22 replies to this topic

[dks]

Juliette is an excellent miniature for a young female wizard. You could get a great variety of results by changing the colors of her dress, skin, and hair. Faced with such a range of options, I made two quick sketches on paper and then painted two schemes.



I hadn't painted a figure with honey-blonde hair in a while, I realized, and this sparked my interest as a long-time player in the World of Greyhawk campaign for D&D. In Greyhawk, blondes and redheads tend to be of Suloise ethnicity, and the Suloise deity of magic is Wee Jas, the Ruby Sorceress, also the goddess of beauty and death. Her priests wear gray or black robes and often multiclass as wizards. So I made our little Juliette an ambitious young necromancer, dressed in gray and black with a hint of purple and some blood-red accents, and set her in a graveyard with her book of spells (or prayers) and a batlike imp perched on a skull. (All of these bits are stock Reaper pieces.) She has violet eyes, and I made her expression more "evil" by manipulating the shapes of her eyebrow and eye. The cover of the book bears Wee Jas's emblem of a ruby skull. I was about to add candles, but the base was already pretty crowded.

The color scheme turned out as a muted secondary triad (orange, purple, green) plus red complementing the green... or maybe it's an orange-red-purple with a green complement. The figure herself is orange-red-purple, but then I brought green into the base with the tombstones and the grass.



Enjoy,
Derek

[TheBucklandBrewer]

Oooh! I only just ordered this one aswell a couple of hours ago!
Can't wait to get my brush on her!

You've done such a brilliant job on her! Fantastic freehand! Awesome atmosphere in it's total, the base finishes her off perfec!
I sooo like this!

[Fruggs]

Awesome work once again.
I love hearing the stories that go along with your painting. It gives the mini personality. Thanks for sharing.

[captenglish]

WOW! That is awesome! I can't find one thing that isn't a treat for the eye.

[chipchuck]

I got to watch Derek do the face and eyes in his class at ReaperCon.

Nicely finished, my man!

[Akiosama]

Derek's technique and style are what I aspire to as a miniature painter.

Awesome work, Derek! Your work amazes me every time I see a new piece. Maybe one of these years I can get to ReaperCon to attend one of your classes. (Ironic that we're both in CA, but that I'll probably end up in TX before I get to shake your hand.)

My 2 yen,

Akiosama

[pae]

I hate you Derek. :-)

Which is to say, it's always an inspiration to look at see your work.

[themudhead]

Nice. Just... nice.

But, why does your work always look so... monochromatic? Is it just me? Or the photography? Is that what you are going for? What do the minis look on the tabletop all together and each one mono like this?

[Metalchaos]

Now that’s a stunning base! I especially like the book cover and the potions.

[MonkeySloth]

I'm not sure what I've been enjoying more recently your work or the back stories you come up with to help bring your painting more character.

[Nameless]

another masterpiece. I love this one so much!

[dks]

Thanks, all! Glad you're enjoying the backstories, too.

@TheBucklandBrewer: Great! When you paint your version of this figure, post it to Show-Off.

@chipchuck: Yeah, after painting the face in the Expressive Faces class on Friday, I painted the boots and part of the robe in my class on "Good Fast Painting" on Saturday.

@Akiosama: We'll meet someday, somewhere. Siberia?

@pae: Aw. Sad. Or are you just angling for a Bugs-Bunny-to-Yosemite-Sam-style "But I loooove you..." ?

@themudhead: To paraphrase a certain movie, "I do not think 'monochromatic' means what you think it means." Clearly there are orange and red and green and purple here. If you are seeing only gray, then it is just you (or your computer monitor). Maybe you mean "muted" or "desaturated"? Naturalistic or low-saturation color schemes let me focus on value contrasts and simulation of materials. If you want to see how my figures look together on a virtual tabletop, you can scroll through my pages in the Paint Crew Gallery. How would you characterize your own color choices? Can you post photos of your figures to the WIP or Show-Off areas? (But speaking of recognizable color styles ... I remember seeing galleries of Golden Demon winners in the early 1990s, and there was one painter who used the same tans and greens for every entry over several years, whether they were Orks or Space Marines or Chaos Plague-knights.)

Derek

[themudhead]

Please don't be offended, I am only attempting to learn here. Your "paint-fu" is greater than mine. I will try and have a pic or two up next week for critique as I can only be online after work from work. Let me know if I am being too overbearing.

I think I see where you are going. I do see lots of color and your questions did challenge me to look closer and longer and do some reading and thinking. This is an awesome model.

Yes, "muted" is a better term.
To my understanding, removing/controlling the saturation of colors will tend them all towards a single hue/chroma. In this case, I see it going gray. In your other works, towards red, purple, green, sepia... Since saturation changes in surrounding light, then seeing them in the Paint Crew Gallery does not set them in the same light and I cannot get a good handle on how they would read if they were together. I think next Reapercon, I'll spend more time comparing your work at the table... :)

In this model, can the saturation in the hair be too high (and borderline high with the vials and book cover) when compared with the rest of the model? And should the value in the shadows of the lower dress be more accurately portrayed with darker grays (values) instead of purples (hues)...?

PS. Does the nail on the thumb of her upraised hand need to point downward or side-wise? The sculpt in that thumb suggest it is below the level of the palm and not parallel?...

[klarg1]

I love your work.

I'd also like to chime in and say that I also really enjoy reading your thoughts on how you approached the model and the story you've attached to her. It's nice to have some insight into what you were thinking and why you did what you did while you were painting.
(and sculpting too - I got to take your sculpting "anatomy and armatures" class at ReaperCon this year, and I learned a lot from it, Thanks!)

[dks]

@themudhead: Were you at ReaperCon this year? I met various people using either their real names or handles, but I don't remember meeting you under your handle.
Hair: The saturation draws your attention. "Hey, boys, eyes up here."
Shadows on the dress: Well, there's accuracy and then there's what looks good. I see a lot of painters use dark gray shadows for gray objects, and their figures just look drab to me. I used purple for at least reasons: 1. Shifting the shadows of any color toward purple is useful in general. 2. It reinforces this figure's secondaries triad, with the orange and green. 3. It makes the fabric look more interesting, as though it had a color-shift like silk instead of plain cloth. I used Ghost White (blue-white) for the highlights, and this cool-warm-cool shift with the Aged Bone midtone looks good to me.
Thumbnail: When my thumb rests against my middle finger like this, the nail points sideways/up. I can push the tip of my thumb against the finger and force my thumb to rotate downward. Just about any nail position would be fine on this figure.
If you want to test your theories about color choices, you can download my pics and experiment with them in Photoshop or some other program -- reduce or increase the saturation the hair, desaturate the dress, etc. But then step away from the computer and paint something.

@klarg1: Thanks, and I'm glad you enjoyed the sculpting class.

Derek