Redghar, Pirate Orc - Part 4

I've been using what little free time I've got to keep working on Redghar.  With the skin almost finished, I decided to base coat the rest of the figure.  I wanted to see how the various colors would look together.  I'm still trying to decide on a few spots, like the patch on his knee, but the rest I more or less know what I want to do.  The rest of him will be mostly brown, grey, and black.  The main exception will be the red cloth around his waist and some reds and yellows coming in as rust on the weathered anchor.  This will hopefully provide a nice contrast to the skin without over powering it or distracting from it.  For the pants, I decided to go with a stripe pattern.  Right now I've just roughed that in.  I'll clean it up when I start shading and highlighting there.

With that done, I went on to finish off the hands and paint the cloth wraps on his forearms.

As with the elbows, I switched the purple on the knuckles.  On human skin, I'd just add some red with glazes, but purple glazes over dark green would take ages (and kill the highlights on the knuckles).  So I just painted them on directly with opaque layers and then blended in the edges to the surrounding green.  I also did the palms in a different color (mix of khaki and purple).  Unfortunately, because of the way they're turned, it's not really something you can see in the photos.  Guess they'll just be for the people who look at this in person!

Redghar, Pirate Orc - Part 3

I'm continuing to make slow and steady progress on Redghar.  Since last time I've finished off the back and both of the arms.  I've still got to wrap up the hands, but then I'll be done with all the green.  Phew!  On the elbows I transitioned back to the Imperial Purple and Vampiric Shadow mix.  I also put a mix of Burgundy Wine and Terran Khaki on the undersides of the hands.  It's hard to see in any of the photos, but I wanted to add another color shift there.

I took a few pictures of the process as I worked on the right arm.  The initial photo, top left, shows just a rough base coat (primer still showing) and then the shadows blocked in.  To refresh your memory, the base coat is 2 parts Badger Minitaire's to 1 part Reaper's Burgundy Wine.  The shadows are created by adding more Burgundy Wine to the base.  The top right photo shows the shadows blended in to the base, the base with a more thorough coverage, and then just a bit of highlights added in.  Those highlights are a mix of 50/50 Reaper's Dark Elf Highlight and Vampiric Shadow.  I continued to add more and more of the highlight mix into the base, each time applying over a smaller and smaller area.  I go until I get to a light grey-green, but not all the way to pure Dark Elf/Vampiric Shadow.  The end stage for this part is shown on the bottom left.  At that point, I start adding just Vampiric Shadow to that mixture and really tighten up on the application area.  In a few select spots, I'll add a dot of pure Vampiric Shadow onto the figure.

Redghar, Pirate Orc - Part 2

I've continue to work on Redghar's skin.  I finished off the ears and back of the head, then started on his torso and arms.  For the scars, I tried a mix of Imperial Purple and Pale Violet Red with Vampiric Shadow.  A slight change from the purple I used for the lips and eyelids, so it wouldn't look exactly alike.  I'd like to do something with the veins in his arms, though that will probably be a mix of the basic skin shade with blues.  Not quite sure, but I'll experiment a bit and see how it looks.

I've still got to do his back.  You can see I begin by roughing on the midtone green and then sketch in the shadows.  I'll smooth those out and add the highlights so that it looks like the rest.

Redghar, Pirate Orc - Part 1

I've been wanted to work on another fantasy project for some time now.  After poking through my stock pile of kits, I decided to start on one of the figures from the Black Sailor's kickstarter.  For those not familiar with that project, they are a range of 1/35 scale orcs, goblins, and trolls themed around a pirate crew.  Lots of amazing sculpts, they are really worth checking out.  They are available for regular sale through Big Child Creatives.

I decided to start with Redghar, one of the orcs.  A while back when I was working on the dwarf pirate, I'd considered pairing these two (along with perhaps a third figure) into a pirate scene.  I may return to that idea, seeing as I never officially finished the dwarf and he's not glued down on the base I made.  But, I'll decide on that once I get further along with the orc.

The figure is roughly 75mm tall (a human at 1/35 is 54mm, but orcs are taller so the figure is bigger).  I started working on the face.  I'm doing it in small sections, so you'll notice the ears and back of the head aren't complete yet.  I wanted to do something a little different from the other versions I've seen of this figure, so I decided to go with a very dark green and paint him up as a black orc.  The base color is a mix of Badger Minitaire's Dark Green and Reaper's Burgundy Wine (2 parts green to 1 part burgundy).  The shadows are created by adding more Burgundy Wine.  The highlights are done by adding a 50/50 mix of Dark Elf Highlight and Vampiric Shadow to the base color.  Eventually I stop and just add in pure Vampiric Shadow.  I've also painted some purple sections on the skin (nose, around the eyes, and the lips) using Burgundy Wine, Imperial Purple, and Vampiric Shadow.  I'm going with a high contrast style for this figure and hopefully I will continue with it for the rest of the piece (though it's easy to fall back into old habits and use a smaller range).

Once I finish the green for the rest of the head and paint up the other details (teeth, earrings, etc), I plan to go back with some glazes and add more color variation.  I'll work around the nose, eyes, ears, and cheeks and use a mix of purple, blue, and red glazes.  Basically it will follow more normal face painting approach, though the location and color of the glazes may change some.  I haven't painted an orc in years and this is the first I'll be doing to a display standard... so I'm sort of figuring out my approach as I go.

For those of you not familiar with this piece, here's what the whole figure will look like:

To help me with this process, I've been looking to other version of both this figure and the rest of the Black Sailors range.  This has helped me with some ideas and inspiration.  The two best versions of Redghar that I've seen are by Sergio Rubio and John Keys (Megazord_man).  I put together a quick side by side comparison of my piece with each of theirs below.  As I said, I took inspiration from these but I also wanted to create a different take on the figure.  Plus I think it's neat to see how differently the same sculpt can end up looking.

Sergio Rubio's version and mine

John Keys' version and mine