Shield- WAMP ladder entry against Vern

[CreganTur]

I've got a diorama I'm scrambling to finish for my WAMP ladder comp against Vern. Our theme is Shield and I've decided to a little scene with a cleric standing between a ghost and a little girl. For the little girl, I bought the scared girl bit from PP's nightmare model. She's tiny- barely 11mm tall, but she's pictured as hugging her knees, so she's actually correct scale to work with the other figures, thankfully.

I completely finished her today. The size was a little hard to work with.

 

[BPI]

Nice one Cregan, trying to paint these tiny child characters is a bit of a challenge after chunky GW warriors isn't it? Some final flash highlights in the hair and a touch more depth to the dress would be nice. Do you use inks? I guess flow improver may have the same effect but trying to shade something this tiny with the thick GW washes has proved tricksy for me (or even paint for that matter), while the thin ink will actually go into the tiny area I want it. Some darklining around the bear wouldn't go amiss either.

As a frightened little girl trying to evade a ghost, has she been scrabbling about on the floor? Whilst full weathering may be a bit extreme, a dirty patch on each knee might sell the effect for relatively little effort.

Looks like your work has jumped up a level to me, this commission work is paying off! :good:

I'm looking forward to seeing the full piece.

Cheers, B.

 

[CreganTur]

I actually used thinned paint to do all my shading and I thinned it with just water. I thinned to 2:1 or 3:1 water to paint. For the shadows on the dress I mixed in Midnight Blue with Tentacle Pink. I used the techniques I learned from the Miniature Mentor video, which mainly involves dragging the pigments where you want them, like into the recesses for the shadows. That allowed me a little more room for each brush stroke and helped give me smooth layering. Also, I made sure to wipe the excess paint off my brush to keep it from flowing where I didn't want it to go.

The eyes on this little girl were the hardest thing to paint. They're so tiny!

I hadn't thought about adding weathering, but it sounds like a good idea. I'll look into that once I'm putting all the pieces together- thanks!

 

[BPI]

Hi Cregan, yes, you've done the eyes nicely :good: I'm starting to feel that managing perfect iris & pupils is less important than conveying a convincing expression (though both would be lovely). You've got yours sorted indeed. She'll be looking at the cleric rather than the ghost, yes?
Cheers, B.

 

[CreganTur]

Okay guys, I could use some input. I'm trying NMM for the Cleric's armor and I tried to use the same color scheme that Laurent uses in the Miniature Mentor video, but he uses a color called French Mere Blue (I think that's it). He said it was a blue grey. Closest I had was SHadow Grey, so I tried it. Is the armor too blue, or does it look good as it is? The sun disks will be painted with gold NMM, but not until I get the armor sorted.

 

[BPI]

It's not too blue for me Cregan :good: Push the deepest shading with a bit of black mixed in & a fine white line edge highlight & you're done bar any time free to smooth blends further I'd say. What colour are you going to shade the cloak with? Using a bit of that in the deepest shadows of the armour may help keep it tied together too. Do you intend any cloak freehand?

Check out the cloaks Elly3438 has done on these Elves...
http://www.coolminiornot.com/251856
http://www.coolminiornot.com/250524
...an intresting approach to giving a sense of differently textured fabrics. Something quite useful when using NMM I think, to help differentiate between "my smooth blending" on the metal & "msb" on the cloth I paint the same no matter the surface, my flesh & cloth currently have no difference, metallic paint saves me from having 3 the same I'm not 100% convinced by Elly3438's current technique but I'm really interested to see the work going on. The NMM shows that there's no lack of skill behind the brush

Is Vern going to post here or do I have to trek over to WAMP?

Cheers, :beerwave: B.

 

[CreganTur]

Okay, I've taken all the suggestions and critiques and put them to good use. I deepened the shadows and took the reflection points to pure skull white. I also completed the gold NMM. I think I need to work some darker shades back into the sun disk on his chest, but I think the others look good. Thoughts?

 

[CreganTur]

Okay, I think the cleric's done- what do you guys think?

 

[mud duck]

Pheer the shield!

Is the ghost going to have some sort of directed light from the holy symbol on it? I guess that I see the scene as in the dark(ish) with the cleric pulling out his holy glowing symbol of faith on the poor misunderstood undead. Key the bright lights and holy lazor beams.

Oh god, I think that just proved that I've watched to must anime or something.

Looking good so far.

 

[CreganTur]

Here's the ghost. I went with a mostly monochrome pallete, but I added in shadow and space wolves grey to add some tonal differences.

 

[CreganTur]

This was going to be my entry for a ladder comp against Vern, but things didn't work out. I did finish the whole entery and I'd love some feedback on it.

The barrels are from pegaso miniatures, but I completely repainted them and converted one to be a rain barrell. These things are solid, so I cut off the top by tapping a hole in the center and then using my dremel to grind out the area. I filled it with some water effects and used the same for the puddles. What do you think of the puddles? They've got a number of washes of different colors on them that give a good effect in person, but I'm not sure if it translates well as a still and I'm not sure what I could do to make it look better.

The ghost has a hidden pin that connects him to the barrel he's brushing up against. Also, you may notice that I took some earlier criticism about the little girl's dress being too clean and gave it, and her, some stains to hint at her stuggle to escape the ghost.