Pixel

I'll just point out now that her character in this campaign is a witch. I don't think you can rule that out. I figure she may as well teach me how to paint at this point. Lol not even close! Although the witch part is a fair point. She vomits spiders and everything.

Ya'll are hilarious! Did a little more after work. Svetlana is inspired by Mammoth in Snowy Village on page 34. She's going to have a lot more purple in various freehand but I find it easier to do that with the highlights and shadows complete, so I just put a bit on to get a feel for the color. The blue needs to be a bit more lavender as well but this is ok for a basecoat: Probably my last paint day until next week but happy with how far I've gotten in the last few days! Heidi

Excellent! I love the stocking idea and thanks for the tutorial as well! I was looking at the inspiration painting again and I need some charcoal gray in there, which will work well with a stocking. I'm thinking of doing her sash in that color as well. Yay!

Can't believe I've missed this thread! I'm having some serious jealousy over your blends!

Worked on Midrith after work. She's inspired by Saurian Steps on page 116. What should I do about her leg? It seems more like a legging than bare skin but cream did not work. Should I just make it flesh, or is there a legging color you think would work? PS would probably never have opened that bottle of mint green without the inspiration pic, but I think it's gonna work out great! Heidi

Finally picked up a brush to continue basecoating cloth. I identified a subgroup of five minis that had a couple of colors in common and started with those. A reddish brown and teal made it onto almost all of them: Then I filled in the rest, using the same color across minis where I could. I've been using a tip from Nic Daniel's color theory class I took at ReaperCon using paintings for color scheme inspiration, and for those of you who have a copy of Color and Light by James Gurney, I'll include the paintings I'm using as inspiration from his book. The mystery lady is inspired by Glowing Ferns on page 41. I'm pleased with how close the premix colors I found are so far, and I think when I do the leathers, feathers, hair, and highlighting, she will have a very close feel to the painting: Oleg is inspired by Old Hudson on page 38. The basecoat is a little saturated to match, but it's close and I'm hoping if I can get closer with generous desaturated shadows and with dark leather boots: Lanna is inspired by Cabin at Platte on page 34. The green I used is totally wrong, but I didn't have a premix that was right so this was my closest starting point. The painting has a lot more green than I found room for on the mini, so the base will have to help balance it out. Also, I have no idea how I'm going to make so many colors work together. The painting doesn't look garish but poor Lanna so far does: Kesten is inspired by Dinosaur Boulevard on page 151. I really should have picked a simpler painting! I'm going to try to focus on a part of the painting. I don't like his shield so far. Again the green is wrong but I couldn't find a right premix. Finally the Harrower is inspired by Oriana in the Moonlight on page 131. One of my favorite paintings in the book for one of my favorite minis. So far the colors are matching pretty well. There's a green I used in the stripes I forgot to put in the pic (I'm using the pics as a painting notebook for now) which are a straight-up steal of the stripes in the inspiration painting. So far I like the way this one is going the best! Here's the gang so far. Basecoating without any highlights or shadows is making me nuts but I am determined to plod onward! Any tips or ideas are welcome! Heidi

You are more than welcome to steal my thread idea! I looked at your link (beautiful work!) and the additional interest you created through your color choices is exactly what I'm going for. My problem is I've heard so many ways to add interest through color choices I'm not sure which I want to go with. A common highlight color is one I'm going to do (I think) and reflective colors I think is the other but unified shadows is a really good critique I got from Clever Crow who pointed out that my red shadows on my ettin's skin were great but I could have carried that over into other areas of the mini and didn't do it anyplace else. My confusion I think is picking the shadow colors. For example, I liked my experiment of doing the shadow in a complementary color (red shadows in green skin), but what do I do if my mini's coat is red but the pants are blue? Do I keep the green shadows for the blue pants, or do they get their own complementary shadow color? Is either a legitimate technique and a creative choice, or is there a better approach? What did you mean by your secondary shadow color (cuz I think that's what I'm getting at here)? For skin next to a red coat, does it get the main red color reflecting onto its skin? Looking at most of the minis it seems cloth reflections will be in skin shadow areas. So what should be in the skin shadows - the main color, a common shadow, or the common highlight? I'd like to work through all of this during this methodical paint because I really think color choices (and better blends. Always better blends) is what I need to level up. So thank you for sharing your own technique and any thoughts you have on my weird and probably ill-phrased questions Heidi

