Skarre: Shading Armor, Round 1

I started shading Skarre's armor today. I used a variation on a technique I learned at a workshop from Kiril Kanaev, which involves mixing some gloss sealer and a bit of the base metallic paint into the shade color. I don't think I'm so fond of putting the metallic paint in, so I'll probably skip that part for the second round. Kiril also had us using more realistic colors, but I'm not going for a particularly realistic look with her - more whimsical and fantastic.

Also worked some on the diorama today. Here's the latest layout, with heads in place:

I have a couple additions. One is putting a couple of swords at the top. I'm going to try making a couple out of plastic and see if I can make that work. Also, I found this cat with another figure:

The cat will go on the base somewhere.

I want to start painting some of the trophies, but need to practice getting wood grain on the shield. I started with a brown base coat:

But then I got a suggestion to carve the grain into the plastic, so I'll probably either do that with this piece and redo the base coat later, or try it with a different scrap piece.