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This past weekend I started painting Brom, the 54mm scale dwarf from Enigma. The sculpt has got a mix of equipment and, to be honest, I'm not even sure what all of it is. It gives him a lot of character, but presents some challenges with the painting. I've been putting a lot of thought into how I want to approach the piece and finally decided to pick a color scheme and let that tie the figure together. I started with the face. Considering most of it is hidden by the hair, the beard feels almost as important as the rest of the face. I used a mix of Reaper's Ruddy Leather, Secret Weapon's Orange Rust, and Reaper's Burnt Orange and Fair Skin Highlight. I find the light skin tones are nice for highlighting hair, I'd do the same with brown hair. For the blood stained cloth on his head, I used a mix of Carnage Red and Walnut Brown. I wanted it to be darker near the center, so more brown, and the moving to pure red near the boundaries. I applied the red as a glaze over the white cloth to give it the right look. Instead of using the well palette that I'd normally turn to for glazes, I ended up mixing them directly on my wet palette. Normally that produces a mess, but I used a bit of paint and then added a bunch of matte medium (plus a little water). The matte medium is thick, so it creates the right transparency without causing the glaze to flow all over the palette. Then I then it down slightly with water for a consistency that's easier to paint with. The effect is the same as a regular glaze, but since it's on the wet palette it's easier for me to mix paints and create different colored glazes. It's also easy to vary the consistency/transparency by changing up the ratio of matte medium and paint. So I can quickly make a section more opaque and another more transparent. Not something I do for all glazes, for in situations like this it's a nice option to have in my tool kit. And here's the full figure. Still a lot left to paint!

If you've seen my other posts here, you know I normally work on larger scale figures. But recently I took on a commission to paint the 28mm version of Kingdom Death's White Speaker. I actually painted the 54mm version a few years back, so I thought it'd be an interesting exercise to see how I could do on the 28mm one. So far my focus has been on the skin. The other sections just have some dark undercoats. I played around with my mixes a bit on this one. I started by base coating her with a 2:1 mix of Rosy Shadow and Bronzed Shadow. I then used a 4:1 mix of Chestnut Brown and Rosy Shadow to create the darkest shadows. From there I worked up to a 3:1 mix of Rosy Skin and Bronzed Skin and finally added in Fair Highlight for the brightest parts. Although she's a female figure, I still went for a more dramatic contrast range and brought out some of the muscles more than I might on a different female subject. This one is a badass warrior, so she should be pretty fit.

A few years ago I did a quick tutorial of painting red hair with Reaper's red hair triad. Since then I have painted quite a few more red heads and hopefully am better at it. The first tutorial http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/46120-tutorial-for-the-red-head-triad/ used mainly just the red hair triad with a few other colors to give it some depth. I wanted to expand upon the first and still focus on the red hair triad. So here are the colors I selected to use for my victims. Here are the three victims freshly primed and waiting to cure a bit before painting. From left to right the miniatures are Dark Sword's Female Mage DSM1192, Reaper's Dain Deepaxe 77074 and Reaper's Valloa Female Elf Thief 03566. I don't usually prime my bones minis but I did put a quick layer of Tamiya primer on him so I can paint with thinner paint. I plan to paint one of them a deeper auburn and one a bright orangish red. The third will be hopefully somewhere in between. Any and all input is welcome. This will be how I paint red hair and hopefully give some of the newer painters ideas of how to approach red.