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This is painted by Chris Clayton from Modelworks. It's a Bust. If anyone has a clue how to achieve this ( with a brush) this is the Holy Grail of painting a mini. Just WOW! I will now commit seppuku by falling on my brush after I drank all of my paintwater..

(apologies for large sections of text- I like trying to explain what I'm thinking as I'm going, but I promise it will have lots of pictures!) Right, so I need to get started on a few new projects and one of the things folks expressed an interest in after reapercon was busts. I went and bought this bust: …planning to see if I could use it for a class. And when it came, I realized it was a bit larger than I expected, even with the description. Also, the mold removal didn’t seem to go very well for the sender, so I wasn’t as happy with it as I might have been. However, I got to thinking I could use it for a WIP at least, and that that might be more helpful to start with anyway. I still might do a class, but the bust called to me and I had an idea and it ate away at my resolve… so here it is. The plan is to make her into Mother Nature. Originally I’d planned to do a bunch of the sculpting first, but I felt like painting. I’ll get the face mostly done, then do the sculpting and finish painting. She’ll have a tree growing out of her shoulder, a bunch of leaves and flowers in her hair and probably some other natural and unnatural things to make the whole a more interesting story. I may attach a few animal companions as well. Right. When I decided on the theme, I knew I’d need green skin. One important thing to think about when it comes to skin is that our brains are hardwired to recognize varying shades of tan, ocher, rust, etc as skinlike. The more saturated and intense the color, the less we believe its skin. So no matter what color I want the skin to look like, I need to chose a softer more desaturated color. Green yes, but it has to be a nice quiet and pleasant green. I went to my stash of greens, took a few deep breaths and asked myself why I had so many greens, and proceeded to pick the warmest ones. I played around with a few of them on paper. I find when working with colors I haven’t before, if I make a few washes on watercolor paper, I can see how they thin, how transparent they are and how they play with each other. See how the pthalo looks cooler compared especially to the viper green? I wanted to compare and knew that one was cool. I can tolerate the peacock even though its on the cooler side comparatively, You can see here the ones I was looking at. I ended up going with these: I added the fair skin mainly because it adds more warmth to the whole. Alone, the green will end up looking too weird, but adding a touch of flesh makes a difference- I'll explain with pics in a bit. The peacock green is still fairly cool. I couldn't find a really warm dark green. But I can glaze the viper over it in places to warm it up. Next, I slathered some paint on the bust to get a sense of how the colors look. Two things. I must decide early on where my light source will be. For a bust, this is probably even more important than a smaller mini, because there’s so much surface area to work with. I have to add enough interest to keep my viewer’s eye moving. Since the bust is looking down and to the viewer’s right, I’ll make the light source come from the top left. Second thing, I need a model to help me place all of my highlights and shadows appropriately on the face. You know how the phone/digital camera has that cool “face recognition” thing these days? (…showing my age…) We people have the same thing. When we look at a face we expect to see certain familiar features. At 28 mm scale, there’s not much space to work in, but at the bust scale, if I don’t paint the highlights and shadows in a familiar fashion, it’ll look weird. What's with the Picasso? Ah hah! The face is made up of a bunch of planes and mounds and shapes that flow in to each other. When we’re babies, the division between the shapes is less defined. Our baby fat fills in all the gaps. As we age, we can start to see the skeleton behind the flesh. When painting a bust, I make a choice (often based on the sculpture itself) about how old or young I want the figure to be. In this case, I’d like mother nature to have fairly smooth features, but maybe a few lines to make her matronly. I’ll get to that. But whenever you choose to paint a bust, think about things like that ahead of time and it will make the process smoother. Cubism among many other things breaks down the human into basic geometric shapes. Learning what those shapes are will help you build up a basic volume in each area. Once you have an idea where each of the highlights go in each basic shape, the rest is all blending. But if the bulges don't match the anatomy, it will seem off. If that makes sense. This was a hard concept for me to pick up at first. Ok, I generally choose a model for my bust. In this case, I chose Scarlett Johansson. She has lovely clear skin. Now, using her, I can see in great detail with a larger blown-up pic where highlights tend to live and where shadows tend to fall. See how her cheek are sort of square or maybe triangular? The forehead and chin are circles? I grab a variety of pics from hollywood, because I can zoom in and see where all the little fiddly bits go around the eye and whatnot. Having a high resolution photo is helpful as a map to follow. here's me debating gaze direction. and playing with the eye. I've sketched in the basic parts. I did some blending and smoothing. I put this one in to show the way the bust sits on the table. So the direction of gaze makes a bit more sense in context. It's hard to make eyes look directly ahead and make them match up, especially with this sculpt because one eye is sculpted larger than the other. It's a lot easier to have an off center gaze. I promise to come back to the eyes, but when I first start, I bounce around and let things dry while working on other areas. So it progresses more quickly. I did some smoothing on the skin and cleaned up the eyes, chose where I wanted a few more highlights on the cheeks. Worked on the lips. See how the top lip is dark and the bottom lighter? That has to do with the anatomy of the face. the bottom one bulges out and the top slants back and doesn't catch the light. Also, just to give you a sense of scale, here's another bust and sir forescale: She's ginormous. So, it stands to reason I have to put more detail into her features and work harder on the blending to make it smooth. That is one of the tricks with larger minis. You have to blend the heck out of it or it won't look like skin. Ok, it did more work on the eyes. I should explain eyes at this point... My trust internet model! Take a look at the eye and see where all of the highlights a shadows fall. This is based on the anatomy underneath. The eye is a big oblong ball-like shape. The lids cover this, which means they bulge out towards us. Generally, that means they catch light at their outermost part, and are shaded below. Take a look at the corner on the left of the eye. That’s the tear duct. Adding that to a bust really adds a sense of realism to the painting. Adding the lashes and the iris lines will tuck in little details to make it more like a real eye. The sclera (white) of the eye is actually a more blueish in color, though in someone with liver issues it can look yellowish. I save pure white for the reflection so it’s the brightest spot and can still be differentiated from the scelera. Pure white in the sclera means we won’t get the full impact of the highlight and also pure white is colder. see the palette here: the two whites near the middle are linen and pure I’m using linen because it has a hint of yellow in it and I want the skin to live on the warmer side. Also, see how the highlight on the eye isn’t directly over the pupil, but more over the iris? The eyes is constantly wet with our tear ducts, so it should always look shiny- that highlight spot helps sell the wet effect, just like light on a wet road or a metal sword edge ok- must work. more soon! I'll probably edit this post and add a bunch more explanation and details, I just want to post in case the computer tries to eat it!

