Search the Community

Ok all, not my best work but this is my first time working on a drow skinned model. Any advise or suggestions?

Although now that I edit all the pics to fit in the post I see things I want to fix... sigh. Well, anyway I "finished" her! I learned a lot working on her skin and I'm happy with the colors. This is the Mother of Dragons bust from Nuts Planet. I opted not to paint her as Daenerys. My WIP is here, and I should have all of the color information there, but if anyone has questions please let me know. I'm always happy to explain or try to break the process down. I'm always trying to improve so C&C welcome! I like the walnut base. Here she is up close: and a few other angles. I had fun with the spiderwebs! Here's one to try to pick up the dragon's texture: It wasn't as successful as I wanted but I have to stop painting it and work on something else. Or I will probably wreck it! Enjoy! I'll see y'all in just 5 months!!!!

I bought the Mother of Dragons bust at Reapercon last year initially with the idea of painting it up for my dad (who is supportive of my painting but ambivalent towards painted miniatures in general) as a present since he loves Game of Thrones. But, I just couldn't get in to painting it as Daenerys. It didn't click. So, dad will have to wait for me to find something equally cool. Although I did buy him some of those charity water-dot-org chalices which I'm thinking he'll like better anyway... plus charity! And beer! Right, at any rate, I've realized something about my painting. I'm not satisfied with my skill set. I always want to add to it or work on something new or learn different technique. Otherwise I feel bored and I can't get motivated to paint. So, in my never-ending quest to expand my mind and go all Neo on this bust, I'm tackling darker skin. It's something I am not good at... yet! But, I also wanted to play with the platinum blonde Daenerys hair since it's also new to me. Blonde is not intuitive and I have to think when I paint it. ...and we all know what dark skin plus white hair means... So, I went in search of inspiration. Khoudia Diop is just gorgeous. I loooooove her skin. Hints of purple and red... beautiful! Now this pic I like for the frontal lighting reference but her skin looks much browner. You can still see the purple, but it's more muted. So I'll go with the lighting on the second and the color from the first. I picked my colors and am documenting them so in three months when I get around to working on this again I won't forget! I couldn't find my ghost white when I started painting so I settled on spectral white. And I'm glad I did. It kept with the theme of the purple. I did find the ghost white later, never fear. So, when I paint skin on a bust, I have a huge surface area to work with. Which means I can add a whole lotta depth of color. I can glaze different shades in to my heart's content. I think this is some of what makes skin look more realistic. I've said it before but it never hurts to reiterate- skin is all about layering. Underneath skin lie bones, tendons, muscles, fat, vessels, nerves finally covered by layers upon layers of translucent cells. Which means there's a huge variety of colors in skin itself, not to mention any shadows or light cast upon it. I like using the photo reference because it makes me really look and see where the colors are and where to put all my highlights and shadows. When I basecoat my skin I wet blend. Basically, I take my paint, mix it to about what shade I want and apply, adding a few areas of dark and light to get a sense of the form and the volume. Since I couldn't pick one color to match Khoudia's skin I mixed a bit of the mahogany with the dark elf skin and the nightshade purple. I used a big brush. I have a #6 series 36 (the cheaper ones) Davinci just for big projects like this. Once I got the base down I switched back to my #1. Oh, and I forgot- I sanded the resin bust USING MY N-95 PROTECTIVE MASK, glued the head and the support on (waiting on the hair, etc until I get father) and washed the while thing with dish soap. I filled in a few areas with greenstuff and primed it with reaper brush on primer. Here's me working on figuring out where the highlights go. Faces have planes that form geometric shapes like circles and triangles. Get these highlighted early and it really guides painting later on. I added a bit of the oiled leather in with the spectral white to keep it on the warm side. notice how I may blend a bit, but I'm focusing more on shape. I can always blend later. Besides, the more layers I use, the more realistic the skin looks. And I might earn my 1K Layering Achievement Badge. If only that existed... Not sure I like the eyes. Not sure what color eyes I want but they were just staring at me. I wanted something different that would stand out. Meh. I'll think about it. I used brilliant blue with the spectral white for reference. h ugh, focus off on that one. I glazed in a bunch of the mahogany brown to de-purple-ize the skin. It was getting a bit purple. I also want to have the left side of the photo (right side of the face) be darker since the head is tilted to the side. So I used more brown and less highlight on that side. I put a hint on pink in the lower lip as well as the tear ducts in keeping with anatomy and all that. In typical Corporea fashion I took a break from skin and played with the hair. I had a hard time figuring out the colors for it. I almost used the ghost white, but settled on a warmth using the oiled leather and some linen white with the dark elf skin as a shadow. The three mixed together make this lovely gray. So, that's where I am right now. Hmmn... maybe about 4 hours of work I think, With a few Skyrim breaks here and there. She still needs more red and brown. Waaaay too purple. But that's for next time! Hooray!!!

