Well, I've been working like crazy to get caught up on commissions since ReaperCon. It's amazing how just a couple of days can make stuff like this snowball.
I've also been working on my own minis along side the commissions - mostly to try to cement in place everything I learned at ReaperCon - or at least grab tiny wisps of it before it flees for good.
I started working on Monique just for something different with the 54mm scale. The only photo I've been able to find of her is the one Anne did on the website - gorgeous, gorgeous reds! But I decided to take her in a slightly different direction. With any luck I could do a couple of simple things here and there, small stuff that I learned at Con, nothing major-tear-your-hair-out-bang-head-against-the-wall....
Yeah, right.
I heard a saying awhile back and I tweaked it to fit. "Man plans, the painting gods laugh."
So I kept on kicking it in between commission work because if I don't at least have a good attempt at the NMM, Michael's gonna reach through the internet and smack me. (Just kidding Michael! He's too nice to do something like that!
)I've started her a couple of days ago, so here's some catch-up photos.
Genius here - NOT - decided maybe gray NMM would be the easiest to start off with for the armor. And of course I couldn't resist and just had to paint the cloak red.
She's got some armor pieces that are quite unwieldy, so I am assembling as I go.
I basically just concentrated on the flesh and the red to start with. I poked the paintbrush at the armor every now and then and stopped when I started getting irritated.
After my fiasco with the drying retarder at Con, I'm happy to say I haven't used a drop on her. It's all layering - so that's definitely something to chalk up in the success column. Usually I try to layer and end up doing this mishmash of wet-blending and layering and fingerpainting
all at the same time and it just goes downhill from there. But this time I was able to keep the layers thin - even if I couldn't get the gray NMM to cooperate.
Okay now the gray NMM is seriously starting to get on my nerves.
So I just go and pull another bone-headed stunt.
(Sorry about the background stuff, I was playing around in photoshop.)
Oh sure, if silver isn't working, gold might...uh...wait a sec....
Well, at least its not as BAD as the gray.
So I'm tentatively moving forward. I haven't taken the highlights up as far as they should go or the shadows as deep as they need to be yet. I'm working my way through the rest of the armor first. Once I get that foundation, then I can start looking at flares and whatnot.
It's certainly not perfect but its a heck of a lot better than past efforts.