My D&D group's cleric picked the torch and scythe wielding townsfolk from this pack: http://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/townsfolk/latest/03123 My D&D group's cleric is an herbalist cleric. He provides the.... healing... herbs. Medicinal use herbs. He's an exceedingly chipper and happy character, much to the annoyance of the emo necrobard. But he uses a scythe, and decided to go with this figure. I don't like this figure. It has an ANGRY face. Super grumpy. All of the grump. Terrible choice for that character. Player told me that I didn't have to go high on the detail with it, so I didn't do as much as my usual. I still practiced OSL and I tried to turn the frown upside-down. I think the result is that he now looks like a very happy mass murderer, instead of just generically pissed. Anyway, rip it to shreds, lemme know what I can do better in the future. I didn't do the most exciting blending or layering or glazing by any stretch deliberately, though. I also was using a different location for my camera and I didn't feel like getting a perfect setup, so stuff is crooked and I'm not going to go back and take more photos. *HARUMPH*.

Couldn't find a good way to search for this exact topic, so please forgive me if this has been asked before. I am always fixated on facial and body proportions. I find that lots of 28mm minis have "weird" faces and bodies (too long, too stubby, etc) What would be the best female figures in the Reaper line that have the best facial and body proportions? #14645 Bladeslinger would be a good example of what I am looking for.

Hi, I think there must be a thread somewhere about this, but I can't find it. Occassionaly I paint busts and large scale figures. Until now they were mostly beastmen, undead and such, just one ( it was my first) human and she had warpaint covering her eyes. I have seen some stuff about painting human faces on this scale, dividing the face in a yellow, a red and a green/grey zone. Could anyone explain this some more? Do you basecoat the face in 3 different colours and then glaze over it with skincolours? What is the right approach? And if it is a large scale figure with bare arms and legs, do these zones need to be applied on the limbs too? And how? I would really want to learn more about this since I have some more busts waiting ( among others, A French Imperial Guard,A Centurion, A Crusader, A Pirate Girl, A Beserker, A Viking Girl, A Hoplite and A Celt) I would like to be able to paint more realistic faces with shadows, stubble, and such. Preferable using Reaper and Scale 75 paints. If possible give me a hint which colours to use in what stage? I would appreciate a nice tutorial or examples, if possible mentioning paint colours/brands.. Thanks in advance.

I should have taken some pictures before the beard went on. The face was BEAUTIFUL. It looked rather like my fairy lady's face. He was gorgeous. The most feminine face I could have possibly done... on a dude. A dude with a twisted smile, but still. So I tried to cover it with some stubble. Looked a bit off at the lips. So to conceal that his lips are a bit funky, I went "heck with it" and gave him a twirly mustache and a goatee along with the five o'clock shadow. Did it work? Or does he still look like a lady with a stick-on beard? Nothing wrong with androgyny but that isn't my intention with this figure either. How can I get him to look like a young cocky dude thief? More eyebrow? AHHHHH Painting dudes is difficult. The original face before beard was so good I could have done Youtube make-up tutorials for women off it. Great... but that wasn't the plan.

