Thanks Cass!
Okay, now that I've unburied my thread, I can get things caught up here. I've been working on this guy and meaning to update, but every time I start, I get interrupted. I left off, after stripping the thing once, working on other parts of the armor because 1. I was getting frustrated with the NMM and 2. If I did manage to get it right, I didn't want to ruin it by over-paint from the armor or other stuff.
I moved on to the cloth items. Since wings were going to be black, I decided this time around to paint the cloth white.
Hey, wait a sec, that white ain't half bad. It's got just a bit too much blue in it, but perfectly fixable at a later date.
Then that ole inner demon, Brian...Briane whatever the hell its name is....popped up again. "Ya know, some folks have a devil of a time painting white like this, but you just knocked it out in less than 10 minutes."
Me - "Yeah, that was pretty cool."
Brian - "So why in the world are you struggling so much with NMM?"
Me - "Oh, I don't know. Maybe it's because I can wet-blend this stuff. but I can't do....that...with...NMM (Realization dawns and suddenly :lamp
. Wait a sec? Why not? Where's the rule that says I can't wet-blend with acrylic retarder and the whole nine yards?"
Brian is now laughing hysterically at me.
Me - "Well, most folks wet-blend when they paint, I just use the retarder more than they do. There is no bloody rule that says I can't do it that way."
So, eyeballing the wings, which are also now getting in my way and the fact the black just aint cutting it - plus, I once again have waaaay too much paint on him.
Well guess what, he's getting another bath in Dawn Power Dissolver. It's a damn good thing this stuff is so gentle on resins.
So into the bag he goes.
And comes out a clean and ready to go. I also removed the wings while I was at it.
Wet-blending with retarder is the foundation of my painting style now. If I can't paint that way, I'm suddenly and completely out of my element. And the funny thing was, it's so ingrained that it didn't even occur to me that was part of the problem. But I can't wet-blend this stuff 100%. Again, I'd be applying too much paint. So I experimented a little and this is what I came up with.
Dark brown is now a dark brown glaze - basically a mix of dark brown paint, a few drops of chestnut ink, and good ole Vallejo glazing medium, then I thinned that as much as I dared with water. The main body of my paints, for the gold, I mixed a healthy dose of retarder. All the way up to white. Then I worked on the technique. It didn't come through right away, but each step was much more promising than the last.
Then I got this -
You can't see it in this photo but I did get it all the way up to white.
It's not perfect by any sense of the word, but it's a hell of a lot better than what I was doing.
I've only worked on the full chest plate on the above pic. The arms haven't been touched at all and I'm just starting on the legs.
I sorta touched on the neck but not a heck of a lot yet.
This one is from today, a little more work done. It's really easy to screw up that's for sure.
The one thing that's really cool about this glaze is if I screw up and put too much highlight on, a touch with my smallest brush of the glaze, knocks the highlight color down one.
For example here are the colors I'm using -
I just took pics of them right in the pot - sorry for the toothpicks in the last one but I was moving fast. lol!
The second to the last color is actually bronzed flesh and it's a pretty strong color. That makes it really easy to go over board with it. But if I hit it with the glaze, it knocks the color down one step and it looks like the color I have in the upper right.
If I put the glaze on the lightest color, then it knocks it down to the bronzed flesh, another layer of glaze knocks it down again. So it's really cool that I can fix stuff and not CHANGE the colors I'm working in.
I think I'm definitely moving in the right direction now. There's only one last problem...my work has once again put on too many layers while I was experimenting with this stuff. The filigree is so fine that anything more than two or three layers and it's covered.
So once again, I'm eyeballing that Dawn Power Dissolver. At least this time I'll be able to get that stupid seam on his leg that I forget about EVERY STINKING TIME! It's driving me nuts because I only remember it when I've got paint on him.
DING DING! ROUND THREE!
