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...

Blood and Poison

There's one more touch to add to those ninja archers... some blood/poison blades.

As I mentioned in the previous post, the idea behind this is to create something that can be seen very easily on the game table in order to distinguish two units from each other easily.

You can see the products that were used in this image.  The heavy gel, which I use for everything from water effects to fire to fur sculpting, is an all purpose must!  Then we have some Secret Weapon miniatures realistic water and Vallejo fluorescent yellow.

I thought I would try to get a mix of blood and poison on the blades, so the first layers would be a mostly blood color with a touch of poison.  The fluorescent yellow is mixed in with the deep red and Realistic Water, and allowed to flow down the blade.

I am not mixing in the heavy gel just yet, since I am focused on getting some blood onto the blades first.

I thought it might also be interesting to have some drips and splatters from the blades on the ground and snow piles.

The first layer on the snow was a very transparent application of Realistic Water with a little of the red mixed in.  Additional layers were added in the center of these spots, in order to make it look like the blood was starting to be absorbed into the snow.

Having hard lined red dots on the snow would make it look like blood hitting a ceramic floor!  I thought this would keep the snow effects going.

If these were my own minis, I would have added a tiny layer of snow flock over the top, and let the blood drops naturally soak into that rough surface.  However, that's not an option here, as I must keep these snow bases in line with the dozens of other bases that were done before.

Fortunately there were a number of instances where the snow piles were right under the blades, so I could keep doing the soaked blood effect again and again!

And here's a quick shot of those bases...

I had so much fun making these kind of blood effects on my Adepticon Dark Eldar army, I did a video as part of my instructional series.  It was called "Bloody Mess", and it was lots of fun!!

Here's a link to a YouTube preview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvAu51YMREA

To try and simulate a very obvious poison color, the fluorescent yellow was mixed into the heavy gel, which could create some drips on the blades.

I put the yellow/gel mix onto the tips of the blades, letting the darker blood stains make it stand out.

On these horizontal blades, it was neat to add a few different drips hanging from the knives.

One more view with all the poisoned blades!!  Stay tuned for all the individual mini photos!

If you are interested in the "Bloody Mess" video, you can get that directly from me, and don't forget many more titles here:

http://www.kingshobbiesandgames.com/James-Wappel-s-The-Painting-Pyramid-s/130.htm

Closing in on the end...

Things are getting to the close on this unit!  At this point, I did a little more clean up of a few skin colors, using the semi-transparent mix of glaze color and regular paint.

I did very small details such as the eyes, made more clear definition on surfaces such as the hands, etc.  Also, I did a little blue gray on parts of the blades as well.

I also went back in on the hoods and cloaks with some grey/green color, mixing in a little bit of flow improver to make that more like a glaze.  I am putting back in some highlights in this section and cleaning up any water marks, just as I did with the flesh colors.

The final light color was a very neutral gray.  In the context of all the other blue green that was used, this gray looked more like a green than a middle of the road gray.

The lightest colors are now in place on the hoods!

The final task that remained was to put in the darkest shadows and other line work that might be needed.  I took the Clear Purple, mixed it with a touch of flow improver, and put in some very nice darks in a few areas.

The clear paints are already slightly transparent, even though the pigments are very intense.  This makes them a great color to use for these final dark touches.

I took a quick group shot in the booth to get a better glimpse at what they all looked like.  This removed all the chaos and visual frenzy of the painting area, allowing me to look for any forgotten spots, which can happen when working on units!

There is one more post coming on these figures... I see what I can do to make the blades look like they have a mix of blood and poison on them!

While it will not be the most photo-realistic effect in the world, it should present the notion of poisoned blades during the course of a game.  Stay tuned!

Going for the Gold!

Here are a few more shots of the Sisters of Battle.  I thought this small group might be an interesting comparison of how the golds looked on different sculpts.

First, the two heavy weapons Sisters.

It's also fun to see the two color schemes side by side... the white robes with gold trim against green armor, and the green on gold scheme.

All of them went on the same style of base, however.

The metals of the heavy weapons were both done in a similar scheme... a warmer grey, with a few accents of green or purple here and there.

I put in the Repentia and the converted Seraphim for yet another comparison.

It is a neat example of how a distinct basing style can tie very different figures together as an army, even when there are variations in specific layouts of color.

This meant that I could have very distinct individual units which would be easy to tell apart on the battlefield, but yet they would all be very cohesive as a united force.

Show me some skin

The second phase of the Glazing begins!

Once the 'dirty work' of the general glazing was complete, I painted the snow on the bases.  It was a very basic combination of slate blue and blueish white.

You can see what the general transition looked like in the lower right hand corner.  This is also why I emphasize using the larger palette, and deploying my colors across a broad swath.  It allows me to see the entire transition, making it far easier to match a certain layer.

Snow complete!  This will also give me a good guide as to what my lightest lights should be.  Otherwise, the skin highlights could possibly have ended up a few shades too light compared to the snow.

This is the part of glazing that seems to be more unique to my method.  What I am doing here is mixing a glaze color with 'regular' paint colors.  This creates semi-transparent layers which can do a variety of things.

By mixing the green with the Flesh shade, I made an excellent greenish shadow color.

I also mixed a medium skin color with the Flesh shade.  This would provide a darker version of the skin.

Using the very controlled glazing method, I started to apply these translucent darker shades onto the recesses.  I would emphasize the greenish hue on surfaces that faced the ground, or were near something dark.

This would let me paint a lot of surfaces on a bunch of figures quickly, but also give me the freedom to not worry about paint drying.  My shadow colors were very easy to recreate.  No recipe needed!

As I move along, you will start to see a difference in those shadow areas.

That touch of green in the shadows make the skin colors have more depth, and also reflect the greens of the dark hoods and cloaks.

Again, this is all happening very quickly, since it does not take as much time to place these isolated semi transparent layers.

Once all the darker layers are in place, I can clean up any water marks or rough areas with lighter colors.

In this case, I added a few touches of purple to the skin colors, as purple is a very nice foil against cooler greens.  

At this point, I also went in to detailed areas such as the eyes and lips.

Skin colors complete!  Time to move on to areas such as the greens and the blades!!  Stay tuned...