painting convincing velvet

[cybersquig]

any one know of some good examples of brushed velvet being painted convincingly onto a model? I\'d really like to give it a try (I\'ll stick a wip together to get feedback as I go along), but I don\'t know how to go about doing it. Currently I\'m leaning towards painting a swirly freehand over the whole area (cloak of a pirate of sartosa captain), but for one side of the folds using the negative of the other (light-dark detail as opposed to dark-light detail). Then highlighting and lowlighting it appropriately. I\'ve only got that from staring at a velvet covered beanbag/poufe whatever you want to call it in a friends lounge. Anywho, any ideas?

James

 

[generulpoleaxe]

easiest way is just to increase the contrast way more than normal.

i reckon if you did paint velvet so that it is 100% accurate most people wouldn\'t like the look of it as they wouldn\'t realize the effect you had achieved was realistic.

 

[cybersquig]

hmmm...you may be right... I just thought it\'d suit my very matt painting style (I don\'t know why all my models come out that way, it isn\'t concious, I just have always preferred it, and that\'s what I do!) and it wasn\'t something I\'d seen anywhere before.

meh. shame. Thanks for the reply - if i\'d spent a couple of evenings on his cloak only to find that noone got it *shivers*

or maybe this is the next nmm revolution all those marines going around dressed in velvet...ogre kingdom maneaters in velvet cloaks...Plague marines in holy(!) velvet cloaks, highelves with neatly pressed and brushed velvet jackets... actually the only person I can think of who actually has one is bilbo...

 

[Einion]

Originally posted by generulpoleaxe
easiest way is just to increase the contrast way more than normal.

That\'s the basic thing in a nutshell - you can see the effect very clearly in painted representations of velvet in master paintings.

James, the colour for the highlight has to be picked carefully but most of it is about very strong contrast. In practice I\'ve found that using few intermediate colours helps for this - so undercoat very dark, some slight modelling with a midtone and then do the highlighting using just a single highlight colour in lots of thin layers.

Originally posted by generulpoleaxe
i reckon if you did paint velvet so that it is 100% accurate most people wouldn\'t like the look of it as they wouldn\'t realize the effect you had achieved was realistic.

There is a danger of that, especially in the round. I think with historical subjects it\'s easier to sell as often it\'s a little more obvious that something might be made out of velvet but the fixed light direction - as with NMM - tends to work better if you look at it just from fixed angles (which is why this can look so good in photos).

Einion

 

[cybersquig]

okey dokey, I\'ll stick him on as a wip and do him step by step to get feedback in a week or two, I\'m sure I\'ll improve loads with feedback (o: thanks!