Fortunes of the Brush

[Auberon]

Hello Everyone. I've gone without a true WIP thread for a while now, but with the recent arrival of some new minis I decided to was time to start one up again! Having dropped by here off and on and seen plenty of good advice handed out, it seemed a good idea to alight somewhere new. Keeping a WIP going is also good motivation of course.

My latest arrivals are from Kingdom Death: Monster and they need some paint on them. After all, who wants to play with unpainted minis? Since these minis are to be handled and played with they will probably need a touch-up or two at some point down the road, so I'm not looking to get too crazy for my tabletop. First up is one of the male survivors, who has a name that I can't recall. I wanted to have white stone faces in a cold light and somehow got the idea that I could do it quickly for the table by doing a series of concentric washes and then touching up the highlights. It worked well enough for my purposes, but I'm a slow enough painter I'll still be painting faces into the next decade without tweaking my approach a bit.

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I think I will go multi-cultural with my survivors, but to start my first survivor is Caucasian. I've been buying and using Scale75 paints more and more this year, but I'm still learning how they work. Time for some more practice. :brushlick:

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Lastly for today, he needs something to wear. At first I took a stab at an off-white but I didn't like it next to the blueish stones. Instead, he will now be wearing a red cloth. I'm not sure if I'll dress all the starting survivors the same or not.

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He still needs a little more work (and that didn't preview), but it's time for some sleep and time to wrap up my first post.

 

[ten ball]

Welcome
Nice and clean painting, very good brush control, well done.

Theres room for more contrast and colour variation in the skin.

 

[Maenas]

Hello Auberon! I am also learning how those sc75 paints work, I have found that adding a drop of Vallejo's glaze medium to the mix helps me a lot with them.

I like a lot some of the KD miniatures, while some others are just too strange for my taste. This one is a cool one, although it reminds me of Michael Jackson xD
Nice start, although I think that left nipple is a bit unalligned with the right one (too close to the armpit) but maybe it's just because of the picture.

 

[Auberon]

Thanks for the welcome 10! I agree with you about the contrast. One issue I've run into with the flesh set is hitting on a shadow tone for caucasian skin that I'm happy with. What I've mixed so far are more red than I would like, but I'm sure I'll find the right combination eventually. I'd like to add a bit more depth to his skin before calling him done.

Today though I've started on another one of the survivors. This one will be african. I have done a little experimenting with that end of the Scale75 flesh set when I painted a fire giant, but that time I used quite a bit of the Indian Shadow to keep the skin red. This time I'm going for something less red and will be making it up as i go. Here he is without any highlighting yet.

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[Auberon]

Hello Auberon! I am also learning how those sc75 paints work, I have found that adding a drop of Vallejo's glaze medium to the mix helps me a lot with them.

I like a lot some of the KD miniatures, while some others are just too strange for my taste. This one is a cool one, although it reminds me of Michael Jackson xD
Nice start, although I think that left nipple is a bit unalligned with the right one (too close to the armpit) but maybe it's just because of the picture.

Hi Maenes! I agree that some of the KD minis don't fit my taste, but it looks like what's in the core set is pretty standard fare. His nipples are actually sculpted on so I just went over what was already there. One is closer to the armpit than the other, but it probably has something to do with one arm swinging forward and the other back. I haven't checked by posing in front of a mirror though.

 

[KruleBear]

Nice start on these. The purple shadows on the Dark skin is effective. And that red toga is the most vibrant red I think I have seen. Very nice.

 

[Auberon]

Nice start on these. The purple shadows on the Dark skin is effective. And that red toga is the most vibrant red I think I have seen. Very nice.

There's no secret to that at least. It's just Scale75 Antares Red. This is the first thing I've painted with it, but the color looks like it has some potential.

Last time I was experimenting with the dark side of the Scale75 Flesh set. I had a little too much fun trying out paints and ended up losing my mid-tone along the way. I mixed together something reasonably appropriate and slathered it on over most of his skin. There are still some areas that aren't quite right, but the real point of this exercise was learning the paints. I also have the Scale75 green set that hasn't seen much use yet (can you tell I made a few purchases while they were running their GenCon sale) and decided to try it out as well. Once again sticking to just the paints included in the set, I used Spring Green for my highlight color. It is going into the yellow, and I'm not sure how I feel about that for highlighting my cloth. I think I would prefer something that had more white in it.

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[Zab]

Welcome. I like the style, very illustrated.

 

[KruleBear]

I have yet to open my Scale 75 paints, but I just got the steel nnm and inktensity sets.

