Grey Maiden (Pathfinder)

[paedia]

For this mini, I was working on practicing a few techniques. My NMM on the sword came out better than any of the ones I've done so far. The gold armor actually came out better than I thought it would. I tried to do a transparent green hose effect on her upper legs, but it doesn't show up that well in the pictures. I struggled with the shield. I was going for shiny gold, but it came out more like a golden SENMM mush. On the purple gem, I'm not sure if it needed both highlight dots or if just the top one would have been better.

View attachment 9936

Any comments or guidance would be most welcome

link: http://www.coolminiornot.com/294654

 

[freakinacage]

I am shite at nmm but from my crappy perspective, I think the gold needs more shading generally and some pure white hot spots to make it pop. The highlighting/shading seems to be in the right place, so that's more than half the battle won

 

[supervike]

Yeah, it definitely needs more 'pop'. You are certainly on the right track with it. I'd think a glaze or two would pull the colors closer together, then go for the extra highlight.

 

[paedia]

Yeah, it definitely needs more 'pop'. You are certainly on the right track with it. I'd think a glaze or two would pull the colors closer together, then go for the extra highlight.

Would I use the base midtone (Palomino Gold in this case), or would I go darker with the glaze to emphasize the extra highlight?

Thanks so much.

 

[supervike]

I'm certainly no expert, but I'd suggest a deeper shade, and keep it away from the utmost highlights.

 

[Dragonsreach]

NMM is all about smoothness of transition from dark tone to highlight and 'flare' coupled with correct placement of the highlighting.
Rackham's company painters brought the technique back into 'vogue' due to their ability to make the transitions seamless.

Now I've been working to get my own attempts at NMM to look something like theirs and after a lot of years practising I'm still not there.
What I can see on this mini is that you need to work on the placement of the highlights to show the origin of the light source. At the moment it seems to be undefined and therefore loses the effect.

If you think of the helmet for example the overall shape is an ovoid so (being right handed) I'd tend to place the highlight and Flare at the 1 o'clock postion and work the shadow tones to increase at the 7-8 o'clock areas.
View attachment 9951
Like this example.
Now adding in complex curves such as the cheek recesses allows for shadow tone variations which means you'll need to place a dark tone very often underneath a bright highlight. I find it easier for this kind of work to use fine glazes of paint to slowly build up the darker tone and also I find it easier to turn the model upside down in order to place these shadow tone glazes.