OneBoot's Bones 1 Kickstarter Figures WIP (picture heavy)

[MatrissaTheEnchantress]

He looks great! I can't wait to see the rest of your notes on the final steps.

 

(And now I have to slink off, mildly embarrassed, because I still haven't finished my exchange mini... stupid real life and stupid head cold and ... bah.)

[OneBoot]

Thanks for the reminder, I have my notes written down and pictures of each step taken, but first I didn't have time to type them up all pretty, and then I forgot to what with other stuff I've been doing today. :)

 

Let's see...looks like I left off with his skin being done, which means that next was repainting his staff with the awesome Mahogany Brown I got. It was the perfect shade of "warm brown but not too red" that I'd flailed around trying to mix up earlier.

 

I painted the cord for his necklace in Oiled Leather, and the teeth/claws in Yellowed Bone. At first I just had the thin cord that runs through the teeth/claws painted, but there's an odd line slightly further up that looks like it's supposed to be something, and it looked weird when I had it painted as skin. So, it became part of the necklace, turning it into something more like a collar-necklace...thing.

 

I did his claws in the same Yellowed Bone as his necklace, because I was trying to strengthen the connection between the two. Also, lion's claws are whiteish. I tried to convey the impression that they were claws instead of nails by painting them further up his fingers, but I'm not sure how well it worked. I extended them further at some later point.

 

Next up was his mane, which I went into without a clear idea of what I wanted the end result to be (I wouldn't recommend this). It already had a coat of... *checks notes* Oiled Leather on it, and I went over that lightly with some Golden Shadow, since a lion's mane (the front half) is actually similar in color to the rest of their fur. I then made a wash of Muddy Brown and went over that to give his mane more depth. I did some highlighting wherever felt right with thinned Tanned Leather, and smoothed the edges out with a bit more Muddy Brown wash. The ends of each hair "clump" I did in Muddy Brown to, again, simulate a lion's mane, which is dark toward the edges.

 

I highlighted the fur collar on his coat with some thinned Golden Shadow, followed by a careful Muddy Brown wash to smooth out the edges. Looking at the picture now, though, I think it sort of killed the highlights some.

 

I went his belt pouches and shoulder things with thinned Black Wash to darken them down a bit, and to really emphasize the detail on the pouches. I then did some...I don't know that I'd call it highlighting, since all I did was reapply the basecoat color on the high points. Reclaiming, maybe? And then I picked out all the clasps and "things that looked like they were supposed to be clasps but were really just tiny blobs" in Antique Gold.

 

I went over the Oiled Leather parts of his boots with thinned Brown Wash to define the transition between gold and leather (partially successful) and to bring out the hard lines across the tops of the boots (slightly more successful). I did a few touches of "highlighting" with the Oiled Leather. The boots were probably the messiest part of the whole mini, since I knew they'd be largely covered up by the grass I intended to add to his base, and so I wasn't my usual perfectionist-picky self on them.

 

This post is getting hugely-big, so I'll continue in a new post.

 

Huzzah!

--OneBoot :D

[OneBoot]

I highlighted the cuffs on his coat with 1 drop Oiled Leather + 5 TT Pure White, and shaded it with 1 drop Oiled Leather + 1 TT Walnut Brown. This part was interesting, because it's when I figured something out. I'd messed up one of the highlights, and was using the basecoat color to "erase" it, when I noticed that when I was going over it very lightly, it softened the edges without obscuring the highlight itself.

 

I found this quite intriguing.

 

After I was done patching, I tried smudging the edges of the rest of the highlights, and then the shading, with a very thin layer of the basecoat color. While not as good as a wet blending, it really helped to smooth out the transition from shade to basecoat to highlight. Cool!! I wish I'd figured this out sooner.

 

...I wish I'd figured this out a whole lot sooner.

 

Erm...apparently I was so excited by my epiphany that I neglected to take a picture of this step. So, uh, here's a picture of a kitten instead.

