Reaper Dark Heaven: Pillars of Good and Evil

Today I completed a couple more of my older Reaper Dark Heaven figures:  02094 Pillars of Good and Evil.  I have had these for many years now (since late 90s/early 2000s, whenever they were released), and the Pillars were among the earliest Reaper figures I purchased.  Having just finished up the Colossal Skeleton from the Reaper Bones line, I wanted a change of pace (and it was a good chance to work on my backlog).

Pillar of Good:  I wanted to keep this one clean and fairly vibrant.  Because the figure is already pretty busy with the vine and flowers. I didn't want to use a complex stone pattern that could either distract from the other details or get lost in the mix.  Instead, I went for a solid "white stone" look, with black wash to accentuate the cracks.  To make the pillar itself stand out, I went with a darker stone color for the base.  I kept the plant a vibrant green, and early on felt that the crowning flower should be reddish-pink (I'm not sure why; I don't know if it's modeled after a real flower).  Gold was used for the ankh and star-and-crescent symbols (I considered using silver, but I thought it might blend in with the stone too much).  I think the darker gray background for the star-and-crescent gives a nice contract to the symbol.

Pillar of Evil:  The surface of this pillar is bizarre, to say the least.  I figured it was going for a Cthulhu-esque motif, so I decided a mix of purple, blue, and red might work for an "undefined mass", with the recognizable bone sections painted appropriately to stand out.  The mass of the pillar turned out darker than I expected, so I'm not sure if the color differentiation is lost.  However, the various eyes were painted red and manage to stand out noticeably, which I'm glad of.  The eyes and the pentagram were painted bone white, then red (to give a brighter effect).  This was especially tedious for the pentagram, as I wanted to keep the clean lines and doing touch-up with black in the center of the glyph risked ruining the previously-painted red lines.  Fortunately, my work on brush control seems to have paid off and I didn't have any mishaps there!

Conclusion:  Between the two, I actually think the Pillar of Good turned out better.  The colors on the Pillar of Evil are a little too muddled, though I think it works well enough.  The highlights on the base of both pillars turned out nicely as well; I used a pretty strong highlight, but toned it down with a glaze of black wash.  Two of my oldest figures are now complete, with respectable paint jobs!

Until next time!

- M:M