[Ferox]

Thought I'd do this up as a WIP thread. I enjoy reading other people's WIPs, so why not?

I picked this figure up as a "generic good-guy with bow" -- which is kind of a shame, because with the sword option he fits a friend's PC perfectly. My goals for this model are (a) to improve my colour selection; usually I just pick two hues on opposing sides of the colour wheel, and there's more to colour theory than that; (b) to play around more with glaze-shading metallics; and © to improve my brush control. We'll see how that goes.

Here's the pointy-eared guy after basecoating:





I started with Liquitex grey gesso as a primer. The cloak is RMS swamp green; I thinned it too much and instead of adding more pigment I tried adding more coats. I think I had six coats down before I got bored and stopped. It didn't come out quite as smooth as I'd hoped, but it's the shadow colour so most of that will get covered. I can always wash it again after building up the midtones and highlights. Swamp green looks like a fairly yellowish green, so I'm going to build it up through green ochre.

The tunic is swamp green mixed with pine green at about 1:5 (I just added a bunch of pine green to the leftover swamp green on my palette). This is a more blue-ish green; I'm not quite sure how to handle that, but I'll probably add true blue to the pine green until I get a pleasant shade and then increase lightness with white. Not being ridiculously thin, this covered nicely with a couple of coats.

I laid down a base of black primer before doing the armour in tarnished steel; we'll see how well that works out once I've shaded everything, but so far I'm optimistic. I want to add a significant blue cast to the armour by shading with true blue and breonne blue, then I'll bring back the shininess with true silver.

The face is tanned shadow; the bow and belt/pouches are cinder brown. I haven't done the headband, belt buckle, or pendant yet because I'm not quite sure what I want. Once the armour's done I'll paint the trim (pauldrons and gousset) with something bright and orange-red and figure it out from there.

Next step: probably the eyes, then shading and highlighting the armour.

[Ferox]

Can't seem to put this mini down... :-)

Did the eyes first. I outlined them in cinder brown, painted the whites with... pure white, and added dots of what was left of my pine green/swamp green mix for the iris-pupils. It went far better than I expected -- a big confidence booster. (I'm not so confident that I want to paint iris and pupil independently. Yet.) He's got a pretty good stare going, maybe a bit cross-eyed.

Then I shaded the armour. Oh, man, that worked well. I started with true blue, then with breonne blue, and layers of depth and interest just popped into existence. I love this technique. Imagine how it'll look when I start to get good at it!

After the shading, I went in with a thin wash of true silver and built up the highlights. It's still a bit dark in places; I haven't decided whether that adds character or removes interest. I think that'll have to wait until the cloth is done. Any opinions?



Next up is the cloth. Let's see if I can manage that without messing up my beautiful armour.

[Jabberwocky]

Looks like a very good start, Ferox! I like the colors so far. The eye looks appropriately intense. The armor is coming along nicely! IMO, you should take the armor up higher for two reasons. First, to help pull off the metallic look, strong contrast is always helpful. Metallics make that easier, of course, but when you are shading with acrylics it helps to maintain that strong, sharp contrast that the mind registers as metallic. The second is he's an elf . Elves have nice, clean, shiny stuff, right?

Back to the shading. I like what you have done thus far, but I think you could take the shading deeper; Blue Liner would be great if you have some about. Be sparing with it, as you have mentioned he is dark in spots and you don't want him to get much darker. I think the shoulder greaves show this best. Some of that may be the overhead lighting, but it helps to show the location of the deepest shades as well as the depth of the shading. As you go out on the arms, the shading not as deep (specifically on the right arm at the elbow). The chain skirt also needs a fine touch to get the shading deeper between links. I find that it helps on chain to do the shading last. It takes a fine touch to highlight all those little links and inevitably I get some down into the holes. Do shading last helps to save a step not reshading the holes.

[Ferox]

Thanks for the advice, Jabberwocky. I took the shading a bit deeper (or tried -- at the very least I managed to get the "shadow" deepness more uniform across the figure) and brought up the highlights. I don't have blue liner, but breonne blue is awfully deep and a pretty translucent colour. I kept your comment about strong, sharp contrasts in mind as I shaded and highlighted, and I think it helped.

