Monday, November 23, 2015

Samurai Part 7

Just a quick update.  I went in and finished off the orange.  I'm not sure if I shared the mix before, but the orange is Burgundy Wine, Bronzed Shadow, Burnt Orange, and Linen White.  You can see the difference those further highlights make.  Here's a comparison between just the initial highlights and the figure with the final ones...

Aside from the orange I also painted his glove and the purple cord around his wrist.

In other news, Adepticon registration opened up tonight.  The classes filled up pretty quick, all the spots are gone for one of my faces classes and, last I checked, the second section only had two spots left.  I signed up to take a few classes too.  I'm taking Ben's loaded brush course, Kirill's blending with oils, and Angel's airbrushing masterclass.  There are a ton of great classes, I wish I could take them all!

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Samurai Part 6

After two weeks on the road, I'm finally back home and got the chance to do some work on my samurai project.  I stepped back from the sleeve design and decided to work on a different portion of the figure.  This is a figure that has a lot of overlapping parts, so he's being done in a number of stages.  Since I've completed the chest design and enough of the sleeve pattern, I decided I could add the flaps on his chest and his other arm.  I painted the armor flaps first and then moved on to the sleeve.  The orange is still a work in progress.  I've done the shadows but I'm just getting started on the highlights.

To give you an idea of where this is headed, here's a look at a cover from one of the Osprey books on the samurai.  I'm using the image on the far right as one of my major inspirations.  I'm shifting the cloth colors to orange and green but I'm keeping the purple for the armor.

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Samurai Part 5

Well, the last week wasn't great for painting.  I spent the previous weekend up in San Jose and then all last week I was traveling for work.  At least this weekend was free (well aside from taking care of household chores), so I was able to find a few hours to sit down and do some painting.  My focus is still the design on his arm... but I think it's finally starting to come together for me.  I did the main lines in the same orange as his shirt.  I then put in the white diamonds where the lines meet.  I think this provided a nice balance to the larger white circles.  Finally I started to do some design work within the circles.  There will be two designs in the end, alternating from circle to circle (so the blank ones will eventually have something in them).  I'm going to continue to the develop the design as I go.  I've got some ideas for what's next, but I'll keep experimenting to see what works for me.