Painting Gwaihir continues...

Today we have the next stage in the painting of Gwaihir, the converted Coolminiornot eagle.

As I mentioned in the previous post, the general plan was to have cooler colors on the ventral sides of the wings and the chest, with warmer tones on the dorsal sides.  I have been mixing a greyish tan with my browns/reds to make these areas that cooler color...

While on the back, I have mixed in more yellows and oranges to warm it up.  I have also been putting more colors on the casualties and the little tree branch bit.

I have been mixing more of the seafoam green into the ventral colors.  I have been using that same color to lighten my greys on the rocks.  This will keep those colors more cohesive, and show the front of the eagle more "in shadow" as he pounces down on his hapless prey on the rocks!

Even though the colors on the back are generally warmer, I did make a section of the neck a warm green (this is where I took off the saddle and sculpted feathers) just to break things up a bit...

More details emerge on the face.  Some shadows, which were done with a dark purple, and a few lights, done by adding a yellow/white to my brown mixes.  I mixed the seafoam green into that purple to create an alternate midtone on some of the head and neck feathers.

I have put more colors on the casualty, and really worked the lighter colors on the ventral feathers.

Same on the dorsal side, getting more and more yellow.

At this point, it was time to start glazing my shadows in.  I had a black a green some browns and a purple glaze at the ready, sometimes mixing them together when needed.  I also had a liner brush with some Reaper brown liner, and that was used to pull out some of the feather outlines on the chest.  I shaded the recesses even cooler, mixing the green and black glaze together, and did the same for the wing tips.

I also did my glazes on the base.  The rocks and the casualty were shaded darker with sepia washes, green/purple mixes (which make a fantastic grey!), and some blue/black glazes on the rocks and robes of the casualty.

On the back, it was all about the warmer mixes, using sepia and reddish glazes.

I continue to do a third and fourth round of shading/glazing, enhancing the darks as much as possible.  The darkest glazes are applied to the casualty and the branch bit.

More enhancing of the darker shades, pulling out more details on the dorsal part of the wings.  

Now it is time to work back into some of the middle tones, and add final highlights!

Sisters: Dragyri Air Caste from Dark Age Games

For the overnight hours we have a few Dark Age miniatures that were fun to paint.  This is a Yovanka:

And this is a Whisper:

Painting Gwaihir, part ONE.

Once I had my eagle conversion ready for painting, I got out the brushes and set to work while we were at the Wandering Dragon Shoppe!

As usual, the shaded basecoat technique reigns supreme.  I started by setting up the colors of the base.  From there, I put down some colors on the palette for the eagle.  You can see I had a green, a dark brown, a light reddish brown, and an orange brown.   This would eventually be joined by a light tan.

Using one of my larger brushes, I work quickly to lay down my lights and darks, being sure to balance things like color temperature.  This is vital when you are doing something as relatively monochromatic as this.  Working quickly is the key.  Do not be tentative.  Come up with your plan and attack the miniature with your brushes.  Think of them as +3 strength magic swords or master crafted lightning claws. :-)

My basic plan was to have the chest and interior of the eagle a cooler temperature of browns, while the dorsal part of the bird would be warmer.

You can really see the basic warmer browns on that dorsal side of the wing.

I like to play with the color temperatures like this to create contrast in a way that is different from the usual light vs dark.  The edges and tips of the wings are also a cooler dark.

I mixed that greyish tan with my reds on the ventral side of the wings in order to make them less warm, rather than the orange brown of the dorsal side.

These next few images show this juxtaposition of the warms and cools...

You can even see that dance of color temperature play out on the palette.  Here the colors are warmer

And now you can see that I have added a seafoam type green and have mixed that in with my reds, further cooling them down.

At this time, I also start working out the details on the face.  I tried to get some golds and oranges in the face, so that it would stand out...

All across the wings and legs, I try to build my lights little by little, working the same sets of cooler and warmer colors.

