squig hunter
New member
Thought you lot might be interested in seeing my painting process, incorporating some elements of the 'French Method', which is similar to what I did already, but I digress.
Miniature is Figones excellent 'Arthur', the colour scheme will be triadic, i.e, incorporating each of the primary colours. To prevent this from looking garish and lego-y, the yellow element will be mainly represented through tones in the white, blue in the tabard, and red in the leathers, hair and skin.
So let's get crackin'
Arthur primed, black:
And the initial pallete for the tabard 'basecoat' Rich blue, light blue, turqoise, cream, grey, brown and reddish black.
The pallete is important, we're aiming for a fairly neutral, light midtone, meaning that we will shade more than highlight, but not by a huge amount. Grey, brown and cream will help neutralise the blue shades once mixed together, each of which already pretty much represents a value leap, from the dark rich blue, through turqoise and into light blue, we have a basic gradient already. This is deepened by the purple transitioning into reddish black which adds more depth, not reachable purely with blue hues.
Here I've applied the 'basecoat' to the tabard. I use basecoat very loosely, as it is a mixture of tones, and not a solid base for highlighting and shading as such, more of a rough sketching in. At this stage, with the dilution of the paint (not overly runny, that would ruin the wetblending) it's still very dark looking. But a slight gradient can be seen over the tabard from top to bottom. A basis for zenithal light.
Here I do the same with the white trousers and sleeves, mixing a neutral mid white with some yellow elements to it, and shading down with yellows and into cool blue tones, not hugely apparent at this stage. Still very rough, but that's how it's meant to be.
Now we don't want to be wetblending these rough coats any further, we apply a healthy dose of hairdryer
And move into refining our gradients:
Here I'm doing a new layer gradient over the first, another wet blend, I can now afford to use thinner paint, and apply it in demi-gradients, as sections of the whole, rather than doing the full blend in one stage, because of the solidity afforded to me by the preparatory layer. I add more yellow and cool hues to the white, emphasising the shapes and direction of the light.
I start to build the solidity and shapes by adding in mid tones and highlights to the gradient. The lightness of the tones used should correspond to the placement vertically, with folds higher up catching a lighter tone than a similarily pronounced fold further down. You can see how the shade of the uppermost creases is the same tone as the highlights of the lower creases.
I now repeat these stages on the other white cloth areas. And have neatened the whites also by blocking in the leather straps with the reddish brown hue.
Here I've repeated the process with the blues of the coat to solidify the gradient. The area here is larger, and the vertical distance greater also, so a higher degree of subtility is required.
And now I again begin to define the light and shapes using lighter and mid tones, respecting the vertical position:
Defining the light and shadow further, it still needs some smoothing and neatening at this stage, but for a 54mm piece, the contrast requisite to the size is starting to appear:
Finishing the whites took more time than I would have liked, so everything else has been set back a bit, not exactly brilliant, hence the lack of updates untill now
Face/Skin
I make my pallette up from fairly neutral browns and the like, the only preestablished 'flesh tone' I'll be using will be a light tone, elf flesh in this case. Trying to increase the contrast for visual effect, the highlights will be concentrated around the centre of the face, rapid progression hopefully ensuring a little bit of atmosphere.
You can see now how I've mixed those colours to get the tones I actually used
And the progression of the face itself, forgive the sub par pictures:
Here, we move from a dark, cold brown, through progressively more saturated, orangey shades, before passing yellow and into a cold white, this helps give the face warmth and the model some contrast against the cold blue tones
I decide to finish the skin with oils, so I make a dry pallette. The retarding ingredient in oil paint is linseed oil, so to make the paint dry quicker, we try to drain this off as much as we can. For this purpose, my pallette is made of kitchen paper, which absorbs a large amount of superflous oil. And, as always, the hairdryer is your friend
Again, the progression of the pallete, I will add some shades with burnt umber and a little bit of blue, and some highlights with a mix of naples yellow, indian red and white, a mix of which I will also use to define the lips and nose.
Here the acryllic stages serve as a base layer, a glorified first gradient, and provide a good basis for the translucent oil paints, however, don't go overboard and add too much, just add touches where needed
And then, the hair.
