Repenter Bandwagon

G’daybloke at Lost Hemisphere has declared this week Repenter Week, so I decided to jump on the bandwagon.   Other authors have been posting their own painted versions of the Repenter, so given it’s already Friday, that’s probably about all I can squeeze in before the end of the week.   So let’s fire it up.

My Repenter is the first warjack I ever painted, back in 2005 when I was just starting Warmachine.   In fact, it was the first Protectorate of Menoth miniature I ever painted, which means it was effectively my test piece for my the color scheme I ultimately decided to stick with.

For the most part I tried doing “razor highlights” for my Repenter, just hitting the edges of the armored plates with thin lines. If you look through the rest of my Warmachine gallery, you’ll notice I didn’t continue the technique. It just didn’t come out as well as I wanted.

The Repenter was a big learning experience for me, and although looking back I’m not as pleased with the model, I learned a lot from painting it. I’ve included the Redeemer here as an example of painting technique evolving. I painted my Redeemer in early 2006, just a few months after the Repenter.

Comparing the two models you can see where my techniques changed. The biggest was abandoning the razor highlighting to return to wet blending. With the size of a warjack’s armored plates, just doing edge highlighting didn’t work. That changed my approach to every jack I’ve painted since.

I also got better at determining where on the armored plates to highlight. This has always been one of my biggest weaknesses and after painting the Repenter then looking at it during play, I noticed that my highlights weren’t quite where I wanted them. I had to adjust where I placed my highlights to make things look more natural.

The best way to learn to paint is by practice, and that’s what each warjack is for the next one that hits your painting table. My Redeemer is definitely an improvement over my Repenter, but if you look at my second Revenger or Blessing of Vengeance you can see continued progress.

For me, that’s what’s important – I’ll be happy as long as I continue to improve. My Repenter might not be the slickest ‘jack in my collection but it played an key roll in learning how to paint warjacks better.