The Great Stag

This Reaper Miniatures Great Stag gave me a chance to balance cooler grayish browns against more saturated, warmer browns.

You can see this in the shadow areas of the fur. I believe the color in question is Secret Weapon Miniatures Woodland Brown.  This same color was used in the 'mane', so it made sense to carry that through the rest of the figure.

It is even more important to have this kind of variety on a figure which could potentially get very boring to look at if you stayed with simple variations on one tone of brown.  While the shading from light to dark would still be interesting, it would still appear somewhat artificial and static.

While the shadow colors are still brown, the warmth and intensity of the mid tones make the color appear more greenish.

These are the kind of subtleties that are discussed very frequently in my tutorial videos.  There are a few different pledge levels available on my Patreon Page, even a basic $5 pledge that gives you a chance to check out the Painting Pyramid episodes, as well as a large portion of the new content being created!

You can see that here:

www.patreon.com/JamesWappel

Into the Wild: Wild Assent

This is one of several interesting minis that I have painted for the upcoming Wild Assent kickstarter campaign which is going to begin on October 16th.

The figures are 1 piece, and very solid, of the board game variety.  I will be posting a number of them here while the campaign is running!

A link to the preview:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1449412950/14064883?ref=581896&token=e363c08e

Here's a little background on this character:

Gurantev is a defense-heavy healer, able to provide area of effect healing and damage immunity for those under his command. He has high health and respectable physical and magical defense, but it’s important that he doesn’t overextend. Always selfless, Gurantev cannot use Heal Dice on himself, so pushing too deep into enemy ranks could result in his untimely demise. Instead, he should circle the edges of his opponent’s front lines, taunting or stunning big threats to keep them off his weaker allies.

You can visit the website to find out even more!

https://wildassent.com/

Blue Notes

It can be very interesting to see how the same technique can look quite different depending on the primary color choices that you make.  In this case, the blueish ethereal glow was requested, but with the "weathered" look I had done for my Army of the Dead.

Here's a view of some of those Lord of the Rings Army of the Dead:

https://wappellious.blogspot.com/2016/04/army-of-dead.html

Just as I did with the Army of the Dead figures, I tried to change the intensity and hue of the blues.  In some areas, the color was more pure, and in others as grayed down as possible.  This time around I had the Secret Weapon Weathering paints, which is very handy!

I will be redoing my Army of the Dead force for Lord of the Rings, and this time around I will be filming it in tutorial form for the Patreon Page.  Once I get that painted, terrain videos and battle reports will follow!

Staying in the Game

Here's another one of the board game style figures... made from the same type of semi hard plastic you typically see from a Zombicide set.

As I have mentioned before, the sanding sticks have been extremely helpful in getting rid of the mould lines, which are usually a major pain to deal with.  I get the packs which have a variety of grits, which means that I can use the heavier grit to take away the mould line, and then the finer sticks to sand away the rough scratch marks left behind by the coarse sticks.

I am very glad that I learned about that particular trick before the Song if Ice and Fire minis came in, since this method was very effective in getting rid of the mould lines on those too!

Shades of Green

One thing I always love to discuss is pushing the range of one color as far as possible... in multiple directions at once.  That is, warmer/cooler, saturated/muted, darker/lighter and so on.

Here's a sample video that I made for the original Painting Pyramid series of tutorial videos.  I will certainly be creating some new versions of these for the Patreon Page!

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

What registers as "Green" to the eye can be many different things.  Potentially a muted greenish gray could convince the eye that it is a 'dingy green' by placing a deep, dark red next to it.  As the say, everything is relative!

Even contrasting very warm bright greens against darker, blueish greens creates a nice depth of color, even though it is all technically green.  Once you add in that element of 'graying down' the green by adding reds to the mix, or by placing other reddish browns near it, you have a lot of interest in what would be considered a narrow band of colors.

While my regular 2D art background is primarily the reason I think this way (due to the use of 6-8 colors at most on a given painting), using fewer colors while painting miniatures leads to more adventures in mixing and playing the colors off of each other.

By the way, yet another fantastic Dark Sword sculpt!  Be sure to check out the Patreon Page, because even more tutorial videos will be added now that the first goal have been achieved!  Many thanks to Dark Sword, and all those who have helped make these possible with their support!

www.patreon.com/JamesWappel

A Date With Morticia

Here are a few scenes from filming the latest Black Heart bust tutorial video for the Patreon Page!  I love using the Mig Ammo Oilbrushers for these busts... here you see things set up along with the primed Morticia...

While I always have fun doing miniature painting videos with the oil paints, busts are a special treat with their relative size.  This means I can do much more on areas such as the eyes!

This is a facebook live session that I did a while back on a different bust, just to give you a sense of how I approach these in the tutorial videos:

https://www.facebook.com/james.wappel/videos/vb.1056181987/10212698297826442/?type=2&video_source=user_video_tab

I also had some fun painting a little landscape on the plinth, and it seemed to be a fun way to introduce people to oils in 2D as well.  

As you can see, I tried to use all the same colors which were used on the bust itself so that it would be cohesive, and not overpower the main interest of the face.

I am thinking of creating a pledge level that would provide a "hard copy" version of the tutorial on a USB drive, and an unpainted version of the bust itself.  This would be an all in one level where you could get started with your painting even sooner!

I already have a pledge level that gets you the hard copy video, and the painted bust too!

If you want to see even more of these tutorials, you can check out the Darkest Hearts pledge on the Patreon Page here:

www.patreon.com/JamesWappel

Charging on with Oils!

You have heard me talking about the advantages of using oils, mostly in terms of working on very large amounts of figures all at once.  There are also some minor things, such as being able to get paint into very hard to reach areas... even blending it.

This figure brought to mind another way oils can be helpful.  As an old time Confrontation figure made of solid metal, it is very heavy.  By using oils to paint it, I had to "handle" it much less, since the colors are blended right on the surface of the figure.

Had I painted this with acrylics, I would have been working much harder on the skin blends, and even the sword blade.  Doing those blends with oils requires far fewer brush strokes, thus less holding onto the figure.  

Not only was the figure really heavy, it was on one foot!  Again, being able to use larger brushes and blending on the surface was a huge advantage.  To give you an idea of size, the base was at least 50mm.