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
Hey! I was just looking into getting started with mini painting, fell across your tutorials, and am now obsessively reading your blog. Holy crap! These are amazing, thank you so much for sharing everything, along with your process. A true artform that I honestly didn't know existed until yesterday.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, about these, I really really love the coloring you chose for the orc pirate. Creates a whole different back-story for him. I imagine him as essentially the drowned brought back to life. Just as Orcs are made from Elves who's bodies and minds are utterly distorted and corrupted, I imagine the sea or a sea wizard or god or being doing the same with Redghar or his ancestors. While their boat can go underwater, they come above for the fight because roaring the attack is fun, and bodies full of adrenaline taste better!