Fortunes of the Brush

Maenas

Maenas

New member
Auberon, don't know if this will help you, but they used arabian shadow mixed with indian shadow, and arabian mixed with pink flesh on the leaflet examples that came with the skin set. Maybe is to "dilute" it's yelow-green tinge with a more reddish one since both indian shadow and pink flesh have red in them. (i'm still a beginner with advanced colour mixing)

Anyway I like the skin tones you are obtaining ^^
 
Auberon

Auberon

New member
I think that you've made a fair observation. Rather than saying that her skin is based around Arabic Shadow, it would have been more accurate for me to say that her skin is based around a 50:50 mix of Arabic Shadow and Pink Flesh. It was that combination that I added other paints from the set to in order to create the shadows and highlights. Of course, that means all but one of my colors was a combination of at least three paints. While something like that is fine for advanced work, I'd prefer something a little more straightforward for a gaming piece that is in constant danger of needing a repair.
 
Auberon

Auberon

New member
The Dark Maiden

While I still have the lion to work on for my KD:M starting encounter, I've decided to take a bit of a break from hard plastic and tackle something metal. I've had my eye on the Dark Maiden for awhile now and decided it was finally time to free her from her blister pack prison. She didn't have too many mold lines, which is always nice, but after looking her over she does have the problem of full assembly making it impossible to reach certain places. One green stuff technique that I had heard of but never tried was filling the gaps during the initial prep stage by putting a little oil on one of the parts. That way the GS only sticks to one but is already in place for when you need it.

For a first attempt it worked well enough. There is enough GS in the gap to mostly take care of it, but I'll still have to come in from the side a bit once the two pieces are joined.

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Now for painting the Dark Maiden my first inclination was to go very heavy on the wood and then using a blue glow. It turns out that DKS has already done this for the store pic, which means I of course have to do something different. What I've decided to do instead is make her upper body lively and then blend that down into wood somewhere below her waist. Even though I want her lively, I don't want her to actually look human. Instead my plan was to make her upper body look like a lighter shade of wood than the rest of the mini, so I've based her "skin" around the sandalwood paint from SC75. It's probably an impossible task to sell her skin as wood with my meager skills, but I won't really know how well it works until her wings are attached and painted as a darker wood.

The gold, red, and purple are all just base coats to see how it would all look. The purple is definitely getting darker, and I'm leaning towards a darker red as well.

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Auberon

Auberon

New member
The Dark Maiden in Red

@KB - I had to stop for a minute to compare the mini to the image on my screen, and I believe the red in the pic is more vibrant than what it is in hand. This is especially true away from my painting lights and under the normal room lighting. The shade of red above is still my midtone below, but it may be that I need to use something other than my green cutting mat as a background to get the red right. Or use photoshop.

So speaking of the red, I took some time tonight to add in some shadows and highlights. Her front and sides don't need to be 100%, but her back does since it will soon be unreachable. As I type this I see that just like last time the red is not completely accurate. I'll have to do something about that next time since color accuracy seems like a good idea for painting advice.

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Auberon

Auberon

New member
I've had a chance to put in a quick bit of work on the Dark Maiden. To start, I didn't really like the way her hair looked so I reworked it. It was looking better, but as my session was coming to a close I decided to try a sepia ink wash on it and see how it worked. The shadows are now a shade darker, which I like, but I lost some of my midtone. I'm also not liking the highlight on top of her head so that will need a bit more work. I also attempted to paint some golden cloth. Now I have a bit of a shocking confession to make. I do not personally own any clothing sewn with golden thread. I know, I know, my fashion is lacking. The Google gave me some ideas, but mostly it is just blocked in.

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Hopefully I will get some painting in tomorrow with football as a bit of background noise.
 
Auberon

Auberon

New member
While it wasn't the extended paint session that I had hoped for, I did have time today to sit down and paint some wood. Her wings are only midtones, but I wanted something not white in place before I glued them on. I'm kinda happy that I only knocked the paint off in a few places since I had mentally prepared myself for more damage. Given my powers of destruction, I think I'll go ahead and attach her to a base before I do any further painting. It will make a couple of areas harder to reach, but it should save me some touch-ups in the end.

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KruleBear

KruleBear

Active member
The golden highlights in the hair look good, especially in the back. The first couple in the front/top have an abrupt transition in the photos andcould use some additional blending.
 
Auberon

Auberon

New member
@KB - i'm glad you liked them. I was mostly focused on the back since, now that she's all glued together, it's a PITA to reach. The front part of her hair is on my list of things to touch-up before all is done.

When it comes to painting I'm not the most efficient in the world. To try and help that a bit, I decided to prep some minis that are only destined for simple tabletop. That way if I'm waiting for something on my main mini, or just aren't feeling it that day, I'll have something else to keep me occupied. I pulled out the dragon hatchlings from the Bones II KS and based them. Now we all know that Bones have issues, but I think the factory in China must have sub-contracted with Mold-line & Sons for these. I trimmed the worst of it off but there are still plenty noticeable.

