Well, it's been quite a while since I've posted anything, but I'm hoping I can get back into the habit of sharing updates here.
I picked up the 80mm Flora model from Golem Miniatures' kickstarter quite a while ago and I've been tempted to start her a couple of times over the years. I was looking for a somewhat straightforward project and decided to finally start on her. I say straightforward because she's got a small-ish number of sections to paint (skin, hair, skirt, sash, flower pot, and flowers) as opposed to sculpts covered in different objects and equipment to paint. And, at this point, I feel pretty comfortable working with skin, hair, and cloth so I didn't foresee any big hurdles I'd have to figure out on this piece. That being said, I still see it as a good piece to learn and practice on. Specifically I wanted to work on nuances with the skin and also work on capturing a more realistic light, working with primary light and cast shadows, ambient light in the cast shadows, and bounce light on various parts of the figure. I'd also gotten the feedback at NOVA last year that on my entries certain areas, like the faces, looked like I'd spent a lot of time on but other areas weren't done to the same standard. I still managed to get golds in Masters Large Scale Single and Bust, but my goal on all my pieces this past year has been to remember that comment and work to have all the parts of the figures be done to the same level of refinement.
Here's the progress I've made over the past 3 weeks or so. For the skin I've tried out some slight changes to my normal mixes. I started with a base of 3:2 Reaper Rosy Shadow and Bronzed Skin. For the shadows I used AK's Dark Rust and some French Greyish Blue. As I worked in mixes from the shadow up to the base, I did add some extra red at about halfway to capture that warm transition in skin as you move into shadow. For the highlights, I used Reapers Bronzed Highlight plus a little AK's Lemon Yellow (to portray a warm primary light), then started to add in some Ice Yellow before finally switching to adding Ivory for the final specular highlights. I then used some glazes of Mindwork's Magenta to add more warmth in the cheeks, chest, and hands.
For the ambient light in the shadows, I worked from the shadow (Dark Rust + a very little French Greyish Blue) up about halfway to the base (3:2 Rosy Shadow and Bronzed Skin). Then I started mixing in a ~1:1 mix of Bronzed Highlight and Grey Blue. The trick here was to avoid getting the skin to be too grey in the darker tones, so staying away from adding too much blue to the skin tones (clearest on the back of the figure). But when I got to the lightest colors, I pushed more of the blue allowing it to turn more grey. However, with the contrast of the warmer shadows and midtones, the desaturated highlights read as cold even though they are mostly grey.
Bounce lights were done with a mix of the base plus some of the shadow, then going into a mix of bronzed highlight and a little grey brown. I plan to go back over these with some glazes to help the bounce light regions reflect the color of the source of that bounce light (as it can vary from place to place on the figure).
