Ragnar Blackmane, the Young King, painted and partially resculpted

As I mentioned previously, Ragnar Blackmane was one of the first models I started making. I finished his head early on, and then left the model half-done for a long, long time, until I recently finished modelling and started painting. Now, while it's fairly obvious that skills improve by using them, what is easy to forget that your expectations of yourself tend to rise more or less at the same pace. So, what had represented the best of my abilities a couple of years earlier, now looked unacceptable.

 Specifically, the part I wasn't satisfied with was the face. Mostly, his nose was the issue, being just a misformed lump on his face, but the general shape of his head was none too pleasing, either. So, I decided to redo the head. I went with Ragnar's trademark howl for his expression on the new head, and added a couple of braids on him. I wasn't sure if he canonically has any facial hair after rising to a Wolf Lord, but I had always imagined Ragnar with sideburns, so that's what I decided to sculpt. His high top knot is what marks him out as who he is, but I also added a couple of thin braids on the model, just because.

Having painted him, I'm still not sure if I like his facial expression, as his eyebrows seem a little too high, and his skull shape could have used some more depth, but I decided this will be good enough for now. This new head is just glued on with superglue, so if I so choose, I can yet again change his head without doing any significant damage to this one.

I felt secure enough with my brushwork to freehand the army badge on his left kneepad (white, fanged skull with crossbones on a black background). Turned out pretty well, actually. Probably because I kept it simple.

  Frostfang turned out well, considering how tough it is to sculpt chainswords by hand. There's probably a trick to it that I don't know, or maybe I should just use different material for weapons.

 His backpack may be my personal favourite part of the finished model. I'm particularly happy with the freehand design on his helmet crest, but the gemstone and the patinated wolf heads worked out well, too.
 See the first version of the model
See the actually finished model