Here's the next stage with the Raven Priest - it's my turn this time and I have painted the legs. This was quite a simple area, but the main thing to take into consideration is the fineness of the sculpt - the detail is so small and sharp that it really needs the minimum of painting - it would be quite easy to 'over-paint' and make them look messy. For this reason I kept the paint pretty thin and built the shading and highlighting up with a few simple layers.
1 - The base coat was a sandy brown colour that was slightly dulled down with a spot of black. I didn't want it to be too warm, and close in colour to the feathers - so I just knocked the edge off it.
2 - I applied a thin wash of a mix of the base colour with quite a bit of dark brown added. I used a flat brown to darken it - again I didn't want a warm tone. I also added a little matte medium to help it adhere to the surface better.
3 - The next step was to use the base colour for the first highlight layer. This was applied to the tops of all the prominent small creases. The areas you are covering are a little small for effective blending, but it's good to soften the edges where you can.
4 - Further highlights are built up by adding off-white to the base colour and applying to smaller areas. Remember the light is coming from above, so the tops of the creases will be the lightest. Photo 5 shows another, lighter shade added after the first highlight. I just added these two levels.
5 - The final stage with the leggings themselves was to blend in a little shade tone to give some depth. This was the wash colour with a little brown ink added. I applied this very thin (in a controlled way), and blended it in with a second brush. I mainly applied it round the edges of the bracelets and bangles, but also between the legs and in some of the areas of most obvious shadow.
6 - Here I have picked out all the small details. The metal bangles were painted bronze and highlighted with silver. I added a little turquoise colour to the shading to give an antique feel.
That's it for this stage! Just few areas to go now - the loin cloth, belt and hair on the main figure - then the sword and birds.
mike
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2 comments:
Cool, I can't wait to see the rest.
For your coop minis, how do you decide who paints what? Do you discuss the paint scheme beforehand, or do you make it up as you go? The two of you seem to have a very unusual (perhaps unique, at least among top tier miniature painters) way of doing collaborative work, and I'm really curious how it works.
Hi David - to be honest, there's no real method to it! We talked about it a little before we started - just to decide on an overall direction. Then just took it in turns to paint obviously different parts of the miniature. We both quite enjoy working on things like this - it's always nice when you pick up the miniature again, and something has been finished for you! I think it helps that the mechanics of the way we paint is pretty similar - ie two-brush blending over a solid base coat. If we painted in different ways it might not work so well...
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