 

Next up was the highlighting on his staff. Before starting, I did NOT anticipate this being difficult. I figured I'd just add some Pure White to the Mahogany Brown, drybrush, BAM, done. Is that what happened? NO. Well, eventually, sort of. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

 

I started with 1 drop Mahogany Brown and 4 TT Pure White, gradually increasing the Pure White as with each subsequent drybrushing attempt, it just wasn't really going on bright enough (curse you drybrushing and your tendency to alter colors!). Finally, I ended up with 8 TT Pure White, and what went on was kind of...pinkish. Plus, I don't know if it was the brush I was using or what (I tried two different ones), but the brush strokes were very clearly visible despite my best efforts to make the highlights smooth. Oh, and to top things off, the final result also ended up looking rather chalky.

 

I can only think that this is the bad karma I knew would be coming to get me eventually after the awesome happy accident I had with his eye earlier.

 

Argh, and now that I see the pictures, it doesn't even look like I did any highlighting at all! *flips table*

 

Oh well. At least it looks decent from tabletop distance...

 

At this point I was distracted by my awesome Summer Exchange miniatures arriving, and had fun looking at them and taking pictures and letting my exchange partner know that I had received them. :)

 

The last thing I had to do was the coat. This may sound silly, but I'd been dreading trying to highlight the nice flowy part (lower back left) of his coat since pretty near the beginning. I just can't seem to wrap my head around highlights that encompass big, smooth areas, which is bad since those tend to be the most visible.

 

Since I knew I was going to need the basecoat, shade and highlight colors, went about this next step methodically. I mixed up three puddles of the basecoat (2 drops Grass Green, 1 drop Stone Gray, 1 drop Pure White, 1 drop water, 8 TT Blood Red), then put a drop of Walnut Brown by one, and Pure White by another. I started with the shade color, and mixed in about 5 TT Walnut Brown. The veritable lake of paint ate it up and changed very little compared to the basecoat when I applied it to the mini. So I added another 4 and tested it again. Still practically no change. This went on for awhile until in exasperation I mixed in the whole darn drop of Walnut Brown. Finally, success! I didn't really think about the fact that more paint = more dark paint needed to shade.

 

Here's a shot of my wet palette so you can see the swimming-pool sized amounts of paint I needed to do his coat properly. As pretty as the color is, I'm never mixing it up again, it's waaaay too much of a hassle. :P

 

For the highlights, I did the same thing, except with Pure White, and I skipped right to the "adding the whole drop" part. The back left part of the coat that I was worried about took a looooot of "apply highlight, glaze over with basecoat" before it started to look at all smooth. It's still slightly blotchy looking, but substantially better-looking than when I first started working on it.

 

It was all smooth sailing from here. I went back over the whole thing under regular lighting (instead of the very bright light from my magnivisor) and tidied up lots of little things here and there. I then went over the base with a quick, messy Golden Shadow (because savanna)

 

followed by a rather wet "drybrush" of Yellowed Bone.

 

It didn't really matter how nice it looked, since it was all going to be covered up anyway; I just needed to get the basic colors underneath to give the grass the right touch. But before grass, I wanted to go over him with some Brush-on Sealer for protection. I experimented on the bottom of my handy Well of Chaos with thinned versus unthinned Sealer to see how shiny each was, and it looked like thinned was sliiiightly less shiny. 3 drop Sealer to 2 drops water did the trick, and it was amazing how many mistakes I caught and corrected as I sealed him up bit by bit.

 

Time to base! Even though this was my first ever attempt at basing, I was far more excited than I was nervous. I figured it was as easy as "pull off tuft of grass, apply superglue, stick on mini." Which...it was. I once again appropriated one of Husband's tools, since this was the smallest plier-type thing we had.

 

I had a lot of fun applying the grass tufts, and despite their being "grass sea urchins" I'm very happy with how it ended up looking! http://www.reapermini.com/forum/index.php?/topic/50263-oneboots-consolidated-show-off/page-3#entry767524'>Here's the link again to the final result in my Show-off thread.

