Fallen Angel Part 3

I'm trying to wrap up some old projects, one of which is this angel figure from Milosh Miniatures.  My last post on this one was way back in June of last year, so it's been on hold for a while.  To refresh your memories, I decided to paint her up as a fallen angel with a more demonic color scheme (unnatural looking pale flesh, red eyes, and black hair and wings).  The reason I put this figure on hold was the wings.  They have the basic feather shapes, but not the fine details (the barbs).  I wanted to paint it so they appeared to be there, but wasn't quite sure how to pull it off.

I decided to take this on by first painting the basic highlighting/shading for the main feather shapes and then paint parallel black lines to give the impression of the fine details.  Worked well enough, but I've been going back over it all to adjust and try and improve the look.  So far I've done 3/4's the the wings and still need to finish the underside of the right wing.  But I plan to continue to tweak the rest of the wings as I go.

I actually think they look a bit better when viewed from the top.  From the side I feel they still need more work, so I'm doing my best to figure out how to fix that.

In addition to working on the wings, I've gone in with glazes to adjust the skin.  It's all pretty subtle, but from this close up of the face you can see some of the red/purple shades in the cheeks.  The glazes where applied other places too, this is just the easiest spot to show.

Time, Practice, and Some Help

I posted this on Facebook yesterday, but thought I should share it here too.  I started this blog back in 2014, but my painting journey began long before that.  I was thinking about what a difference time, practice, and a bit of help can make....

A few recent conversations had me reflecting on how far I've come with the figure painting hobby. So I started looking back at some old projects. I took a few representative pictures for comparison. These are all close ups of faces from busts (so similar scales and all display figures). I painted my first gaming figure around 20 years ago, but it wasn't until 2010 that I got interested in display/competition painting. So this is a look back at some of those early display pieces and a comparison with more recent work.

Practice and a desire to improve (including critically evaluating my own work and seeing what needed improvement) played a big role. But, perhaps just as important, was attending shows/competitions to see what others could do (so I had something to strive for) and all the amazingly helpful artists on the online forums and blogs. Thank you to all of them for the advice and the inspiration. And, whether you're a pro or an amateur, keep sharing your work. It's a wonderful resource for all the people in this hobby!

Celt Part 2

I'm a bit slow in posting the update here, sorry!  I've made some decent progress on the Celt.  Since last time I've been working on the body, mostly the front of his torso and one of the arms.  Haven't had many long painting sessions due the family obligations and the holidays, so easier to work in small chunks I can actually finish in a short sitting.  The back and other arm still need work, but I'll get there.  As with the face, I'm placing spot highlights in places to try to give him a satin-like finish.  One of the keys to these that I've found are making sure you are consistent with how you're placing them.  In this case, I imagine the light is above but slightly to his left.  So the reflection point on each shape has to match that location for the light.  Easy to forget if you're not careful and I've had to make a few corrections as I go where things aren't quite matching up.

I thought I'd show a side by side progression on the face.  The first image is the work from last time.  The middle image has the hair added in and details like the lips (skin shadow + red, then skin highlight added in).  The final image looks similar, but has subtle variations added with glazes.  There's red in the cheeks, on the tip of the nose, and bottom of the ears.  I did a very subtle blue glaze on the chin and jaw to hint at stubble (but didn't want to overdo that).  It takes more layers for the glazes to show up against this darker skin (as opposed the light skin I normally paint), but that can be addressed.  In the end, I was happy keeping it subtle because that felt right for this subject (rather than exaggerated red on the nose/cheeks).  But more layers of glaze would have increased the color had I wanted to.

Celt Part 1

I'm still hopping from project to project.  A while back I agreed to do a figure exchange with a friend.  I didn't want to take forever to finish (or even start) this, so I'm putting my personal projects on hold for a bit to make some progress on this guy.

The figure we chose was a 70mm Celt from Art Girona.  It's a neat sculpt, though the casting leaves something to be desired.  A bunch of pitting that I had to fix.  I've got a couple figures from Art Girona and they've all had one issue or another.  I like some of their sculpts, but the quality of the casting on the ones I've received means I probably won't buy from them again.

Anyway, this is a cool sculpt of a barbarian holding a severed head, presumably a Roman's head.  I gave the figure a quick base coat and then started shading and highlighting the face.  I wanted to try a different skin mix than I typically use.  I thought this would work better for a barbarian.  Instead of my normal base of Rosy Shadow, I used a 50/50 mix of Rosy Shadow and Bronzed Shadow.  For the shadows I used a 60/40 mix of Chestnut Brown and Basic Dirt along with maybe 10% of the base color.  For the deepest shadows I added some Walnut Brown.  The highlights were a 50/50 mix of Fair Skin and Bronzed Highlight, then some Pure White for the final shine on the skin.

