Onitsukaji Part 1

I gave you a preview of this project in my previous post. I needed a fun piece to help me recharge and so far this has fit the bill well. I'm planning to make this part of a 2 figure scene, but I had to start somewhere so I chose to begin with the larger of the two.

I spent a bit of time thinking about what sort of color scheme I wanted for the piece. Part of the fun of fantasy is the freedom to work with a variety of colors. While orcs are most commonly depicted as green, there's plenty of fantasy work (for example Paul Bonner's art) where they come in a variety of colors. I've already done some variations on green with orcs and just did a blue one for the Hera Models bust. So I opted for something of a red-violet shade for the big orc. My intention is to go with a triadic color scheme, so that makes blue-green and orange-yellow as my other main colors. I can certainly work both of those into details on this figure's body. For the goblin, I might switch back to green for the skin, but use more of a blue-green shade like I did with the Orc Brave from Ouroboros.

This guy has a lot of exposed skin. Since it's such a large area, I prefer to break it into smaller sections and work on one of those at a time. This helps me keep track of things like where I put my last layer, which regions I've started to reduce the area of application to form the top highlights, etc. If you're part of the Kimera Kolors Painting Club on Facebook, you can find a bit of a longer discussion on why I choose to paint this way and some tips on how I make it work there. Just search the 'Tutorial' topic. Anyway, below you can see how he came together one section at a time.

I still have the back to finish, along with the forearms and hands. But I'd at least like to base coat those straps around his arms before I work on those sections of skin. The mix I'm using for the skin is a variation I've used on red for a couple of figures and one I happen to like. For the base coat, I used a 60/40 mix of Violet Red and Dark Elf Skin. Burgundy Wine for the shadows and then a mix of 50/25/25 Fire Red, Dark Elf Highlight, and Vampiric Shadow for the highlights. I mix some Linen White into that for the top highlights. I think the combination of the red with a cool grey creates a nice desaturated red-violet.