More progress to report on Sorondil. I'm more or less making this up as I go along. I knew I wanted to do red scales and I thought I'd do a lot of red and purple on the rest of the figure. I don't have a super clear vision for the rest of the colors, so I'm starting with the parts I know and I'll figure out the rest later. First up was the scales on his back. To give it a little more visual interest I added a dark stripe down the center. Since the pattern is organic I threw a bit of randomness in there too.
Up next I went to work on the leather and bone. The texture is important for the leather parts. With the straps I used a lot of short semi parallel strokes, getting lighter along the edges and more worn areas. For the larger sections on his lower body I switched to more of a stippling approach. The darker shades were done normally, but as I got into the highlights it stopped being continuous and was just a series of tiny dots.
With the scales and the padding on his sides finished I was able to add his left arm. I wanted to out a string on the bow. I know this isn't new (though it's new for me), but I decided to try using hair for the bow strong. It's strong and very fine. I began by wrapping it around one end of the box and then dabbing it with a drop of thin superglue. After that dried it was on to the next side. The final step was to use a knife to cut the loose ends.
I'm liking the color choices so far. And I really like the texture and color of the leather panels. I'm having a hard time imagining a color for the hair. I'm thinking a medium brown, maybe -- something close to the color of the leather panels, but with a slight shift in hue or a slight shift to lighter value, or both.
ReplyDeleteThe arm-wraps are a tough call, too. It's tempting to go for something neutral, in order to keep them subdued and not distract from more interesting parts of the model. But when I imagine how the outfit might be designed in the fictional world of the elf, he's looking like a noble, out for sport, and it makes sense that the arm-wraps would be a color (as opposed to a neutral brown) to match the rest of his outfit.
It might be too late for this comment, but the hair on the bow looks a bit out-of-scale. Too thin and slight to pull that honkin' bow. Maybe three hairs, twisted together, with the strands held together with white glue, before applying to the bow. Again, might be too much of a pain to fuss with now.
Thanks, Mike! Yeah, brown for the hair makes the most sense to me too. The texture is tricky, so I've been avoiding it.
DeleteYup, a little late to change the bow string. Well I could, but it would be pretty tricky. And hey, it's one of those super strong elven strings, so it can still pull that huge bow.