Here's a close up of the face.  I included another face I did with my old skin mix for comparison.  I'm not done with this new face yet, will probably make a few tweaks and then apply a number of glazes.  But I like how the new mix looks.  I'll definitely keep it as an option for future projects.

Germanic Knight Part 1

Sorry for the long gap in posts, I haven't had much time to work on figures recently.  It will probably continue to be like that for the next few months, so updates will be sporadic.  Since I'm having a hard time finding more than an hour at a time to paint (sometimes less than that), the Count Melenth project is getting put on hold.  The OSL on the body is tough and I really need 3-4 hours to just sit and work through it until I figure it out.  I just can't make much progress on that piece with these short painting sessions.  So, I decided to start on something else that would work better for the time I've got.  I decided to go with a knight from FER miniatures.  It's a great sculpt and cast, so should be fun to work on.  This should give me a chance to work on metals, leathers, and freehand (for the clothing and shield).  I started with the freehand and I thought I'd show you my process.  Hopefully the amount of information in the write up will make up for the lack in frequency in posting them!

A while ago I'd ordered a table mounted vice. Normally when I do design work I'll start by adding little dots as guides. Unfortunately I need one hand to hold the ruler, one hand to the hold the brush, and one hand to hold the figure... that's one hand too many. This was a huge paint when I tried to paint the samurai. But, with the table mounted vice I can free up a hand and that makes this early step so much easier! I was able to reposition the figure at different angles and work my way around it. I used a scrap of paper with the spacing marked on it and added dots around the figure (second image). When that was done, I connected the dots to form the borders for the edge design (third image).

I needed a design for the chest.  I decided to use a double headed eagle.  I like that image and haven't done it before.  I looked around online for references and found quite a few different versions of the eagle.  I settled on this one since it's a neat one with plenty of detail

To transfer it to the knight, I created a simplified version to start.  I had previously drawn a vertical line down the center of his chest.  This served as a guide for where to place the eagle.  Measured the height of the shoulders of the eagle (roughly halfway between the top of the heads and the top of the tail) and place a horizontal line on the knight where I thought those should fall.  I placed dots for the location of each eagle head (measuring the distance from the center line so they're spaced properly).  I did the same for the wing tips.  I then created a very rough version of the eagle design.

Once I was happy with the roughed in version (the size, proportion, location, etc), I started to fill it in and add a few more details.  While doing that, I rough in the shadows on the design as well (following the locations of what I'd previously roughed in).

And then the wings...

The design is by no means finished, but I've got the main idea of what I want to paint on his chest.  At this point I start to paint and shade the background (the bulk of his clothing).  This figure will have a black design on top of a white surcoat, so I started with the white.  Right now I'm just focusing on this chest.  Normally I'd do all the white together, but with the limited amount of time I'm breaking it up into small pieces which work better for those short painting sessions.

You'll notice that the white background made the design fuzzy, obscuring the clean edges from before.  That's fine.  The next steps will have me going back over the design to do the full shading and highlighting on it as well as adding further details and refinements.  What I've got here is meant to be a guide for the next step and not the final design.

An important question: why did I rough in the design before shading the background?  Well, I could certainly have done that first and then painted the design on top of it.  The reason I didn't is that I planned to use white with a high level of contrast for the background.  Getting smooth blends takes time and lots of work (layers).  Why waste time getting a nice smooth blend in an area that will be covered up with another color?  By roughing in the design first, I save time and effort by only painting/shading the background areas I need to.  I will have to go back and clean up the edges of the design, but that's a much quicker task than shading all of that white.

Count Melenth Part 3

I'm continuing to refine the face on Melenth.  I did some more work on the skin under regular lighting, painting the back left of the head and his neck.  I also tweaked the shadow on the right of his forehead.  There was a section that was a sharp line which just didn't look right, so I smeared it out.  Then I painted the teeth (nice and yellowish).  And finally I did some work on the OSL.  I adjusted some of the placement and upped the brightness of the highlights (leaving the rest pretty dark so you get a more dramatic transition).  There are a few very minor things I want to tweak, but mostly I'm very happy with the OSL.  Oh, and the OSL on the neck is still unfinished, I need to bring up the brightness there to match the work on the face.

Here's a look at an earlier version and then the most recent one.  You can easily see the change in brightness and some of the other adjustments I made.

Count Melenth Part 2

I've taken my sketch on Count Melenth and started to smooth it out.  The OSL section is still in the early stages, but I have been working on the skin under normal lighting (along with some of the shadows on the dark side).  Of course even that is still a work in progress.  I'm still making tweaks to the shadows and highlights as there are a few parts I feel aren't quite right.  When that's done (along with the OSL sections), I'll go back in to add further detail with glazes (and maybe a few other things I want to try out).