 

~~~~~~~~

 

So, that's Damien. I really felt like I pushed my boundaries as a painter here, and I've found where I need to keep pushing them (highlighting and shading, mostly). I learned that basing isn't so scary after all, thinned paint is good but not all of the time, and that having the right color makes a big difference. Just changing his skin from Tanned Leather to Golden Shadow changed the whole feel of the piece; he looked a lot more alive after that, it was very cool. I also think I may have accidentally stumbled into glazing (I hadn't intended to attempt that for quite some time), but I'm going to need to do a lot more refining of my technique before I feel fully comfortable with it. I'm liking what I've done so far with it, though! :)

 

Lastly, when I was starting to clean up from this project, I suddenly realized just how many different paints and paintbrushes had gone into paining just this ONE miniature. So, just for fun, I took a picture.

 

I've already got my next project lined up, and he'll be a good one for me, since he's got lots of nice folds and creases for practicing deeper shadows and higher highlights. :)

 

Huzzah!

--OneBoot :D

 

EDIT: In the future, my WIP posts won't be nearly this exhaustive. I try to only go into a lot of detail when I'm trying a technique for the first time, and there were a lot of firsts on this guy. :)

Edited September 25, 2013 by OneBoot

[Pixel]

Erm...apparently I was so excited by my epiphany that I neglected to take a picture of this step. So, uh, here's a picture of a kitten instead.

 

ROTFL! you totally crack me up!

 

And you painted up Damien very nicely as well, so win win!

Heidi

[Baugi]

Yeah, be careful mixing browns with white. So many of reaper's browns are really red- browns, that the pink thing happens with quite a few of them.

 

End result is very nice! Especially given how long you've been at this!

 

Edit: Forgot to mention, the phenomenon of visible brush strokes when drybrushing is often called streaking, and typically comes from the brush being too damp, or too much paint on it.

Edited September 25, 2013 by Baugi

[OneBoot]

Yeah, be careful mixing browns with white. So many of reaper's browns are really red- browns, that the pink thing happens with quite a few of them.

 

End result is very nice! Especially given how long you've been at this!

 

Edit: Forgot to mention, the phenomenon of visible brush strokes when drybrushing is often called streaking, and typically comes from the brush being too damp, or too much paint on it.

 

Thank you! :D And thanks for the advice! I'd noticed a definite drop in how my drybrushing has been lately, and I didn't even think to equate it to a brush that was too damp. I thought I remembered reading from a couple of people that having the brush slightly damp beforehand helped, but I very well could be confusing that with something else. I read too much stuff, I think.

 

Yeah, the pinkish-red thing caught me by surprise, since I've never had that happen with Muddy Brown (my only dark brown up to this point). The two new dark browns that I've picked up, Mahogany Brown and Chestnut Brown, are both on the reddish end of things, which is what I'd originally gotten them for (I'd wanted a nice warm brown and wasn't sure from the online color swatches which one would work). Do you have any recommendations about how to highlight the warmer browns? Should I try highlighting with a warmed up tan instead?

 

Huzzah!

--OneBoot :D

[Corporea]

Hooray! In celebration of all your hard work, here is a trusty seal to use!

Celebration of a job well done!

[CashWiley]

Hah! Too awesome.

[OneBoot]

Hooray! In celebration of all your hard work, here is a trusty seal to use!

Celebration of a job well done!

 

I can't like this enough. This is totally going to be a thing I use now.

 

Because I'm meta, I give your post:

 

 

Huzzah!

--OneBoot :D

[Baugi]

Do you have any recommendations about how to highlight the warmer browns? Should I try highlighting with a warmed up tan instead?

 

Huzzah!

--OneBoot :D

I'd try yellow-tans to start, but some colours can behave strangely when mixed. Experiment!

[OneBoot]

Wow, it's been awhile since I've posted anything here. To be fair, there hasn't been much to post, since I think I'm subconsciously afraid of the next mini I paint turning out horribly after I was so happy with the job I did on Damien.

 

