Sorry it's been a while since the last part of this series - we got really busy with the release of Broga and have only just managed to get back to The Raven Priest. Here's two parts in one go though - the loin cloth and the hair, both painted by Ali.
Loin cloth - Quite a simple process this one. The base coat was a linen colour - which is basically a sandy buff colour, but with just a spot of green in it. I believe the one she actually used was a Wargames Foundry colour called Moss. This was shaded down by adding a tiny dot of blue to the base colour to give cooler shadows. As normal, the shade colour is applied to the insides of the creases - but on this miniature the bottom part of the loin cloth is over-hanging so gets quite a lot more of the shade colour - and even darker in the creases in that area.
The highlight tones are a mix of the base colour and off-white. You don't really want to use a straight white here - it's just a little too bright and harsh to mix well with the softer tones. The highlights are applied in gradual stages - getting lighter on the areas that would naturally catch light falling from above.
Hair - The base colour for this was a dark grey, with just a hint of blue added to give a cooler tone. The next step was to pick out whole areas of the hair by adding a highlight tone - it's pretty obvious which areas you should pick out - just look at the miniature and the way the hair has been sculpted. Breaking it down into smaller areas in this way gives a far more natural 'layered' effect than trying to highlight individual hairs... The base colour was highlighted with an off-white to get the highlight colour.
The white streak at the front was treated in exactly the same way - but the colour was taken quite a bit lighter.
That's it for this stage - just the sword and birds to go really (and some smaller detail areas to complete). I hope to get the whole miniature finished off as soon as I'm done with painting Broga... He's coming on really well, in fact I haven't had so much fun painting a miniature for a while - he's definitely suits my painting style more than The Raven Priest.
cheers!
mike
Looking great, thankyou for the sharing.
ReplyDeleteThis is fantastic, Mike and Ali. I have been a fan of your work since Man O' War was a regular feature in White Dwarf. I am really excited to see you lay out a step-by-step. In particular, I enjoy reading about your color choosing process, so thanks for that.
ReplyDeleteI was also surprised to see how often you mix and match paints from different manufacturers. For whatever reason, I've always assumed mixing different formulas would result in a full-blown chemical explosion...
Hi AJ - you can mix and match acrylics from any manufacturer, they all have the same basic formula -artist's tube paints included. I also use inks when I paint - and they mix fine with acrylics too. It's probably possible to mix acrylics and watercolours, though I have never tried that...
ReplyDeletemike