Painting the Guard Tower diorama

Here we go!  I am pretty sure that most of you have already seen the images of the unpainted guard tower.  For those who have not, this diorama was made entirely from sculpey.  Most of the textures were carved in after it had been baked.  

Now, however, it is time for some images of the painting!

Painting this proved to be almost as difficult as sculpting it.  It was not easy to reach many of the areas, and it was so heavy, I could not maneuver it very easily to get at the nooks and crannies.

I always liked the look of the castles that had the lighter colored "trim" stones.  I also tried to make the flagstones on the roof many different shades.

Basic flock was used to get some mossy feel to the walls and the rocks.

I will be doing one more post that has some more pictures of the guard tower, and the miniatures as well.  Stay tuned!!!

Just when you thought it was safe...

So, you thought there were no more dioramas!  Not so!

This piece was part of the 2004: the Year of Dioramas.

This giant tower was made entirely from sculpey.  It is hollow on the inside, but it still weighs several pounds.

It had to be baked in multiple parts.  I made the bottom section first, and baked that.  I extended the tower section upwards and baked it again.

The two sentry posts on top had to be sculpted separately and baked, since it was going to be too tall for the oven!

Once those were baked and cooled, I glued them onto the tower.  The windows were tricky, as I had to sculpt those as well.  I wish I had made some casts of those!  They would have come in very handy since then...

All of the stone textures you see were carved on once it had been baked.  That is a very time consuming and difficult process, but it is well worth it.  Unlike some of my other non sculpey techniques for creating those textures, this one lets me get a great deal of precision and depth.

First, it lets me create the variety of surfaces, such as the flagstones on the roof, the wall stones, the corner stones, and even the wood grain on the door and the barrel, which was also made from sculpey.

The rock texture on the base was created by pressing real rocks into the unbaked sculpey.  That is a fantastic technique that Cathy invented.  It has come in very handy, even recently when she made her steampunk bases for DragonForge.

I have a lot of pics of the painted versions of this, so stay tuned!!!

Gamezone High Elf Archers

Here are some High Elf Archers from Gamezone that I painted last year.  The bows are certainly different...

It was interesting that all of them were crouched down, instead of all standing up, like usual.

The command group is also interesting.  The harp is pretty wild!

Air Caste Elemental: Dark Age Games

This was a very challenging piece that I painted for Dark Age Game.  It is an Elemental for the Dragyri Air Caste.

 There were a lot of pieces involved, and at the time it was all metal.  I did have a lot of fun with the colors though!!

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: