Female Orc Part 1

I decided to take another try at an old project. I got this 75mm scale female orc from GT Studio Creations. It's a bit of a different take on the subject and I liked the sculpt. It's also (hopefully) a straightforward project as there's just a few materials to work with (skin, leather, and metal). I actually first started painting her about a year and a half ago, but I got stuck. I had a basic vision for the piece but had trouble figure out exactly how I wanted to do the blue skin. I started on her and then changed my mind, painting over my previous work. I did this a couple times and the piece, especially the face, started to get over worked. It was turning into a mess so I abandoned the project.

Lately I've been looking for something fun to paint. There are a couple areas I want to work on, so I wanted a figure that would let me explore those topics. But I also wanted something that wasn't too complicated. I didn't want a project where I felt I'd likely get bogged down halfway through. After a bunch of indecisiveness, I decided to give this orc another shot. Since it was already in danger of having too much paint built up on it, I decided to just strip my old work and start fresh.

I'm sticking with my earlier vision, just not second guessing myself with the color mixes. For the skin I'm using a 3:2 mix of Void Blue and Violet Red. From there I transition to a 2:1 mix of Void Blue and Snow Shadow. From there I transition up to pure Snow Shadow and then some Vampiric Highlight for the brightest spots.

I want to play around with light on this figure. My main interest is playing with ambient or bounce lighting. This was something covered by Roman Lappat in a class I took with him at NOVA Open and I want to get in some practice. For this piece I plan to have a base that's mostly red. So that's why I'm adding Violet Red into the shadows. As I move down the figure and closer to the base, I plan to have the reflected red become more apparent. Of less importance, I wanted to work with a brighter main light as well. Recently I've fallen to using some rather dull off whites for my main highlights. I feel like it's creating the sensation of an overcast day. For this piece I switched to Vampiric Highlight (a nearly white highlight) just to switch things up a bit.

And here's a close up of the face. You can click on the image for the full resolution version. I like sharing these close ups from time to time as I think they're helpful in seeing what's actually going on with the brush strokes and blending.