Whom Do You Serve? Saruman!!!

As I mentioned in the last post, I have had a couple of Saruman miniatures in my painting queue for....well, forever.  While version two is still under construction, I had a moment to snap a few photographs of the first one.

I painted this version from a dark undercoat of brown up to a final highlight of almost pure white.  I struggled with each highlight stage though to keep the white and brown mix from turning too pink but remembered an article I read years ago about adding a bit of yellow to offset the the pink hue.  The technique worked pretty well.  I'm working in the opposite direction in version two where I'll be starting light and washing to get the appropriate shades.  The latter option is certainly going much faster but I'll decide when both are complete which one looks the best.

How do you paint?  Do you start dark and work up to the highlights, in the middle and add both shading and highlighting, or light and wash down to create shades?  I'm assuming most wargamers take the easy route since speed is important for rank and file minis but it would be interesting to hear what technique others use for heroes, commanders, or single minis.