Sumothay

So I'm trying to catch this blog up on the three main figures I'm working on.  You've already seen the Praetor, now here's the second figure, Sumothay from Engima miniatures.  He's part of their 54mm range and, with all that equipment and those details to paint, I'm very glad he's twice the size of the standard gaming figure.

I started on his face almost two years ago but got distracted and he seemed destined for my pile of never completed projects.  But recently I dusted him off and decided I was still pretty happy with the paint job.  A few minor adjustments to the head and he was back on my painting station.  As with the Praetor, I started off with the metals.  I wasn't sure about the rest of the color scheme so I used them to stall.  The general approach was the same: black, old bronze, and VMA gold.  Still treating the metallic paints like non-metallic metal, trying to force the highlights and shadows to only be where I think they should be.  Eventually I settled on a royal looking reddish purple for the color scheme.  Here are the results:

That banner makes me think of samurai, so I wanted to reinforce that Asian feel with the pattern.  I started on the right one with a geometric design thinking I'd paint a kanji in the center.  For the left I wanted something more representative so I sketched in a dragon design.  I like the old tattered look of the banners, so I made it seem like the bottom of the designs had been worn away.

The spacing on the left and the right of the dragon was off, so I repainted part of the body.  I then added some highlighting and shading, plus a horizontal line at the top and bottom to link it to the other banner.

The last step was to add the kanji.  Thanks to help from me_in_japan over on CMON, it should say 'Dragon' (assuming I didn't screw it up).

All that's left is to add some contrast to his swords and build him a base.  I might even try my hand at some simple sculpting.  As long as I don't make a giant mess of it I'll post some photos of my results.