St Peter from Purgatory - Single Figure Winner

Back in September, I won the single figure category of Purgatory's first painting contest for Death. The reward for winning that contest was a copy of St Peter (unboxing here), which gave me a chance to enter the next contest, which finished last weekend. 

It turns out that something between me and Purgatory miniatures seems to have clicked, as St Peter followed Death and also picked up the win in the single figure category!

In the world of Purgatory, St Peter is a bouncer, so the other paint jobs of him I've seen tend to have him in a black suit. I wasn't confident of pulling off a smooth enough blend on the suit so ruled out black as the main tone.

This opened up some room for my imagination to get to work and at some point I came up with the scheme that ended up on the miniature. White suit, black shirt and ginger beard. While the shirt didn't entirely make it to black, it did allow me to use the same tone across him from the wings and club handle in to the shirt and down to the sandals.

I say that the suit is white, but there isn't actually any white on him at all! I worked it from Khaki through Deck Tan and into Ivory (all Vallejo), which almost gives the feel of a light cotton or linen suit to me.

The metals were probably one of the more challenging parts of the miniature. With the pale suit, silver wouldn't really fit for the wings so gold it was. The challenge was to get the gold dark enough in the shadows, of which there are lots as he is leaning backwards, so most of the back of the wings feels like they should be in shadow. I don't think I managed to get them as dark as I wanted, but I do think there is a nice contrast of dark to light through the colour.

The wings themselves were another area I tried to push the dark to light. They themselves are almost leaf like in design - the edges are brought higher while the middle sinks back. This design, combined with the pose of Pete leaning back, brings a lot of the feathers on the front towards the light and the ones on the back away from it.

With that in mind, I worked my way through from black to Coal Black (P3), Ryleh Grey (Scale Color Fantasy) and then threw some Fenris Grey (GW) into the mix, highlighting a larger portion of each feather as I moved out and upwards.

While the pose brings the opportunities to play with light and shadow on the wings and the suit, it does make it difficult to paint the face (particularly with the wings on) and get a clean photo of him. Apparently some angels age, and as they age, they lose their hair. Such has happened to Pete, but he's responded to this by growing a great big bushy beard. 

Quite frankly, I'm well chuffed with how he's turned out and that he won. I've picked up on a couple of ideas of how to improve him, which may happen, but there is plenty of time for that before the weather gets nice enough for me to get the varnish can out.

He was great fun to paint and is an important figure in the world Purgatory are building as the leader of The Gangbangers. If you fancy picking one up for yourself, you can get him over at the Purgatory website. It says he's pre-order, but they do have him in hand! Alternatively, head over to the Purgatory Facebook page and fire them a message.

Finally, I should show off the prize for winning the comp. I'll be getting a copy of Keysha when she's back from the casters (original green below) and she's also up for pre-order, I believe. Again, just head over to the Facebook page and fire them a message, they're dead quick on it. Oh, while you're there, check out the awesome artwork of all the figures that are going to come!