 

[Auberon]

@Zab - Interesting that you should mention illustration. Back when I took my art electives I wasn't interested in painting and actually focused on illustration. Since I don't like drybrushing I'm thinking that something more illustration based could be an efficient enough style to work through my pile of unpainted RPG baddies. That's some experimentation I'll be saving for later though as I want at least the four KD survivors to be of a similar style.

@KruleBear - I have the steel nmm set. In fact, the blue-steel portion of it is what I used to paint the base in my first post. One of these days I may even use it to paint steel, but first I think I'll use it to take care of the KD White Lion. Once you open your sets remember to drill a hole in the tip of the bottle. I've heard of people not realizing that the tips aren't pre-punched and making a bit of a mess when they squeeze them.

 

[Auberon]

With Zachary now sitting on the shelf beside my first survivor in a mostly completed state it's time to start work on the female survivors. For this survivor I've decided to try out more new paints, Scale75 Fuchsia and Sunset Purple. Since I don't know what they'll look like I decided to take care of them first. For my highlight I used Antares Red, but one of the many things I want to work on is pushing my highlights so I took it a step further to white. I kept the areas of increased highlight small so I could go back over them if I didn't like how it looked. I realize that some of the areas I took to white are not actually directly lit, but for her I'm leaning more to the concept of interesting rather than realistic. Comparison shots are below.

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So any tips on highlighting to white, other than practice, practice, practice?

 

[KruleBear]

Your use off white looks appropriate. Mike McVey goes back and glazes red ink over the mostly finished reds to get the vibrance back.

This isn't the sbs I recall, but he talks about it in this blog post. http://studiomcvey.blogspot.com/2009/09/assembling-and-painting-broga-hourigsen_17.html

 

[moetle]

Fantastic work! I love your skin tones very much.

 

[Auberon]

@KB - I believe I have seen the post that you are talking about. I did a Bones test piece using that method a while back and it seemed to work OK.

@ Moe - Thanks! Everything I've posted so far has been done using the Scale Flesh set. It's worth a look if you haven't picked it up.

I got some painting time in on the survivor today. I worked on her base for a bit and then started on her skin. I had originally planned to do something really pale, but changed my mind. So far she has a basecoat and a couple of highlights. Unless football is particularly interesting tomorrow I should have time to add in some shadows and then smooth out the transitions.

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[KruleBear]

Great work, especially the eyes and the touch of purple/pink around them.

 

[Auberon]

Yeah, the inserts included with the Scale75 paint sets leave a bit to be desired, but they do occasionally have a suggestion that I like. In this case, using a three way mix of the skin "shadow" paints to outline Caucasian eyes works pretty well.

Since I stopped painting for a moment to transfer some laundry between machines, it seems a good time to take a step back from what I painted during the first half of football. I've added in some shadows as well as glazing some Indian Shadow onto her cheeks. She does not have a sculpted spine so I decided to make the attempt at freehanding one. Taking this pic also made me realize that I've once again painted the base and forgotten to paint the stone face in the survivor's hand. :doh:

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[Auberon]

On to the last starting survivor! Of the paints included in the scale75 flesh set, the one that has given me the most trouble is "Arabic Shadow." There is something about it that just looks oh so slightly off to my eye. It's fine when used as a minor component of one of my mixes, but as a primary ingredient it doesn't seem to be quite right as a shade for light skin or as a highlight for dark skin. Because of this, I have decided it is time to conquer Arabic Shadow and have used it in every mix for her skin. The result is the best I have done with this paint so far, but I'm not entirely satisfied.

I see a path for further highlighting using just the flesh paint set as I have done for the previous three, but I'm not as sure about the shadows. When mixed the Indian Shadow creates a more reddish brown that doesn't quite seem to match. A three way mix works better and is what I've used, but now that I think of it, I haven't tried mixing just Arabic Shadow and African Shadow yet. Further experimentation awaits. :brushlick:

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[Auberon]

They were giving out free flu shots at work a few days ago so I got one and haven't felt quite right since. It's not too bad to paint though. That would be quite the dire illness.

Her skin has received a bit of a touch-up since last time as well as a final highlight. It looks like I got a bit too much on her left knee, but beyond that I've run up against my self-imposed time limit. I also tried out something new for her hair. The final product is definitely rough up close, but does the job at arms length so I'll take it for tabletop.

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[KruleBear]

I wasn't sure about the dark skin either. But once you put the hair in and touched it up, the skin is starting to look pretty good.

 

[Auberon]

Yeah, it's better than I thought it was going to be, but in the end I did a whole lot of mixing to create a pallet that I believe is more or less already covered by commercially available paints. I'll just have to get myself a present or two for the holidays! resent: