8 replies to this topic

[Mierot]

After a few years of lurking in the corners, admiring everyone else's work, I decided to take the leap and share my own. I was looking for a model with plenty of skin and muscle to practice with, so I pulled Garnuk out of the pile of minis and got started. After about one hour of prep (oh, those mold lines) and about two and a half hours of work (yeah, I'm a slow painter), his skin is base coated and I started in on the shadows on his torso, arms, and legs.



I decided to go with a yellowish skin color, so I am using the Reaper tanned skin triad along with Tanned Leather and Amber Gold to provide the yellow tint.

For the deepest shadow, I added in some Midnight Blue to Tanned Shadow to try to create a cooler tone, which will hopefully give it additional depth. This is the first time I have tried the trick of adding a bluish/purplish color to my shadows, so I hope it works out.

The next step is to start highlighting the skin and then on to the face.

[Adrift]

Using blue-purple for mixing in with the shading is a great way to enhance the color of his skin and enhance the shadows simultaneously. Be careful though, other skintones might be complimented better by different shades.

He's looking great! And don't worry, I'm a slow painter too.

[MonkeySloth]

++ to the blue and purple for the skin. I'll use a blue gray and then a standard darker red skin shade that most companies make, but don't be afraid to not use those colors as if you use greens, oranges, reds you'll get non-human skin tones.

[Mierot]

Adrift, thanks for the encouragement.

MonkeySloth, I never thought of using a blue gray. I'll have to try that out on another figure!

[MonkeySloth]

Here's a recent mini I finished that used a blue gray (think it's P3's greatcoat gray mixed with Exile Blue) and P3 Khador Red. With humans I tend to do softer shading as opposed to my non-humans. Both those non-humans were the same base coat and very similar highlights, just used different colors to shade and accent (greens\purples vs brownish red\purples) so just changing the shading or highlighting colors a bit can really change how a base color looks.

[Mierot]

I got a chance to work on Garnuk and added highlights to the skin, and shaded and highlighted his face. Since I am nearly done with the skin, I managed to get through a couple of shaky hand moments, and help from one of my cats, to line the transition areas between the skin and his clothing.



I am getting a little tired of skin tones, so hopefully I will have time this weekend to start in on something different.

[bloodydrake]

looks great so far..really like how the flesh tones are working out

[Mierot]

Thanks, bloodydrake. I am pleased with them so far.

I think I might need to go a little higher on the highlights, but that is always the scary part for me. I prefer a natural look to the hypercontrast highlight to white methods, but there are a few areas that look a little flat, such as the shoulders. Maybe I should deepen the shadows a bit?

I decided to go ahead and take a break from layering on skin colors and switched to base coating Garnuk's, erm...kilt? I am going for a ragged, poorly cured black bear pelt, after all, he is an ogre, so I used walnut brown for the fur and muddy brown for the reverse side.



Since it is fur, I thinned down the walnut brown much more than I usually use for a basecoat so that the paint would easily flow into the spaces between the hairs. Normally I use a water:paint ratio of 1:2 for basecoating. This time I upped the water to 1:1. In addition to getting a more even coverage of the fur, the thinned paint was also easier to clean up with a brush full of water when I got messy and accidentally flicked paint onto an already painted leg.

[Mierot]

The Thanksgiving holiday passed with painting done, but no pictures until now. I worked on the fur kilt several times with various changes in color before I landed with a slight blue tint to the otherwise almost black fur. I do not plan anything else on it.

The hair on Garnuk's stomach caused me plenty of agony as the picture in my head failed to reach reality. The sculpted hair ended up being too subtle for my brush control. I am not happy with the result, but I tried to save it as much as I could. I did not want the hair to end up a blob of color, but that is how it came out. It is a learning experience.



Today, I worked on finishing him up as much as I could before I work on the base. The left eye, always the hardest for me, took a few tries before I stopped. The right eye came out as I wanted it to the first try...funny how that always happens.



Next up, finishing the base and finding my camera tripod!