I also highlighted pretty much everything else. I did the tunic with a base of pine green, blending in true blue, then snow shadow, then pure white. The white was a mistake, as it brought up the lightness pretty sharply and made everything all chalky. You'd think I would've learned that when I made the same mistake with Toxanimer, but apparently I needed the extra kick in the head. Oh well; a bit of a wash with the previous colour smoothed things out a bit.

I brought up the cloak by mixing green ochre into swamp green, and eventually highlighted with pure green ochre. Much better! I eventually added a couple of really small tanned leather highlights when I did the leather bits, which worked nicely.

I did the leather with coat after ultra-thin coat of tanned leather directly over the cinder brown, no intermediate shades, no paint mixing. Working with thin, watery paint on tiny details sure forces me to pay attention to my brush control! Fortunately, my trusty W&N S7 goes exactly where I want it to -- and if I make a mistake, I can take the paint off the brush and suck up the offending puddle with the thirsty Kolinsky sable bristles. This brush is magic in the Clarkeian sense and I should've bought it months ago. I didn't realize until I started painting it that the pouch on his right hip is in fact a pair of exposed scrolls. Well, I'm going to keep painting it as a scroll pouch; it's just silly to leave paper exposed like that, even magic paper.

For the face, I blended pure white into tanned shadow. (This might seem like pure misguided stubbornness, but I had good results doing this with rosy skin on Toxanimer.) It worked, but ended up a bit washed out, so as I did the leather I painted on a thin glaze of tanned leather over the worst-offending highlights. Eh. Seems better.

I did the bow with more thin coats of khaki shadow and terran khaki. I didn't really have anything in mind other than "do some blending", and it kind of shows. I don't hate it, but I'm not really impressed with it either. (I also had too much paint on the brush, and ended up with some blotches.)

All that's left are the hair and the details. I'm thinking of doing the scrollwork on the pauldrons in a nice bright gold, and the headband and pendant chain in silver. The gem on the headband, the pendant, and the belt buckle I'll do as red gems. No firm idea about the trim on the gousset; I'm thinking green.

On with the photos!

[Ferox]

Just about done....

I painted the scrollwork on the pauldrons in old bronze -- I thought about bringing them up further, but I kind of like where they are now. The pendant chain and headband were done in true silver, trying to hit the top side of the grey basecoat. I did the belt buckle, pendant, and headband gem as per the Necrotales gemstones tutorial, working from black through GW blood red to GW golden yellow. I like how those turned out!

Finally, I highlighted the hair with khaki shadow and then terran khaki, and painted on the eyebrows as a shaky-handed afterthought; probably a mistake.

All that's left is the base -- and the trim on the gousset, which I completely forgot about.

[Ferox]

The bow's bugging me -- it's just bland compared to everything else. Any ideas for how I can spice it up?

[Darius Glenwell]

Take the darker brown you used on the bow, mix in a SMALL drop of a golden yellow. Then paint lines like you would see on a piece of wood. Take that mixture and add in an even smaller drop of white and do the same thing. That should help brighten it up a bit. I would also go for another brighter highlight on the cloak. That and the armor IMO doesn't look defined enough, especially around the fingers of the left hand. I guess take the shadows deeper on the armor.

[Ferox]

Darius Glenwell, on Oct 21 2009, 06:18 AM, said:

Take the darker brown you used on the bow, mix in a SMALL drop of a golden yellow. Then paint lines like you would see on a piece of wood. Take that mixture and add in an even smaller drop of white and do the same thing. That should help brighten it up a bit. I would also go for another brighter highlight on the cloak. That and the armor IMO doesn't look defined enough, especially around the fingers of the left hand. I guess take the shadows deeper on the armor.

Good call on the left-hand shadows (done with black wash for maximal contrast), but I just can't get excited about adding wood grain to the bow. I've tried wood grain based on a yellow progression, and wood grain based on a khaki progression, and neither one seems to add any oomph to the thing. I'm tempted to leave it as-is -- hey, maybe some sort of green/yellow vine-like pattern? I doubt I have enough skill to pull it off properly, but if I don't try I'll never develop that skill.

