Painting Poorly: A Song of Ice & Fire - Lady Val, Wildling Princess

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by CMON Games

“I am No Southron Lady But a Woman of the Free Folk...”

So, one of the biggest things that I’ve missed from the Game of Thrones TV series is actually a multitude of small things: Supporting Characters.  There’s (or should I say “Where’s”) Moonboy or Patchface or Lady Stoneheart?!? Hell, the fact that they’ve omitted Young Griff and Jon Connington pretty much means that their story is pretty much a load of $!@% doesn’t it?

Well, today on Painting Poorly, we’re going to be taking a look at one that I felt was sorely missed during the Mance Rayder storyline: Val.

Val is a badass Free Folk woman who doesn’t take nothing from no one (unless she wants to). She’s a pretty simple paint job so if you’re looking to jump into the hobby, she would make an excellent point of entry. Let’s get to it!

1. Gameplan, Prep, and Prime

So, with Val never appearing in the HBO series, I have to go based on what I envisioned when I read the books, and whenever I think of Val, I can only really think of this picture by artist Matt Olson:

He actually based the design for this rendition off of a mutual friend of ours, cosplayer Booba Fett, and I’m going to be doing the same thing.

I'll be using:

Vallejo

Dark Sand, Orange Brown, Field Blue, and Basic Skin Tone

Ceramcoat

White

Handmade Modern (Target Brand)

Slate (Standard Grey) and Brick (Dark Red)

I've already primed her with Matt White spray on primer by The Army Painter, so we're ready to start painting.

2. The Fur

The first thing we'll be doing is painting the fur.

I'm putting down a nice basecoat on the fur of standard grey, remembering to thin all our paints with equal parts water when we're basecoating.  Get a nice even coat of grey all over the fur and let it dry.

Once it's dry, get your white out, don't thin it any, and get a your wedge/chisel brush, and give the fur a nice little drybrush in white in order to create a nice highlight, and some depth to the fur.

3. Basecoats

Once the fur's all taken care of, take your basic skin tone and paint the face and hands.  Try not to get too much on the skull she's holding, though you can repaint it white if you need to.

Now, take your orange brown and paint the entirety of her dress, being careful to avoid the rib cages decorating her upper arms.

This particular color can be tricky to get an even coverage with, so don't be afraid of letting the first coat dry and then going over it again to get a truly even coat of orange brown.

Next, take your dark sand and paint the hair and bone strip(?) going down her front along with the belt around her waist in the back.

For the hair, make sure you get the large braid on her left shoulder, but try to avoid the Weirwood face, and don't forget the small braid hanging down past her right cheek.

With the bone strip, don't worry if you paint the bones themselves, it'll be pretty easy to cover up, but avoid what you can.

After that, take a little bit of your field blue and just paint around the upper chest, like it's a scarf wrapped around her neck.  I don't know what this piece actually IS, but I feel like it's a great opportunity to introduce some color to the model.

Before we move onto shading, take the time, and your white, to go over anything that should be white, but got paint on it, like the bones in the front, the ribcages on her arms, the skull in her hands, or the Weirwood face.

4. Shading

So, even though Val is a pretty basic paint scheme, we'll be using quite a few different shades to add depth.

Soft Tone, Strong Tone, Flesh Wash, and Blue Tone, all by The Army Painter.

We're going to start with the flesh wash.  Just a single drop should give you enough to cover both the face and the hands of the model.  Try not to let it pool up too much in one area or get too much on the skull.

After that, we're going to apply soft tone to the hair.  This mutes the blonde hair and creates a really natural looking blonde.  I know that I've used a brighter yellow to base the blonde hair of the Lannister Siblings in the past, but I want to keep them distinct as having the most golden heads in Westeros.

Next, take your strong tone and apply it to the dress, fur, bones, and pretty much anywhere else you haven't already washed.  Try not to let it pool too much in one area, and make sure you go section by section (ie. first the fur, then the right arm, then the left arm...) in order to avoid it drying in an uneven pattern.

Finally, just a little touch of blue tone on the scarf will really help make that blue pop, but not in an obnoxious way.

Once that's all dry, you're ready to highlight this sucker!

5. Highlights and Finishing Touches

We're going to start off the highlights with the skin.  Use your basic skin tone to highlight the forehead, cheekbones, nose, and chin of the face, and the thumbs and forefingers of both hands.  Don't worry too much about the other fingers, though you can if you're OCD or a sadist (or BOTH!).

Next, using your dark sand, apply some top down highlights to Val's hair.  Try to paint the top and the front, while avoiding the darkened areas, such as the parts of the space in between the locks of hair/braids.

After that, take your orange brown and start to highlight the dress.  Really, you want to paint each fold/billow in the dress that juts out, and avoid the darkened recesses.  Here's a highlighted (in yellow) example of where to put the highlights on the front of the dress:

And here's an example of the back:

You also want to highlight the tush a little, but don't go too far down.  Highlighting the top creates a nice illusion of a booty shelf, which helps with the illusion.

Then take your white and highlight up all the bones and Weirwood face brooch.

For the Weirwood face, treat it like an actual face, highlighting the forehead, nose, cheeks and chin, while for the bones, just give them a quick wipe of color to bring their centers and edges back up to white.

The skull is a little trickier, but still treat it like a face, so paint the forehead and cheekbone.  There's no nose or chin, you we don't have to treat it EXACTLY like a face...

You can also take this time to really touch up any of the tufts of fur with some white to make it really pop.

The last thing we're going to do is take our smallest brush and just get the TEENSIEST TINIEST amount of dark red on it to give Val red lips.

Make sure your brush tip is as fine as you can get and aim for in between the two lips.  Just get a LITTLE HINT of color in there, don't try to get perfectly formed salon quality lipstick on her.  It's not gonna happen.

6. Ride that Half Blind Horse!

Well, guys, that's about it for Val!  She, along with all my tutorials for A Song of Ice & Fire, can be found here.  I hope this tutorial helped you or inspired you, and if it did, I humbly ask you to consider becoming a Patron!  The basic pledge is only a dollar a month and helps me to create quality AD-FREE content on a weekly basis!

Check back soon as we continue our journeys through the land of Westeros!

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