Another approach

I thought I might show you a few images of the painting process of the Magic Reality Miniatures Lady Dynamite.

In the previous series of Shaded Basecoat posts, you watched me go from middle tones to light, followed by glazing to shade and tint those lighter colors.

I will use these glazes alone to take the colors from the somewhat flat grayish white to darker tones. 

I also want to show you the use of the Secret Weapon washes that I call opaque such as the Concrete.

When a wash color such as Concrete is mixed with other washes, or even regular paint, it will lighten the color!  I know that most of you see glazing as something that only darkens a color.

Once I discovered this concept, it opened up a whole series of new techniques and options!

When I mix the concrete with some of the very intense Vallejo washes, some very interesting chemical interactions take place.  The colors sometimes push each other away, not mixing completely.  This is very useful when you want to get random color effects on something like weathered metal.

I added more dark colors to the base, this time mixing in some regular purple grey paint with the glazes.

The same kind of technique would be used on the figure itself.

Just as with the base, I mixed some of the glaze colors together, keeping that concept art color scheme in mind.

I can see the horrified looks on your faces right now!  This is something that is always entertaining in my live classes.  Keep in mind that all I am trying to do here is drop down some darker tones, and get a little variety in those darks.

The Concrete was was also mixed in with the different glazes at this time.

Before you all run away from the screen in horror, I wanted to show you an image from barely 20 minutes after the previous images were taken.

As we like to say, you have to accept that the figure is going to look pretty nasty at first, and seemingly out of control.

Since I am going back to my 2D art roots, I don't feel like any control is lost! :-)  Stay tuned for more...