Emphasise!
Things can look different in RL to the camera so these are just what I see from the pictures.
Contrast Buddy Contrast
The purple cape has the darks but not the intensity of the highlights. Im sure you remember how you did liliths dress, think of compacting that into his tunic and also his cape, different colours can help because of the tonal differnce (light blue - purple).
Skin is tricky and it feels so wrong to paint dark colours on to an albino but for what we do adding contrast pushing the tone using greys, tiny bit of brown, down to black. Reference pictures of statues can help with light and shadow.
what we see in real life Vs what our eye NEEDs to see in smaller scale to figure out whats going on.
You know what you see in both pictures. Grey, white with tones of brown, flecks of others and colours of the enviroment, and when the light and shadow is added those colours are emphasised.
Spend some time evaluating what you see and how you could increase the contrast if it was smaller in every day life. Walking down the street seeing a rubbish bin. Maybe a few scrathes that could be more defined in it if it was a mini, maybe the post is a bit bent that holds it. The idea is Emphasise it. Seeing the colours and emphasising the light and shadow in your head. Yes Im MAD but it helps when you sit down to paint having the thoughts of the day with you.
BASE WORK
Your Base work is nice and you're getting there. Basing is one of my fav's so enjoy my little run down
Reference pictures on what it is you want to replicate are very helpful, so find some pictures of rocks in a grassy field and use that to help transfrom your base. This is what I looked at before I did my dwarf. I didnt add trees and ferns but you could imagin if it was a bigger base it could sit in here, I hope. (laughs in head)
I looked at the shape of the rocks added some pointy ones looked at the colours and used them in the rocks. A mixture of wahses, drybrushing, glazing, sponge, and a few small lines. The foliage was way out of my legue and it didnt need it, so I just used some grass tufts and mixed some saturn varnish with some woodland scenics fine turf and made moss.
****Sticking them on is not enough!****
I aslo put some wash and paint on both the moss and grass, dark green and brighter green then a few spots of 97% white with mix of the bright green, Emphasise! ( I only used pure white on the face this time) Then added some water effects mixed with the same dark and bright green. The water is not green in the picture I just took the liberty to make it more interesting(I hope).
Intergration of base and mini, Harmonising
I used teal and the orange/red colours to bind the mini and the base together, it does not have to stand out, just be there for the subconscious to work it out. You see further down Skettets uses blues and purples to bind and build emotion. In your head you don't instantly think oh thats the same colour, you feel the emotion of the piece. Apon further study you can see how it works.
Shape of base
I think you could build up the area around the skull to make it look over grown. Maybe a hill or Like the earth is taking back the skull. A dynamic, angled, or varried level base is more attractive than a flat one.
Wip of angled base with split level
Skelettets Base
Angled, split level. Harmonised and you see lights and darks
Your Base
What it is short on is Emotion, a feeling of depth and the feeling of a living enviroment. Shadow and light needs to be picked out, more variation of colour and variation that you see in real rock, plant, grass, ivy.
I like the ivy on the edge, flowers and grass, its a good start it just needs to look more like a real enviroment even if it is fantasy or sci-fi. Reference pictures my man. Emphasise!
Last though
We all have vivid imaginations thats why we are all at this crazy place. I hope this is benificial and what you are looking for in the way of help. The last thing is Practice no amount of watching and reading can turn you in to a master it just helps to realise and understand what your trying to achieve.
Paint on buddy