I posted some images of my sculpting attempts in the Show Off threads. This is the main body and armature for a birdhouse for my grandfather's 80th birthday. He sculpts in the medium of cement and sphagnum moss and builds fantastic faces on cedar roots (and other fun creations). My dilemma is that, while this needn't necessarily be a functioning birdhouse, I'd like it to not weigh 75 pounds in the end. So I'd prefer to lighten my cement mixture with sphagnum/peat moss. But whenever I add even the slightest amount of moss, it turns the end product crumbly... So I've finished this guy, my first cement sculpture, not my first birdhouse. I went with pure cement (fine) with a dash of mortar to smooth it out more. Took me a while, but I think Gramps will appreciate it. I know I'm not a world class sculptor or anything, but this was both enjoyable and challenging. Working with cement (ie: fighting gravity and hydroflow constantly, as well as dealing with occasional too-large chunks) was very strange, having worked with only GS, apoxysculpt, sculpey, and Play-Doh. If I did it right, you should be able to tell the emotion I was trying to invoke in him. Any questions, comments, suggestions, critiques are welcome! Cheers!

A client of mine wanted the monster bases from his Kingdom Death set to more closely match the awesome setting in the plane of faces. He also requested places that he could make into lava or little streams of blood (especially blood flowing out of a mouth that the Butcher is standing on). Here are the greens for these bases. He'll be painting all of these himself, so my work here is done.

EDITED: I tried to fix the pics since the originals were on photobucket. Apologies if they're a bit off! Ok, face painters! Have you always wondered how to get nice smooth skin blend? I'm going to do my best to take you step by step through a face. I could probably be persuaded to also move on to other skin areas, but let's start simple. Now, while snapping photos I realized this blending is not going to be as neat and clean as I usually like it because the photoing process did interfere with a few layers. But, we'll get it smooth in the end! Are you ready?! First things first: A large model, to better illustrate what we're doing! And our materials. We have Yephima, cloud giantess, a W&N #2, and RMS paint! I used fair skin as my flesh color, and I'm going to shade with porcelain rose and spattered crimson and highlight with pure white. This should give us a nice warm flesh tone. I'll also use walnut brown on the eyes. After snapping this, I also realized I wanted blue eyes- so I added ashen blue for the iris. Porcelain is a retired color. You can sub punk rock pink or just mix spattered with white and it'll work just fine. But I had it, and I like it, and if I keep using it, maybe reaper will bring it back! 1. Step 1: basecoat the face with fair skin. Hey! My model has a little face blemish! Oh no! What can I do to fix this? Never fear, face painters! Just take a little bit of brush-on sealer and cover the blemish with a nice layer, and it will smooth out. You can then put another layer of basecoat on top. I did a total of 3 layers of flesh, mainly because I forgot to wash this model and I had some adherence issues on the chest. 2. Step 2: The eyes! Line with walnut. Doesn't have to be perfect. You can always touch up with flesh. Paint the sclera white. Pure white probably isn't as good as linen or leather white, but I'm trying to limit our palette. Add the iris- ashen blue, as you can see. Here's where we pick the direction of gaze and try to make the eye "look" in the same direction. Takes some practice to figure our what works and what you like. Again, if paint goes where you don't want it, just touch up. Hmmn... I could have sworn I took one with just the blue... at any rater, after the blue is down add the walnut brown pupil. Then dot the pupil with white. Sorry, that back eye is hard to see. Usually there's an easy eye and a hard eye. Some people start with the hard eye. I start with the easy eye, so at least one will look the way I want! 3. Step 3: Breathe. Don't forget to breath again now that the eyes are done! 4. Step 4: Shading. This is a lot messier because I'm pausing to photo- sorry! First I lay down a thin glaze of spattered crimson all the way to the edge of the walnut, then clean the brush and just smooth the edge out using a damp brush and some feathering type strokes. Thin is better. See how nice and translucent this layer is? You can easily see the flesh underneath. I went back in with a thin glaze of my flesh to reclaim some of that cheekbone from the shadow. Then proceeded to put some crimson on the side of the nose and smooth it out. I really tried to catch each specific step. But- you can see how thin the layer is, then how it smooths with a damp brush. I usually do a few layers of this and reclaim my flesh with a thin glaze if I feel I have too much shadow tone. The crimson will mesh nicely with the walnut so that it looks like she has nice intense Maybelline lashes! Er- probably don't want quite this much contrast with a male face. If I were doing this on a male model, I'd pick something like ruddy brown to line the eyes. More soon!