[OPEN/GROUP] WIP L2PK5

[CashWiley]

No WIP thread for Kit 5 or did I miss it? Prepped both minis tonight; primed and mounted Dain.

 

 

He's my favorite mini from the Kits thus far. We'll see how I feel once I get into the increased amount of fiddly bits. As has been my self-imposed restriction thus far, I'll be painting as close to the instructions as I can manage.

[ced1106]

fwiw, Dain also comes in the Vampire KS, so would be interesting comparing "sticking to the instructions" vs. being creative!

 

Any suggestions on getting primer out of chainmail links? :/

Edited December 19, 2012 by ced1106

[Matbar]

Soak in whatever you normally use, and get those wisp pocket toothbrush things. Pop out the little bead of "toothpaste". If the brush doesn't do the trick, there's a fantastic plastic curved "toothpick" on the backside that I had a lot of luck using in some very tricky crevasses. It's harder and sturdier than both a regular toothbrush and a wooden toothpick, yet being plastic and a bit bendy it won't damage your mini.

[CashWiley]

Got out of work a bit early today and hopped on the sofa in front of a nice crackling fire.

 

Deviating from the paint included with the Kit, I based the skin with Tanned Shadow and the hair with Auburn Shadow, a quick lining with thinned Walnut Brown.

 

 

With apologies for the blurry pic...I then followed the Kit's instructions on underpainting. Here you see the metal bits that will get painted silver underpainted with a mix of Ultramarine Shadow and Walnut Brown. You also see my sloppy painting at this stage of the project as well as my poor ability to paint chainmail solidly :)

 

 

That's a two-hour session. I'm so slow!

[CashWiley]

Yay holiday stuff winding down, time to get painting. Nursing a headache from an afternoon of Jameson Gold Reserve, watching RG3 and Morris take the 'Skins to the playoffs, I finished up the base coats for Dain.

 

 

I did a second pass of the Ultramarine Shadow/Walnut Brown mix to try and tighten up all the spots where primer came through. Doing this mini again I'd probably prime it black for my sanity, the white primer has been haunting me a lot on this one.

 

Then, following the kit instructions, I based the gold parts in Ruddy Leather and just went ahead and based all the leather in the same. I won't worry too much about that as there isn't a ton of leather on him; the wood and fur I'll change up with washes/highlights from different families. Ultramarine Shadow as a base coat for the blue areas, planning on digging out the rest of that triad to do a quick job on the clothy bits. Horns got a coat of Stained Ivory.

Edited December 31, 2012 by CashWiley

[klyons99]

Ok, you've got the Ruddy Leather down really well there, I had a devil of a time trying to get that shield done. Kept having a horrible time trying to get the paint to cover those lines without spilling over. Very nice and clean work, I'm impressed!

[CashWiley]

Yeah, that was pretty much the 4th quarter of the skins/cowboys game. Though I was pretty distracted as it was a really good game. I mostly did 'side painting', using the side of the brush dragged along the high spots. Then I went in and tried to clean up the edges a bit. As usual, just using my WNS7 #2.

 

Still not happy with it, but I called it done anyway. Now I get to mess it up again several times over when I do the metals.

 

Spent about a half hour this morning getting the eyes to an acceptable state. Nailed the right eye the first time and spent the rest of the time re-doing the left eye over and over and over and...

[CashWiley]

Laid down the Honed Steel base coat for the steel bits.

 

 

Then the Polished Silver and Pearl White highlights.

 

 

Still really not liking metallic paint. Apologies for the weird colors, it was more yellow than usual so I hit auto white balance in GIMP.

[Mierot]

Dain is looking good. Of the three I painted, I enjoyed this kit, and this figure, the most.

[CashWiley]

Just a quick update, laid down the first layer of gold, Antique Gold.

 

[CashWiley]

So Tommie Soule has set up a blog at http://therainycitypainter.blogspot.co.uk/ He's talking about the old days, and I always find it inspiring to see the early work of really good painters. One thing he said stood out, "I am sharing my painting journey with you all so you may gain insight into how I developed my 'simple' skill. The first step I took was one of 'spot the difference', a simple game you all know, or is it?"

Basically, look at an example of how you want to paint something. Then try to paint it that way. Then try to figure out why it didn't turn out correctly :)

So you all know I'm extremely frustrated with metallics right now. I was looking forward to L2PK5 to improve painting with metallics, if not actually liking the metallic paint itself. Wretched stuff, dries on the brush, goes on totally different from normal paint, etc. (A slight aside - I have airbrush medium on order and I'm contemplating an order for some vallejo air metallics, two suggestions on improving metallics on the brush).

The point of this long winded post is that I found a bunch of mediocre to well-painted examples of Dain, many from right here on the forum. As I looked at what I was trying to achieve, it struck me. L2PK5 only really goes into how to mix paint but when it comes to placing highlights, it just kinda says 'wherever you want a highlight'. Well, I don't know where I want them!.

All apologies to Anne, for the most part these have been great kits with well-chosen subjects. But I feel the most important part of painting metallics isn't paint mixing, it's where to shade and highlight, the theory of painting metallic effects. I really hope this gets addressed in the kit revamp.

Ok. That said, I just got done highlighting the gold. It is what it is, I'll put those pics in the next WIP post. Thanks for reading my dumb little rant

[Doug Sundseth]

A camera is your friend here. Light the bare-metal miniature with a single light in approximately the position that you would like the figure to be lit from. For zenithal highlighting, use large, diffused light source directly above the figure and photograph from all sides while keeping the camera at the same height (important because the highlights will move on metals with viewpoint.

 

Paint the highlights where the bright bits are.

[ObsidianCrane]

Hmm metallics dry only slightly faster than non-metallics for me. Maybe that's a side effect of considering it as "cool enough to paint" when it's bellow 83F :)

 

Also you do know where to put highlights, between your experience with the Drone and L2PK3 etc. Upper edges get highlights and the highest points get the brightest highlights.

[CashWiley]

Oh, I know highlights for non-metallics just fine. It's metal surfaces that don't reflect light like absorbent surfaces. Just looking over kit 3 (which I saved for last), it does indeed get into where to lay in shadows and highlights on metallic surfaces (as NMM, but same thing, really). I should've read that kit before doing metallics on Dain, though.

[CashWiley]

Ok, first up is the gold highlights I mentioned before. Antique Gold, New Gold, Pearl White. I didn't mix between layers, because metallics.



Then I got into a bit of a groove NOT PAINTING METALLICS and ran the blues and browns up to highlights. Started on the beard when the UPS guy showed up with my Rocksmith cable, so this is the progress for now as I went to rock out on guitar for a bit.

 

Browns went from Ruddy through Oiled for the most part, with some Linen White hinted in the mix here and there. Bedroll is some Oiled up to almost Linen White. Rope was the same mix not taken up as far.