So, earlier this month, one of my LGS, Hairy Tarantula, held a painting contest for all of its usual customers currently stuck in lockdown. The rules were simple: purchase a single model from the store, paint it up, and then send a picture, along with a picture of proof of purchase, to the contest organizers, who would then judge the results and announce the winners on social media.

While I was tempted to go for something vaguely Sororita-y, I wanted to take a break from painting Sisters of Battle, and instead wanted to try something different. As fate would have it, I had been considering getting the model for Inquisitor Kyria Draxus– what with her fancy armour, looted borrowed Eldar weaponry, pet dragon and mysterious lack of hair– for quite a while now, and so decided to use her as my entry for the painting contest.

I had been mulling over possible colour scheme options when someone on Discord mentioned that, if painted with dark skin, Kyria Draxus kind of reminded them of Okoye from Black Panther.

Of course, after a statement like that, I couldn’t do anything else, now could I?

I wanted the model to match how she looked in the movie as reasonably as possible: note that while the character’s Dora Milaaje armour in the movie is much more elaborate, my freehand skills are so poor that I was not comfortable trying to do any elaborate patterns or symbols on her armour or cloak.

I did, at least, add some newly-purchased modelling grass that looked close to the kind that would be found on a savannah, and, because I wanted to keep at least some tie to Black Panther himself, I painted her pet dragon black with glowing purple highlights.

Her skin was Dryad Bark with successive highlights of Catachan Flesh. Her armour was a simple coat of Retributor Gold, with a wash of Agrax Earthshade followed by a layer of Blood Angel Contrast (Contrasts are something that I’m still getting used to, but I won’t deny their results). The trickiest parts of the model, honestly, were the dragon (as it was hard for me to do the purple highlights without them looking messy), and the grass, as it absolutely refused to stay upright and was really tricky to glue onto the base without the model getting in the way.

Do I think this model is going to win? I don’t know. Is it a masterclass paint job? Definitely not. Could I have done better? Probably, with a little more time dedicated to it. Am I happy, all the same, with the results? Definitely. It’s a shame there was no easy way to convert her to be carrying a spear instead of, say, that shuriken catapult, but all the same, I think I captured the character as best as I could.

There, that was a bit of self-indulgent model posting from me, stay tuned and I just might post more finished and in progress stuff!