme, I think), so you can blame her for the End Times.

Birch, please

The model is something of a puzzler: one of the most finely-detailed I've ever painted; and yet with an odd two-dimensional quality to it. From the way she's facing, you'd assume she slots into the base horizontally, but that makes her thin as a willow. Added to that, one side of her is so featureless, it might as well be her back

The Birch Is Back

I approached this in a different way than usual. Anxious not to obscure all the tiny details, I decided not to use any base coats. Once the model was primed white, I went at it with nothing more than inks, washes and drybrushing.

Sometimes being a birch is all a woman's got to hold on to.

Inky recipe as follows:

• 'Skin': Brown Ink, Agrax Earthshade, Balor Brown drybrush, Ushabti Bone light drybrush
• 'Hair': Brown Ink, Green Ink, Elysian Green drybrush
• Claws: Brown Ink, Green Ink
• Bark: Brown Ink, thinned-down Dryad Bark, Nuln Oil, Tallen Sand drybrush
• Eyes: White Scar, Golden Yellow outline, Warpstone Glow drybrush

So the only layer paint I used was Dryad Bark (which I felt compelled to, given the name), and that was seriously-thinned. I think it worked okay, and I certainly didn't lose any detail (I actually found some I hadn't spotted before).

It was tricky to get a clear contrast between the wood-brown skin and the wood-brown bark. It shows up okay in good light; in anything dimmer, I may as well have dipped the whole model in Mournfang Brown. I'm still getting mileage out of my glowing-eyes trick, although I think it was justified here, to add some more colours.

And that's the Briarmaven of Woe completed. Off to terrorise Beastmen and Bretonnian damsels alike!

Get away from her, you Birch!
(I've got a million of these)