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The idea of course was to have these in easy reach, but seeing them sitting there I decided to spend a few minutes on one of them and color his base. Then while I'm at it basecoat the rest of him. Oh, might as well work on the wings.

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I had a few minutes to kill after supper and took care of the scales as well. I use the term scales loosely because they appear in patches but are absent in other areas.

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That has 95% of this guy covered to what I call my tabletop quality. It still needs a few details, like the claws, and inside of the mouth, and the eyes... which I can't seem to find. Any ideas or is it just a detail lost to Bones?

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Auberon

Auberon

New member
Yeah, I'm thinking about going ahead and painting another one. I'm actually on-call for the holiday, so maybe I'll smuggle a mini into work with me if I get the call. It's probably the only way I'll ever get paid for painting something! :laugh:
 
Auberon

Auberon

New member
To be fair, the camera is smoothing out a few imperfections that I can see in hand. Her chest is bugging me enough that I will have to go back to it before I can call her done.

This morning I worked on the individual planks. I couldn't decide if I wanted them to appear old and dry or damp from the sea. I wanted to get them out of the way since the next big step on her is to blend her dress into the wood. I may change my mind on the darkness of the planks depending on how that goes. My other thought was to have the color sort of radiating out from her, so that the wood is lighter the further away from her that it is.

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I also slapped some paint on another of the dragon hatchlings. Just to make it a little different I used jade, but I wonder if I don't have an off bottle of jade paint. While the paint covers evenly, it is glossy straight out of the bottle and fairly transparent. I know most paints have something added to them to increase their opacity since most modern pigments are somewhat transparent. This bottle seems to be lacking that additive.

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Auberon

Auberon

New member
Howdy 10. I agree with you about the wood. These scale75 paint sets are still fairly new to me and I have yet to see what all the colors can do. I'll be mixing up a darker brown to try out later. Speaking of trying new things, I blended red into wood to connect the more lively torso into the more wooden remains of the ship. I took two pics, one right after blending in case I screwed up the shading/highlights and then another after adding some in. The last of the white primer was bugging me so I started covering it up, though it looks like I stopped to grab the camera before I finished. :doh!:

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I also got called into work today :curse!: and just wasn't feeling it when I got home. So instead I took out my relaxing piece again. Against my better judgement I did some drybrushing on the scales... and immediately disliked it because it looked drybrushed. Anyway, still trying to keep that jade-like look for the greens.

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Auberon

Auberon

New member
Somewhere along the way I started having too much fun trying new things and forgot that this lady was supposed to be fairly quick. I picked up the pace today and got a few things off of her to do list.


  • Metals - the first law of mica flakes states that some will end up in places you don't want them. Because of this I try not to paint metallics last since I personally find it frustrating to say "Done!" and then see a sparkly bit where there shouldn't be. I'd forgotten how shiny VMC silver is, since I hadn't used it in awhile, but it became nice and grungy after a couple of quick washes.
  • I had read at one time that silver could be used as a final highlight for gold so I tried it out. It works, though it is pretty intense.
  • The swords became blue, and aren't quite done. The transition line on the front of the upraised sword appears to be due to a horizontal imperfection in the sword itself. It's really hard to see without the camera.
  • Seaweed - check.
  • Touch up hair - check.
  • Ropes - check. They are a little closer in color to their surroundings than I would have like, but I can live with it.
  • Wood - I went in with a darker brown for the gaps and reinforced the edge highlighting. I'm sure there's room for further contrast, but that will have to wait for the next mini.


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Tomorrow's main goal is her backside wood and touching up anything else along the way. After that I think I'll start on her base, which will be all sorts of watery stuff I haven't done much with in the past.
 
Auberon

Auberon

New member
@KB - I suppose it could be, but I'm not sure that I'm up to making it dirty without causing it to blend in too much with the wood. I'll give her a once over before I call it done and decide then.

So as I mentioned my plan was to work on the back of the mini, which is mostly a whole lot of wood. After that I decided to give her a Caribbean color base. Just so you know, I live 800 miles from the gulf and it's been probably 20 years since I last saw it in person. Which is to say my memory of how it looks is pretty hazy. After laying down some color I added water effects. It's my first time trying to make waves so we'll see how it goes. Since I took this last picture I've added another layer of water effects. If that looks acceptable I'll try mixing some water effects with white paint and attempt foam. :fingers-crossed:

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While the latest water is setting I started on my next project, which is finishing up a 54mm mini that I primed months ago and then never finished. At this point I'm just blocking out colors. I see that there was once a painting contest using this very mini if I need some inspiration.

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Auberon

Auberon

New member
Thanks! I think I learned a bit and will be in better shape the next time I paint some wood.

My foam attempt didn't work quite so well; I believe I mixed too much white paint into the water effects. I'll have to practice on some test pieces and then come back to her base.
 
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