Adding in a yellow tone to the piece, I chose a fairly neutral yellow, and as before, shaded and highlighted a basic gradient before I started shading and highlighting more finely to define the smaller shapes:
And if you must touch the model, don't let it be your oily fingers that do so, but no kinky latex gloves for me
Hope this has been useful to someone, more to come,
Squig
Miniature is Figones excellent 'Arthur', the colour scheme will be triadic, i.e, incorporating each of the primary colours. To prevent this from looking garish and lego-y, the yellow element will be mainly represented through tones in the white, blue in the tabard, and red in the leathers, hair and skin.
So let's get crackin'
Arthur primed, black:
And the initial pallete for the tabard 'basecoat' Rich blue, light blue, turqoise, cream, grey, brown and reddish black.
The pallete is important, we're aiming for a fairly neutral, light midtone, meaning that we will shade more than highlight, but not by a huge amount. Grey, brown and cream will help neutralise the blue shades once mixed together, each of which already pretty much represents a value leap, from the dark rich blue, through turqoise and into light blue, we have a basic gradient already. This is deepened by the purple transitioning into reddish black which adds more depth, not reachable purely with blue hues.
Here I've applied the 'basecoat' to the tabard. I use basecoat very loosely, as it is a mixture of tones, and not a solid base for highlighting and shading as such, more of a rough sketching in. At this stage, with the dilution of the paint (not overly runny, that would ruin the wetblending) it's still very dark looking. But a slight gradient can be seen over the tabard from top to bottom. A basis for zenithal light.
Here I do the same with the white trousers and sleeves, mixing a neutral mid white with some yellow elements to it, and shading down with yellows and into cool blue tones, not hugely apparent at this stage. Still very rough, but that's how it's meant to be.
Now we don't want to be wetblending these rough coats any further, we apply a healthy dose of hairdryer
And move into refining our gradients:
Here I'm doing a new layer gradient over the first, another wet blend, I can now afford to use thinner paint, and apply it in demi-gradients, as sections of the whole, rather than doing the full blend in one stage, because of the solidity afforded to me by the preparatory layer. I add more yellow and cool hues to the white, emphasising the shapes and direction of the light.
I start to build the solidity and shapes by adding in mid tones and highlights to the gradient. The lightness of the tones used should correspond to the placement vertically, with folds higher up catching a lighter tone than a similarily pronounced fold further down. You can see how the shade of the uppermost creases is the same tone as the highlights of the lower creases.
I now repeat these stages on the other white cloth areas. And have neatened the whites also by blocking in the leather straps with the reddish brown hue.
Here I've repeated the process with the blues of the coat to solidify the gradient. The area here is larger, and the vertical distance greater also, so a higher degree of subtility is required.
And now I again begin to define the light and shapes using lighter and mid tones, respecting the vertical position:
Defining the light and shadow further, it still needs some smoothing and neatening at this stage, but for a 54mm piece, the contrast requisite to the size is starting to appear:
Finishing the whites took more time than I would have liked, so everything else has been set back a bit, not exactly brilliant, hence the lack of updates untill now
Face/Skin
I make my pallette up from fairly neutral browns and the like, the only preestablished 'flesh tone' I'll be using will be a light tone, elf flesh in this case. Trying to increase the contrast for visual effect, the highlights will be concentrated around the centre of the face, rapid progression hopefully ensuring a little bit of atmosphere.
You can see now how I've mixed those colours to get the tones I actually used
And the progression of the face itself, forgive the sub par pictures:
Here, we move from a dark, cold brown, through progressively more saturated, orangey shades, before passing yellow and into a cold white, this helps give the face warmth and the model some contrast against the cold blue tones
I decide to finish the skin with oils, so I make a dry pallette. The retarding ingredient in oil paint is linseed oil, so to make the paint dry quicker, we try to drain this off as much as we can. For this purpose, my pallette is made of kitchen paper, which absorbs a large amount of superflous oil. And, as always, the hairdryer is your friend
Again, the progression of the pallete, I will add some shades with burnt umber and a little bit of blue, and some highlights with a mix of naples yellow, indian red and white, a mix of which I will also use to define the lips and nose.
Here the acryllic stages serve as a base layer, a glorified first gradient, and provide a good basis for the translucent oil paints, however, don't go overboard and add too much, just add touches where needed
And then, the hair.
Adding in a yellow tone to the piece, I chose a fairly neutral yellow, and as before, shaded and highlighted a basic gradient before I started shading and highlighting more finely to define the smaller shapes:
And if you must touch the model, don't let it be your oily fingers that do so, but no kinky latex gloves for me
Hope this has been useful to someone, more to come,
Squig
