Assembling and painting Broga Hourigsen pt.3

Here's the next stage on my version of Broga - actually there are two stages here. The first thing I did was to glaze the red armour. Unfortunately that process didn't photograph very well - the changes in colour are so slight between each glaze, I would have to show lots of photos that look basically exactly the same... So the first photograph in the series above is when the glazing process is finished.

I applied around 12-15 glazes of ink - and as I have said before, it's very important to use transparent ink for this process - it gives an intensity of colour that glazing with paint simply couldn't achieve. The glazes are applied very watered down and very evenly - if you allow it to pool on the surface, the finish will be patchy and messy. Dip your brush in the glaze colour and then dab it on a piece of paper towel to remove most of the liquid from the brush before applying to the miniature. You are aiming to apply a thin, even layer consistently over the surface. You may think 12-15 glazes will take a long time to apply - but if you give the miniature a quick blast with a hair drier between each layer, they actually don't take very long at all.

I used a series of deepening colours for the glazes - starting light and getting deeper as they go on. I also change the area that I hit with the glaze each time according to the highlight areas - so the first glazes is a mix of yellow and red (I aim for a rich golden yellow), and this is applied to the whole area. Subsequent glazes are deepened with more red, and painted onto the miniature avoiding a little more of the highlight areas each time. So the final glazes are deep red and are only applied to the areas with no highlighting - this effectively shades them down to a deeper, richer red. For the really deep tones (in the most recessed areas) I add some blue to the glaze mix. It's important you don't glaze over the highlights with the deeper colours, or you'll tone them down too much.

The trick with glazing like this is to be patient. When you apply the first glaze, there will be hardly any difference - but as you go on the colour will get deeper and richer.

The photos sequence above shows the loin cloth being painted. I knew I wanted to add a freehand design to this area, so I planned to keep the whole thing quite light and simply shaded. The base coat was a mix of bone and off-white, with just a little black added to take the clean edge off the colour. The next step was to roughly apply the shading - this is the base colour with a little more black added. I didn't bother blending this stage very carefully as I knew I was going to cover it again. When that was dry I used the base colour to clean up the transition between the colours. The next two steps show the highlights being added - and these are a mix of the base colour plus more off-white. There is actually about four stages of highlighting on those two pictures - just adding a little more white each time, and blending the colour in with a second brush.

The final photo show the loin cloth finished, and cloak with the base coat applied - it's just to show how much neater everything starts to look when you fill in the unpainted areas.

That's it for this time, I'll get the next part up soon. It should take to long to get through the rest of the miniature as I only took stage by stage pictures of some of the parts. With any luck I'll get through the whole article before we release the next Studio McVey miniature! Ali is currently painting her, and I know I am biased, but both the sculpt and paint job are absolutely stunning...

talk to you soon

mike