Medieval Raider (Workshop Figure)

 At the beginning of this month I attended a workshop with Ivan Hortal in the bay area. It was a 2-day class where we worked on this bust sculpted by Lucas Pina Penichet (Spira Mirabilis). It was a fantastic class and I learned a lot on painting textures as well as some nuances of light placement that I will definitely be using in my future work. I (and most of the class) painted the majority of the bust during those two days. I was very happy with the progress and, since he was almost done, I wanted to complete the figure at home.

Here's a look at the piece after the class. I had done a little more work on the hair the night I got home, but otherwise this is what I finished during the class.

And here is the piece after more work at home.

I painted the leather belts and redid the NMM. I really liked the approach to NMM taught in the class, I just spent a little more time refining those parts and adding a little more ambient and reflected color. On the skin I painted the neck and made some tweaks to the face (reflection under the nose, redoing the area under the eyes, adding some light reflection on the lips, some glazing, some highlight adjustment, etc.). I also worked on the chest, adding a little more hair texture and then using glazes to develop the shadows and add a little more color nuance. I wanted to add a bit of weathering on the shirt, so I add some small flecks of dirt. Finally, on the fur cloak I worked more on the highlights and did a little more ambient color glazing on the right, shadow side.

I'm extremely pleased with the end result. Here are a few additional views of the final piece.