Olfo Part 7 - Testing out the Airbrush

Time to start putting some color on the base.  While I could use a regular brush, this seemed like a good time to dust off the airbrush and try it out on a real figure for a change.  For a while know I've known that I needed to add an airbrush to my set of tools.  There are a lot of instances (like right here) where it can make painting a lot easier.  Unfortunately I haven't devoted the time necessary to really learn how to use it.  Hopefully in the next month or two I'll set aside some time to run through some tutorials and practice models.  But for this mostly dark base I figured I couldn't screw it up too badly so I decided to jump ahead a few lessons and give it a go.

The first thing I needed to do was cover up that horrible satin black.  I took the blue-grey tones from Olfo's dark side and covered the base.  I applied several coats to create some simple highlights.  With the base a little more in tune with the moonlit feel I switched over to my lamplight color (the mix of Polished Bone and Lemon Yellow).  Now I tried to lighten up any areas that would be lit by the lamp.  I tried my best to spray from the direction of the lamplight, so plenty of rotating the base so I'd hit it at the right angles.  I kept this paint pretty thin so I could gradually build it up.  I wanted the areas closet to the lantern to be the brightest, so I applied more layers in those areas.  So, for example, the tree on the right is intentionally brighter than the one on the left.  After I'd finished with that I switched back to the darkest of my blue-grey colors to fix some of the shadows.  Olfo's body blocks some of the light so I had to darken some of the ground behind him and fix some of the overspray on the trees.

Overall I'm quite pleased with the results.  This would have taken me the better part of a week with the brush and I was able to do this in less than two hours.  That's good motivation to devote a few weekends to actually learning how to use the damn thing.  Anyway, now I will go in with the traditional brush to clean up the OSL a bit and add some colors to the lit areas.  I kind of like it as is, with only Olfo in color... so I will probably try to use some more muted colors for the parts of the base in the lamplight.