Pirate Goblin Dio

[CreganTur]

This is going to be my entry for the contest over at Reaper. One of my best friends gave me the Pirate Goblin and Powder Monkey set from Reaper and I thought they would be perfect to paint for this. I just have to hope I can fit all the work I have to do in between now and the deadline.

For the dio I'm going to try my hands at my first ever deep water base. I've already picked up some clear acrylic for the water. My idea is to have the goblin and monkey walking across an old wooden dock. The water will have a very sandy and muddy base with some random bits and bobs, including a rusting sword sticking up out of the muck.

This is as far as I've gotten on the Goblin. The hat and flesh are the only things that are "done" at the moment- I'll probably give the skin another touchup after I finish everything else. I'm thinking about doing the vest in an earthy color and doing something very bright and possibly patterned for the sash.

I finally have good pics because I picked up a Sony a290 DSLR and a macro lens last week. Thanks to War Griffon over at WAMP I finally figured out how to use them properly!

 

[SkelettetS]

cool guy and interresting idea!
nice skintone youve accomplished there :good:

 

[Kathie von Vhoorl]

Great ideas! The model looks really fun to paint too. Good luck with the competition.

 

[supervike]

He's a cute one! Good luck, and keep us posted.

 

[CreganTur]

I've made a lot of progress since my last post- which is great since this guy is due in less than a week now. I tried to add more color into this miniature so that I can really set off the skin compared to the clothes and other details. I followed Matt's CMON tutorial on NMM for the blunderbuss and I think it turned out really well- it's definately the best NMM I've done to date. The feather was a fun little challenge and I forced myself to slow down and highlight each individual raised section so I wouldn't ruin it with bad drybrushing or by getting the highlight in the recesses because of going too fast. I do wonder if Ineed to give the gun's stock a wash with Devlan Mud, though. I'm also trying to think of what to do for the bag- I don't want to do a boring leather purse for this gobo.

I've also finished sculpting the parts for the base. This is the first base where I can honestly say it's 100% scratch built. I sculpted the wooden planks, supports, and beams for the dock out of Sculpey and the terrain of the base is sand glued over Sculpey which sits on a 2" X 2" 0.08' thick piece of plasticard. I'm going to paint it up to look like beach sand and litter the area with a rusted dagger, some chain, and other assorted trash. Once it's all painted, glued, and varnished I'll be using clear epoxy mixed with a tiny amount of blue ink to create the blue caribean waters... for some reason I just picture this scene happening there.

 

[reigada8]

I also like the skin tone you are using. If you don't mind me asking what colors are you using?

 

[CreganTur]

I don't mind at all. Here's what I did:

- undercoat or prime black
-basecoat 1:1 Orchide Shade to Gretchin Green
-Gretchin Green covering everything but deepest recesses
-2 washes of Thraka Green- second wash for shadows and recesses only
-Gretchin Green painted on all raised areas
-Highlight 1:1 Bleached Bone and Gretchin Green
-Extreme Highlight pure bleached bone

All the colors were properly thinned sothat they would blend well.

 

[CreganTur]

I've almost finished the base for this scene. I busted out my old Citadel inks to get all of the shadows and tones into the wood before coming back and highlighting it back up. The rusted dagger is from one of Reaper's weapons packs, the chain is jewelry chain, and the shell is a real mussel shell that I just repainted. You'll notice some out of place highlighting in the lower picture- I've fixed that now but didn't want to take a second set of shots. Now all that's left is to mix up my clear resin for the water and let it dry overnight. I really hope it turns out well- I've got some experience with standard resin but this is my first time with the clear stuff.

On a related note I decided to add the Powder Monkey to this scene who comes in the same package as the goblin. Stupi simian's ankle snapped and it's so thin that the pin I put in ripped right through the side of the metal just from the weight of the mini. Luckly my local store had another pack, so I picked it up and will be finishing him soon.

 

[SkelettetS]

nice one, will be cool to see it with water effect, good luck with that!

 

[CreganTur]

I sealed all of the edges and the bottom of the plasticard mold I put around this base with PVA glue and the clear resin still found a place to leak out. Good thing I put it in a dish, otherwise my work area would be a mess! Luckly, only a small amount came out, but it was enough that I had to pour in some more to get the water back to the level I wanted. I actually mixed some Asureman Blue wash into the resin, but I was afraid to overdo it, which resulted in some pretty colorless water. I'm very happy with it and I've learned what to do different next time.

The Pirate Golbin is almost completely finished. The last thing I need to do is the jewel on the hilt of his sword- other than that it's all done. His money purse was something that I didn't want to be leather, so I decided to do a checkered cloth. I also hit the extreme highlights again because I felt like they were't showing enough contrast.

 

[SkelettetS]

oh i think the base turned out very well! success!

 

[CreganTur]

I finally finished everything for this project. The Powder Monkey was the last bit and I was able to finish him today.

Here's the CMON Voting Link if you would like to throw me a vote.

 

[CreganTur]

After taking in everyone's suggestions on my photography skills, chaning my background, adjusting the height of the mini in relation to my camera, and the light tent setup I think I finally have some good pics of this piece. It is much, much closer to how the piece looks in real life. Thanks for everyone's help!

New CMON voting link

 

[DunErwit]

That's a very cool scenery, wow!
And the work you put into painting everything so accurate (i.e. the feather, the wood, the NMM, blending in general) was worth every minute you used for it. But indeed, the water could have needed a bit of a turquoise-bluish tone, but I agree that it certainly is quite difficult to find the correct mixture of resin and paint.

Really good - I'll go voting for it right now

Do you have a link for working with deep water? Was it difficult (except sealing everything)?
For my dio, I have to use quite a lot of deep, muddy water, too, and I fear, the warm resin or the like could be too aggressive for the plaster wall's acrylic paint around... Or isn't this a problem at all?

 

[CreganTur]

The clear resin I used is called Easy Cast- it's very easy to get here in the US, but I don't know about its availability overseas. I didn't have any problems pouring it around already painted material- it just seemed to work really well.