Alastriel, Elf Mage

[mrrocknroll]

Hi all.
I\'ve decided to paint Alastriel from Reaper she\'s gonna be the 3rd model I\'ve painted since coming back to painting models in a 7 year absence, thats not me making any excuses so please don\'t get me wrong at any point in this topic.



As you can see i\'ve only really got the base on the clothing and hair which im using the GW set paints. But I\'ll be updating her as and when I get the chance to paint / photo her, which should hopefully be ever evening.

But basically I\'d like feedback as to how you think Im doing and of course any help you can give me will be well received.
My camera skills ain\'t the best either nor is the lighting since my bulb blow up earlier.

 

[Maron]

I am not a good painter so take everything I say with a pinch of salt but heres what I think anyway...

It is a bit early on in the process for me to get a good feel of what you are aiming for but the only thing that strikes me at the moment is that the hair and cloak really clash with each other. This is just a purely personal thing but pink and orange don\'t sit well next to each other in my eyes.

Other than that I tend to work from the inside out with models as it makes for an easier paint job. When you come to paint the face you are more likely to get some paint on the hair that if you did it the other way around (does that make sense???). What I mean is if you paint the hair first you are likely going to have to go back and do some again after you have done the face unless you are able to control your brush well.

Post some more pics once you have started highlighting and shading her.

 

[mrrocknroll]

Yeah I kinda realised it was early after I started so heres the update.

I didn\'t like where the model was going so I made some changes to her.

Basically hated the bleach bone I was using so went for a more lighter gray, haven\'t really done much to the high lighting as it was late when I finished going back over the clothing.

Also the hair has had its 1st high light, I\'m gonna gradually go lighter in some places by may be adding a yellow to get the light areas a touch up.


I\'ve just put down the skin color so I could get a feel as to how the three choosen colors of the skin / hair and clothing look. Not sure on the cloak yet may even change that on the inside to a lighter pink.

Anyway, since I\'m still new to painting if anyone could help me with the ways I can high Light the clothing that be great, I spoke once or twice to some guys about this at work and they said to dry brush it on, but I dont like that.

I\'m always open to comments so please good or bad I wanna know, can\'t become better without critism.

Thanks.
Nick

 

[daemon boy]

i think that the highlights on the hair are a bit rough, well from that distance anyway, i prefer greatly the grey rather than the bleached bone! good choice

 

[JesterzUSMC]

I like the compliment of reds, (orange hair, mauve/pink cloak) and the gray is a much better choice as well.
Drybrushing is good if you are going for a weathered or rough textured look, otherwise I would go with washes.
I myself am just starting to get back into doing \"display\" pieces, meaning I am trying to get away from the \"quick\" army painting techniques.
Anyway, basically I\'m saying good color choices, try thin washes in multitude instead of drybrushing, and try for a more natural blending look with the hair as well.
Keep \'em coming...

 

[Thunderhawker]

LOL - looks like I beat your edit

That is definitely a complete redux. I do like the blue/orange compliment better. Also you may wish to push the contrast on the flesh.

 

[mrrocknroll]

lol cheers mate, I gave up and cried in a corner

I was infact gonna say, should I high light the skin more, also the cloth, but you beat me to it.

 

[Manus]

Yes - much better. These colors compliment each other, making for at more interesting,calm and generally more \"true\" looking mini.
The highlighting on the purple clothing is well done and I believe it\'s the way you should do the rest of the highlights instead of drybrushing.
A note on the highlights on the hair; do them in bands/stribes across the hair not along the hair.

 

[mrrocknroll]

Cheers mate, I\'ve yet to re-do the hair yet, But I\'m gonna try what you\'ve said.

 

[fieldarchy]

Don\'t give up Nick! Keep going! She\'s a somewhat difficult mini for a beginning painter to learn on. You were doing well though.

 

[mrrocknroll]

You realise I owe this all to you though Meg :beer:
Yeah shes hard to paint, but hasn\'t put me off ordering another one of her

 

[fieldarchy]

aw damn you owe your headache to me?! shucks! That\'s not what I was going for! /sarcasm

Keep workin\' trust me I hit a wall this weekend with one of my minis. going along so well and then BAM! all my hard work gone by paint that went grainy and chalky.

 

[mrrocknroll]

Yeah I read that on the reaper forum, something about bad patch of paint, orange or so I think. I had something similar \"Back in the day\" when I used to do warhammer stuff, some shoddy gray went bad on me .:evil:

I\'ve not hit a wall btw, just had a lot of emotion baggage pounded on me in 2 days and had to take time out to help my friends > my painting.

 

[mrrocknroll]

Been a while since I\'ve updated cause some hectic stuff going on for me, so here goes:

As you can see from the picture I\'ve managed to redo her hair, I wasn\'t participially happy with the redness of it so I went back to a dark kinda brownly/ red, erm, I also re done the staff, after speaking to FieldArchy about it, it became obvious that the browns in the cloak and staff was blending in to each other, so to counter this I changed to highlights to get more of a bone colour.
I also went about doing highlights for the boots and briefly did the sword, but for this moment in time I\'m not interested in doing much work on metals or armours and rather get the basics to blending and highlighting cloth.
Several other things have been done like smaller details, but again I wasn\'t so worried about these and can patch them up later on. But for my standards I\'m happy with her.
If anyone can give comments on how I can get the last few things done to complete her Id be much obliged.

Nick

 

[airhead]

I cannot tell if you\'ve fixed it, but there is a huge mold line still on the first pic.

Her cloak going down on down through the rock in the base.
There is still a bit showing in that last pic, under the cloak.