I've since gotten over myself a bit, and made a start on putting some actual color on our game's spellcaster's PC mini (http://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/warlock/sku-down/77040'>Satheras, Male Warlock), whom he named Aerodis.

 

I started with a coat or two of Pure White, and then a fairly heavy coat of straight Brown Wash. I think I might have put it on a little too heavy, since although it highlights details nicely, it has a tendency to blur the edges of things a bit. (forgot to take a picture, but you aren't missing much) Happily, my Reaper Brush-on Primer has since arrived, so I'll be able to dispense with the wash in the future, since I've mostly just been doing it to help with basecoat adhesion.

 

Blue is this player's favorite color, so I decided to paint him up using many different shades of blue. This will be interesting, since I only have three to my name, and one of them is Snow Shadow, which is a very very light blue. Which means MORE PAINT MIXING, yay!

 

The main part of his robes got 2-3 coats of thinned Soft Blue, and I'm liking that as a good solid base color. I was at gaming night during this step, so no picture, sorry! Next, I knew I wanted to use my Sapphire Blue for the half-cloak thingy on his shoulders, so I needed something in-between for the top layer of his robes. I stared at my three blues for a moment, then shrugged, mixed together a drop of each and thinned it a bit.

 

When in doubt, us ALL THE PAINTS. It keeps life interesting. :D

 

 

 

Excellent; it's distinct enough from the Soft Blue that I can tell they're two different layers. I love it when a plan comes together.

 

The Sapphire Blue gave me a lot of trouble, since it behaved like a toddler at naptime. It did NOT like being thinned, it did NOT play nice when I didn't thin it, it was just generally...fussy. Here it is with about 3 coats of thinned and 1 coat of unthinned Sapphire Blue, and it still needs a couple more to look decent. :P

 

 

 

The middle layer, unfortunately, reads too close to the Sapphire Blue in real life, especially when not in strong light. To double-check that I hadn't just been staring at blue for too long, I handed it to Husband and asked him how many shades of blue he saw. After looking it over for awhile, he tentatively said, "...Two?"

 

Sigh.

 

I think adding another drop of the Snow Shadow should help change the saturation enough to distinguish the two. I know if I added a wee bit of orange, I could desaturate it right quick, but I don't want to make it too dark either. I plan to do his hood in the Soft Blue, and his under-vest/shirt in Snow Shadow (this guy almost has more layers on than a Victorian lady, srsly). Haven't decided what to do for his pants leg yet; maybe either a warm rusty brownish color, or else a very dark orangey brown. I'll play around with colors and see what fits. The gem on his staff will definitely be a lovely bright orange, though, because color theory (yay I'm applying stuff I've learned!).

 

I was going to do some more work on him yesterday, but then my neck decided to assume a Full Upright and Locked position, which led to a trip to the physical therapist and a determination that bending over squinting at tiny figurines would probably not be conducive to my health at that time.

 

It's still too sore to do much right now, but I should be feeling better enough to get back in the saddle tomorrow or the day after. Now that I've started him, I'm starting to get all sorts of excited to finish him before Friday and see the player's face when I hand it to him.

 

Huzzah!

--OneBoot :D

Edited October 9, 2013 by OneBoot

[Maglok]

Good use of blues!

[trystangst]

So all that brown is just a wash over white? Because it looks pretty cool by itself.

[Jasper_the_2nd]

Nice. Apparently he just calls out to be blue. My Satheras is still sitting on the shelf at home in his base coat of blues and greys. I decided to try wet blending on him and still haven't gotten to it....I really must get back to him sometime soon...

[Corporea]

Is it just me, or is this mini huge comparatively? Blues can be tricksy. Sapphire plays well with teal and white. Soft blue can tolerate a nice peacock green as a shadow. Also- consider mixing your soft blue with a gray to change its tone a bit from the bright sapphire. I still like the blue brown combo...