[Darius Glenwell]

Ok. Instead of wood grain how about just a nice layering effect? darkest shadow around his hand to a spot of white on the tip of the bow. Then taking a dark green paint on your vine work. Then add in a little yellow to the green and, leaving some of the dark green as lining, go over your vine work with the lighter green. Just my thoughts on it.

[TaleSpinner]

You might want to consider rethinking the bow entirely. It is a bit too close in color to the belt. Perhaps try painting it very light, like bleached wood. Yew, which is commonly used in bows, is a light yellowish brown unless it is stained. This may add a bit more lightness to the paint job and would complement the warm gems.

By the way, the top two gems look great. You might want to take another look at the belt gem though, the transition seems a bit too quick and the reflection dot seems a bit off, ruining the illusion.

You could also use another level of highlights on both the tunic and the cloak.

Keep up the good work.

Andy

[Karabean]

Ferox, on Oct 24 2009, 12:50 AM, said:

Good call on the left-hand shadows (done with black wash for maximal contrast), but I just can't get excited about adding wood grain to the bow. I've tried wood grain based on a yellow progression, and wood grain based on a khaki progression, and neither one seems to add any oomph to the thing. I'm tempted to leave it as-is -- hey, maybe some sort of green/yellow vine-like pattern? I doubt I have enough skill to pull it off properly, but if I don't try I'll never develop that skill.

Have you ever tried just a little linen white added to some of the curves of the rings in some of the yellow progressions? Also I found it helpful to add just a hint (very thinned) of metallic here and there at some of the brightest points- well it made me more excited over it. But I feel your pain. I feel like I have yet to get the hang of woodgrain, which is sad because in theory it's a simple technique.

[Ferox]

TaleSpinner, on Oct 24 2009, 09:08 AM, said:

You might want to consider rethinking the bow entirely. It is a bit too close in color to the belt. Perhaps try painting it very light, like bleached wood. Yew, which is commonly used in bows, is a light yellowish brown unless it is stained. This may add a bit more lightness to the paint job and would complement the warm gems.

That's a great idea. Thanks!

TaleSpinner, on Oct 24 2009, 09:08 AM, said:

By the way, the top two gems look great. You might want to take another look at the belt gem though, the transition seems a bit too quick and the reflection dot seems a bit off, ruining the illusion.

Funny, I had the opposite opinion of the gems. The gem on the belt is actually pentagonal (about the same shape as the plates on the front of the knees), which doesn't come across too well in the photos -- it's a different shape than the other (round) gems, so it gets a different specular reflection. I'll see about smoothing out the blends.

[TaleSpinner]

Ferox, on Oct 24 2009, 09:51 PM, said:

TaleSpinner, on Oct 24 2009, 09:08 AM, said:

By the way, the top two gems look great. You might want to take another look at the belt gem though, the transition seems a bit too quick and the reflection dot seems a bit off, ruining the illusion.

Funny, I had the opposite opinion of the gems. The gem on the belt is actually pentagonal (about the same shape as the plates on the front of the knees), which doesn't come across too well in the photos -- it's a different shape than the other (round) gems, so it gets a different specular reflection. I'll see about smoothing out the blends.

Ah, that makes sense. It's hard to make out that shape since that part is in a bit of shadow in the photos. Sorry to nit pick too much.

[Ferox]

TaleSpinner, on Oct 24 2009, 08:50 PM, said:

Sorry to nit pick too much.

Not at all! Keep picking nits: if I have an excuse I'll explain it, if not I'll improve.

(And I'll get better lighting for my photos real soon now....)

[Jabberwocky]

Gemwork looks fantastic! I'd agree with TS on the bow; the lighter color would help provide a bit of contrast. The bow currently is relatively dark and blends a bit with the cape (although some of that may be the photo). Darius's observation on the left hand is spot on as well. I don't have anything else to add at this point.