I think glazing sounds like a good approach. Nice thing is with 15 minis, I got plenty of tries to get it right !

Actually it's something I wanted to talk more about anyway to see if anyone had tips. I got a great tip from a pro painter at ReaperCon that flesh in particular tends to reflect the colors around it. Actually it was kind of funny because the tip was a compliment for doing something I hadn't known I had done, which was choose a skin tone for Libby that looked like I had mixed the green from her tunic in: Looking at a lot of the minis in this set, it seems like shadows under chins and arms is likely to be reflecting the color of the clothes the characters are wearing. So I'm going to try mixing skin tone shadows with a bit of the cloth color, to see if I can add more interest and harmony into my skin tones. On purpose, this time, lol! Heidi Edited because compliment is not the same as complement

Thanks for the tip! Carnage was a strong contender but a bit darker than I wanted, so I think you're right about shadows. Heidi

Working my way through a slightly more canny reading of Color and Light, trying to get a firmer grasp of what I'd like to do with color in this experiment and pick some more colors. First up for me was a red. If possible (for a bit of efficiency and in order to really get to know the colors I use better) I wanted a red that would work across five figures I knew would have red as a main color or significant accent. I wanted a red that read as red (say that three times fast) but had decent coverage and was a bit desaturated. I painted up some swatches and immediately felt drawn to Big Top Red. I tried blending it into the skin tones of the minis that would use the red to see if anything horrible would happen: It still looked good to me, but I was worried about coverage since red is bothersome that way and Big Top is not an HD paint. I decided to try it and was pleasantly surprised. A thin layer still had decent coverage and a few thin layers gave very nice coverage. I mixed in some Reaper brush on sealer but very little water and it had a nice consistency. So here are three that have big red areas. I'm still considering whether I want to use this shade on the Red Fairy, and the red on the Scary Elf is just an accent on her belt, so that will wait: Thanks for looking! As always, any tips are welcome! Heidi

Ok, skin basecoats are done! Totally weird for me not to jump straight into eyes and highlighting next, but that's not the plan, this time. Here they are: The fey are the hardest to get the feel for since the shading and highlighting of the skin will really change their look, but I wanted a bright base to start with: Ang ideas or tips are welcome. I'm picking colors for cloth next! Heidi

"True Metallic Metal" I believe. Using metallic paints to shade each other to give an effect of metal by using their hues and their tones, but also their metallic properties. Like Non-Metallic Metal, but with actual shininess. Yes, I think this is what I mean, although thinking about it I guess I don't know the difference between TMM or shaded metallics (if there is one) or which I'm planning on. I know going more extreme on my highlights and shadows on my metallics was a critique I got from several judges and something I want to improve. Which minis are the ones you did? I'm glad the methodical thing is appealing to someone besides me! I'm almost done with the skin tones basecoats, and I have to say I'm already liking this process. I got better at working with skin tones and getting a smooth basecoat through all the repetition. I do have to keep reminding myself that the point is to take my time and get better, not speed through each step!

If you go to the Reaper factory, you can see where they have shelves of these yellow bins that have all the minis they currently sell. You find the ones you want by catalogue number and pay by weight, which is an incredible deal! No blisters so you have to take care to keep all the bits together, but on the other hand if you want a specific mini and its bin is empty, they'll cast it for you! Mmmmmm, warm pewter!

I clearly need to take Shubert's class next year on expressive faces - looking very good!