The next post will show you how the base was painted, along with the face and talons!  Stay tuned for the next exciting episode!!

From Osprey to Eagle...when you gotta have air support.

As many of you already know, I had decided to get rid of the Army of the dead, substituting Gwaihir in their place, along with some extra cavalry.  You will also recognize this figure as the Great Osprey I just painted for Coolminiornot.com.  One more was kindly donated to this cause, as I didn't have an eagle.

The biggest thing I had to do was to saw off the seat for the rider, and get rid of the straps.  To make this more approproate to the fluff of my two tournament armies, I added some Easterling casualties...

Here is the back view that shows my green stuff work to fill that area in.  I have done 4-5 birds by this sculptor, so I was pretty familiar with how the feathers are arranged and such.

I have some more posts coming with step by step images of the painting process.  Stay tuned!!!!

Where it all began: The Triumphal Arch, early 2004

This is the very first of the big dioramas.  Obviously, it was made with sculpey, as all the other pieces from this era.  We are talking early 2004 at this point.  That is whay the painting style looks so different. :-)

I had seen a piece of fantasy art that illustrated an overgrown, ruined arch.  I liked it so much, I had to try and make it real!

I had to learn a lot about foliage on this piece, as I had only done minimal landscaping on small miniatures.

I spent a lot of time super gluing flock, moss, and tree bits to my fingers!

This was also the first time I had carved away baked sculpey.  I needed to do that in order to create the brick textures beneath the broken and cracked surface

This shot shows some of my favorite landscaping material, from Woodland Scenics.  I loved those realistic trees!  You can see it on the left.

This view shows you how much of the landscaping I got up on that top surface.

The Grond Finale!

Well, hopefully you have all anxiously awaited these final images of GROND!

As I mentioned in the first post, the display base was about 25 x 13.  I used at least 4-5 pounds of sculpey!

The trolls and the orcs were metal, so every part of this giant diorama weighs a lot.  Now that I play LOTR all the time, it would be very interesting to actually make this again, with the knowledge I have today.

It's hard to believe that I did this almost 8 years ago.

In some ways, my techniques have changed a lot, and not just painting.  Even the display board would be much different, using brand new ideas that I explored on the recent terrain project.

I might be more inclined to convert some plastic dinos to pull this thing, to save on time and weight.

This piece required many many hours of work, and it really has been fun to look at it again (at least in picture form).  As I look at the sculpting of Grond itself, I am very pleased with how that turned out.  It was extremely close to the movie version, as I did have a lot of artwork and references on the battering ram.

If I did this again, I would leave more space for surrounding orc horde. :-)

I hope that you folks have enjoyed all the various posts concerning this diorama.  I split it into many posts to make it easier for me to manage.  There were tons of pictures to go through, and I was able to make it more cohesive when I broke it down into the individual components.  

Thanks for checking out the blog!!!

A break from Grond with Wrath of Kings. Sword pattern blues?

Before I get to the final post of Grond, I thought I would interject with a little Wrath of Kings.

I think the reason I wanted to post these was to discuss the real challenge of painting weapons (swords in this case), that have a very unusual shape.

It seems like I never get to paint "regular" swords anymore!

I guess companies are trying to make their minis more unique and stand out by doing some different patterns with the swords, but that makes it way more difficult to determine what surface is getting direct light, where the reflected light goes, etc.

I was restricted here in my color choices by the pre-determined concept art.  If I had a choice, I would have had much more 'earth' tones show up in some areas.

This one was not too difficult, since the surfaces were quite large.  Still, I had to change on the fly at least twice with the weapon n his right hand.

Again, these color choices were not mine.  After doing all the wild fluorescent colors on my Tomb Kings weapons, everything seems dull now. :-)

Here is one of the "grunts" of this faction.  These weapons were even more difficult, as the ends were rounded, and not flat, as they were on the big guy above...

Not long before the final images of Grond appear... Stay tuned!