IF YOU ARE MY EXCHANGE PARTNER, PLEASE DO NOT GO FURTHER UNLESS WILLING TO BE SPOILED!!!!! So my Exchange Project for the Spring Exchange is going to be chronicled here. My project will be painting the following miniature... I'll be trying to make this Mini into a Drow Vampire or something similar. I'm going to my FLGS Tomorrow for painting lessons. Wish me luck. GF

So here he is the final piece to the set I've been working on, an old Ral Partha AD&D set from the nineties, the Drow Elf assassin. and here: is the whole set and as a reminder the other three individually: Enjoy!

Another model rescued from my friends trash bin. It was in a blister pack bubble with a monkey, no label and other than the 2005 paizo marking on the bottom of the base, no other clues as to were it came from. I thought that was extremely odd, a drow with a monkey. After some heavy google fu, I finally figured out that it was a model from what appears to be Paizo's 1st line on minis. He went along with a module story of some sort where is was listed as the "Evil Sheriff." Not a whole lot of detail and after I primed him, far less. I did what I could with him and being my first drow paint up, happy.

Finished up a group of drow this month. I'm running Out of the Abyss for a group of my coworkers, so these should get some tabletop mileage pretty quickly. Thanks for looking! Rogue Archer Warrior Mage Warrior

I struggle completely with skintones, even real human ones, and doing something natural looking but alien is beyond me. For my new elf army however, I wanted to try something new and go with an 'inversed drow' colour scheme - pale skin, with blueish grey tint, and cold black hair (p3 coal black as base). I am not sure how to transfer that idea into reality; for rank-and-file, with little actual skin showing, going with just a pale skintone base, lightgrey/blue wash mix and highlights should suffice, but the method doesn't really scale to characters with more skin showing. As usual, I would prefer to start painting with characters to set the look, and then simplify the method, rather than the other way round. These fora were always a great source of inspiration with unconventional colour schemes, and I suspect this is not a particularly original idea, so I hope to find a pixture of something similar to help me transfer the picture I have in mind to actual paint colours.

***In another bout of insanity, I had started this mini as well....*** ***And it's about time too....*** ***Yes my Queen of Darkness....*** So while hunting the Bay of all Evil, I ran across the 'human' Avatar of Takhisis from the box set for a good price, and bought her. After she made her way here from Denmark, and got cleaned up and primed, she has been getting som paint here and there... Decay Black base coat for the skin, followed by MSP Dark elf triad...(incomplete) Eyes were White Sands and Aldebaran Red Bikini with Sunset Purple ***I mean I already painted her Awesomness' Human Avatar, (DSM Barbarian Queen), so I thought that MY people would be fitting for an Avatar of the Queen of Chaos....*** ***I will reserve my judgement until I see what you have done with my other mortal form.....*** ***Yes my Queen! I will do my finest work!*** ***You had Better!*** (Ma'al Drakkar....) ****AAAAAAhhhhh Dreamy.........**** Comments, critiques and distractions welcome! George

This is the final batch of my vintage enamel paintjobs on this classic range of minis. If anyone missed the earlier parts, they are here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Shambling Mound Giant Toad Naga Drow Sylph These final few were painted relatively recently (ie. in the last 12 years or so) using them thar newfangled acrylic paints. Gibberlings Yugoloth Mimics And that seems to be all I've got from this range. Or at least, all I have painted so far...

Really like this mini and when I had primed it I thought to myself hmmm I wonder if that leather armor will work painted as metal so I gave it a shot and I think it came out quite well. So here is Arathanel painted as a drow in metal armor. Please C&c ;)

Hey folks! I was looking through some old Forgotten Realms stuff the other evening, and came across my copy of FR1, Waterdeep and the North, and looking at the cover art by Keith Parkinson, I decided that I would like to attempt to re create that as a diorama. So I spent some time with the figure finder, and tried sorting through the characters shown: Beholder- Not sure yet which one I will use to do Xanathar.. The fighter- no mini really jumped out at me when I sorted for male human scale mail. I tried assorted weapons, but again nothing clicked. The CPA- again, sorting human male cloth / clothing and nothing worked... The Dwarf - 03626: Gruff Grimecleaver seems to have good possibilities, the fact that the peg leg is on the opposite side is immaterial. The Drow lady- I would have though a female drow in a bikini and boots would have been relatively easy to find, but again no luck searching under female elf / dark elf... Intellect Devourers- Nothing comes up under that term, and not really sure what to convert from.... I thought that a puma/cougar mini could be modified... I am willing to do modifications.... So if anyone has any suggestions for me, that would be great! Thanks George

This is an old drow elf made by RAFM that I've had mostly done on my shelf for way too long. All I needed to finish was his boots and base; I have no idea why I didn't finish him up before. Anyway, he's done now. Most of the paint is from a couple years ago...

