Lady Justice
Lady Justice is in charge of the Death Marshal elements of the Guild in Malifaux. She is a blind, Buffy the Vampire Slayer type cowgirl who, judging by that massive hairdo, moonlights as an eighties rock star…
I bought my Death Marshals box before I had any interest in playing Malifaux. I bought it because of the cowboy aesthetic that the other figures in the box have. The Lady Justice figure was not originally a draw for me.
The sculpting is very nice technically but the subject matter and design initially left me cold. In particular the massive amount of hair on the figure, which spreads left and right to span the length of her sword gives the figure a lozenge shaped silhouette, which doesnt really appeal. From behind the miniature looks a little like Cousin Itt.
Click for image credit.
Lady Justices voluminous barnet also obscures her scabbard, the strap suspending her scabbard, bits of her fingers and elements of her pistols and holsters in a confusing way. And I dont just mean confusing to paint (which it was). I mean confusing in the sense that depending on how the figure is painted and the colours used it can be very hard to see whats going on.
This view is pretty much all that I ever see when I play games with Lady J.
And yet, despite my apathy towards the figure initially, as I painted Lady J it all started to make sense. To start with I had difficulty imagining what colours to use as I wanted to make sure that the elements somewhat lost in the hair would be visible and identifiable. I also wanted the figures palette to tie in with the other figures in the crew but without making the figure too gaudy.
But, as I decided to embrace the (as I see it) eighties rock vibe I found the figure easier to work on. As I painted my original attitude turned around 180 degrees. I went for the vaguely Dick Turpin, somewhat Adam Ant and definitely Meat-Loaf-one-minute-into-the-video-shown-below look shown and ended up quite happy with it.
By the time that I finished painting the figure I was really quite pleased with both how it turned out and with the design of the figure overall. I dont remember my opinion of any miniature altering so drastically during painting before now, but in this case it did. And it all turned out pretty well I think.
Here is a group shot of my first completed Malifaux faction, the Lady Justice crew.
Lady Justice Crew
Incidentally, the three gravestones were prepped for use in the game when the Death Marshals “bury” opponents in those magic coffins that they lug around. I dont know if they will be of any use when playing, but they were fun to make anyway.
Comments and criticisms all gratefully received.
Filed under: Miniatures | Tagged: 2012, Cowboy, Guild, Malifaux, Steampunk, Western |
sho3box 
You are right….She must be a realative to Cousin It.
Hmm how about converting him?
Group shot is fantastic! And I see nothing wrong with 80s rock!!!
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“And I see nothing wrong with 80s rock!!!”
I dont either, I just wouldnt dress like an 80s rocker myself 🙂
Im glad that you like the group shot. Thanks for the feedback.
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Really nice group there, Paul! I especially liked the green gunk coming out of that coffin! Doubt I’d have the patience to paint Lady Justice, too much going on there. Her hair turned out really nice though… care to share the recipe? I’ve just recently finished a dwarven slayer and yup yup, he’s sporting that orange 90s ‘do. =( Would much rather see any future slayers with something close to Lady Justice’s hair colour.
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Lady J is quite a busy figure, thats for sure. It was a challenge to come up with a scheme that worked with the groups browns (essential for a cowboy feel I think) that also made the different elements of the sculpt clear without being too gaudy. I was pleased with how it worked out, but there were numerous points in the process that the whole thing looked like garbage.
I was making up the hair as I went along, so some of the stages below could probably be rationalised out. On the other hand part of the reason that LJs hair looks OK is because it has layers of depth, so its hard to say.
Hair Recipe:
White undercoat
GW Bestial Brown
Overbrush GW Fiery Orange
Layer random bunches (not each sculpted strand but groups of adjacent strands) with Fiery Orange
Layer random bunches Fiery Orange/Warzone Vega Sand mix (Vega Sand is a light yellow brown colour)
Layer random bunches WZ Vega Sand.
GW Flesh wash (the old blue lidded flip top pot. Old stuff)
More Vega Sand bunch highlighting
A light wash of Baal red to pull it all together another bit and add less realistic, comic book colour to it to help contrast with the green areas..
A pretty laborious process realy, but seeing as the figure has so much hair, it was important to spend some time on it. For models with less hair (like Trollslayers) you could probably cut out a few steps.
It might be worth noting that I painted her skin in quite pale tones as she is a redhead. If I had gone with my usual more tanned flesh look then it would have jarred with the hair a bit I think.
I hope that that is of some use 🙂
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[…] The witch in the shot above is the better of the two third ed BB witch figures. Initially I wasnt too fond of the third edition team at all really, with their large noses and features, but they grew on me a little bit. The witch here looks so eighties rock that I started to like the model while painting. Now that I think of it that seems to be a common theme for me… […]
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