Just finished up a commission for a new D&D player at my local shop. I'm not totally comfortable with drow skin and white hair, but I'm fairly happy with how it came out:

I painted up a relatively quick $20 commission for a player in my D&D group tonight. The character is a half-drow rogue, hence the skin and eye colors.

Hi I had long break from painting, because i was preparing Festus the leechlord and it is so complicated that i had enought with my hobby... Today i painted two old figures from my friend collection (I dont know manufacturer). I had to sculpt head of the dragon because it was lacking:( and i made bra for one of drows beacause she had very strange breasts. Im happy with drow skintone i think its very underdark. http://imageshack.com/a/img908/9548/eOOxF4.jpg http://imageshack.com/a/img908/9599/bp9W4V.jpg http://imageshack.com/a/img908/6772/SxZsVP.jpg http://imageshack.com/a/img907/6008/yDCP8W.jpg http://imageshack.com/a/img903/9890/vmGiJI.jpg Thanks for watching.

I got this figure as part of a 'grab bag'; she was missing her base and her right hand. I did a pretty hamfisted attempt at sculpting her a new hand; to hide the worst of it, I gave her a hand crossbow from the bits box. Looking at the finished figure, I now realized that I should have cut the stock off of her crossbow. Oh well, live and learn; i think it looks alright as is. Standard table top paint job. Tell me what you think. I need to work on eyes a lot more.

http://www.critical-hits.com/blog/2015/07/07/inside-the-deep-elf-marketing-department/ My gaming group has often wondered how the heck Drow society even holds together, or how Mind Flayer cities can possibly work ...

I've gone back and forth about starting this thread since I started painting these last April. Shaerileth and the female spider-centaur are topless, so I need to link pictures owing to nudity. But heck, I guess talking about how I'm painting them can help people so I'm giving it a go anyway. The male spider-centaurs, faces, and backs will be shown. Any front female torsos will be linked to, as per Reaper's forum policy. So anyhow, these are Bones plastic, so fairly lightweight. I primed them all with Reaper's "Brown Liner", the acrylic paint that sticks to Bones no matter what, thinned down somewhat. http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u439/PingoPaints/Miniatures/2015/Driders/0418-007-Lolth_zpsmptc3gnm.jpg http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u439/PingoPaints/Miniatures/2015/Driders/0418-010-driders_zpsoicoszxa.jpg

I'm waiting as patiently as I can for my Bones order to get here... In the meantime, I'm practising with a bunch of minis I have kicking around from a brief (and very ungood) attempt at painting minis back in 2009/2010. I was digging around in my stash last night and found some barely-started Black Ark Corsairs. I've included two of them. The one on the right of the picture is untouched, exactly as I left it 5.5 years ago. (By my standards of the day, the bits that are painted are actually very well done....) The one on the left of the picture has seen a bit of a touch-up. I put a basic grey gradient on the sword, as the first step towards attempting NMM. I also changed the hair. Instead of just painting it all flat white, like the guy on the right, I re-based it with a grey, then added a couple layers of highlights to bring it back up to white. Now I should probably basecoat the rest of the mini and start doing it properly, but mostly tonight I wanted to experiment with adding some layers to the hair, to see if I could do it. I'm sure it could be better, but I'm happy with it.

This is my first Reaper Mini that I have painted to post on the forums. I have recently found the forums here, and am very interested in doing the paint exchanges, but I did want to throw something up so the organizers and other members knew that I can throw some paint on a mini and not have it look like total jank. I am interested to hear what everyone thinks. This was also my first Bones mini that I have done, and did as suggested and not primed it. First coat was a bit tricky but after that everything went pretty typical.

HI ! This is m'y last miniature for fun ... Visible here (WARNING ... Boobs ^^ ) : https://octopusworkshop.wordpress.com/2015/05/19/reaper-shaerileth-spider-demoness/

Another one I finished before coming out here, where I can't paint: Hasslefree's Blanche (resin master). As always, C&C welcome!

I plan on taking a bit of time on this one. I already completed 2 of 4 minis for my goal for April I hope blocking the nipples makes this family friendly? I guessed as long as they were blocked it was ok since I gave her a digital bikini I'm still struggling with contrast. I feel like if I go too far it looks silly, but when I think it looks "ok" it photographs looking all one color. http://housebathory.tumblr.com/

Continuing to paint my Bones wizards.