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

[OneBoot]

Sorry for the lag in updating, not only did life happen, but I was starting to get (unfortunately) a little bored of rats. I figured out why, though: trying to paint them all simultaneously is apparently boring to me. So, I decided to just focus on one rat at a time and go from there. This helped a lot to motivate me to start painting again. :)

 

I opened up my wet palette, and I'd forgotten that I'd left a couple drops of Flesh and Black washes on it. So, this is what happens when you leave a wash in a wet palette for too long:

 

 

Interesting. I'll have to remember to not do that again if I want to still use it.

 

Since Rat #1 was the first in line, he got attention first. I pretty much used Reaper's #30-0 brush for the whole of this post. I toyed with the idea of giving him spots, or mixing up my own wash, but eventually decided that I wanted him to be done, so instead I mixed 1 drop Fair Skin with 1-2 toothpick-tip amounts (hereafter referred to as TT) of Blood Red, and painted his tail, paws and little bitty nose. I forgot to take a picture of that step (though you'll be able to see it in later pictures), so instead here's a picture of the amount I mean by "toothpick-tip", just in case anyone ever wants to replicate any of the colors I use:

 

 

Next, I tried messing around with adding 2 TT of Dusky Skin to 1 drop Blood Red for his mouth. The result was still too red, so I tried adding 1 TT of Walnut Brown. And holy cow, it totally overwhelmed the entire mixture. So, I ended up having to add back 2 whole drops of Blood Red to get it looking red again. Oddly enough, when I dipped my brush into the mixture, it seemed to break through a floating layer of darker color, revealing a brighter red underneath. Maybe I hadn't mixed well enough, I'm not sure. Anyways, I painted his mouth, and instantly didn't like the color at all. My rat looked like it had just gotten done eating people or something.

 

 

 

So I decided to just go back over the whole thing with my trusty Walnut Brown. It ended up looking a whole lot better, and I was able to even give him a bit of a gumline by leaving just a thin outline of the red.

 

 

Next, I mixed 1 drop Yellowed Bone with 2 drops Pure White for his teeth. This took...quite some time, and after going back and forth several times between him looking like Vampire Rat and having short stubby teeth, I finally ended up with something I was happy with. I then realized that it would look better if I put a line between the teeth, which led to another couple rounds of widening and narrowing his teeth until at last, success!

 

 

It's funny, but I never in a million years suspected that I would think the #30-0 was too big for anything. That's certainly how I felt here.

 

I needed a little break from focusing so intently on tiny little details, so I redid the 1 on the bottom of the base that's been bugging me since I did it. Abracadabra, I make the 1 disappear!

 

 

Now come back, only less terrible!

 

 

I'll continue in another post, since this one's getting pretty big.

 

Huzzah!

--OneBoot :D

Edited July 8, 2013 by OneBoot

[OneBoot]

Feeling somewhat steadier, I decided to tackle his eyes. I wanted to do sort of a pinkish red, like a lot of white rats have, but a mixture of 1 drop Pure White with 1/4 drop Blood Red did not end up making very good eyes.

 

 

Ah well. Back to Walnut Brown it is. My first attempt looked too evil, and I really wanted this to be a cute rat, so some careful patches of white on the corners made them magically turn into round happy rat eyes. I also tidied up around his mouth, making it less grimacing and more, um, smiley.

 

 

I went back with Pure White and tidied up the cement lines on the floor, and was able to successfully freehand the missing cement line between his body and his tail. After that, I decided that Rat #1 is done!

 

 

 

 

And then I took a good look at the last four pictures and noticed a bunch of things that needed to be tidied up, such as around his toes, his tail, the front of his body where it meets the base, and I also thought the toes on his front paws could use some definition. I tried painting between them with Walnut Brown, which looked fairly cartoonish, and not what I was looking for at all.

 

 

So I just went back over it with his paw color and called it good. I'm sure I could do better, but I was feeling significantly cross-eyed at this point, and just wanted to be finished.

 

 

And lastly, here's a pic of the curve of his tail tidied up quite a bit.

 

 

Yay, I'm calling him done for now! These rats just keep reinforcing that I really really really should have done my brownlining first, before any basecoating, because I know that the transition between the rat and the base can look a lot better than it does. But, as they are now, they'll look good enough for the table, and I certainly have learned my lesson for next time. :) Next up will be Rat #2.

 

Huzzah!

--OneBoot :D

[smokingwreckage]

For mixing washes, white ice cube trays. The trays for making tiny ice balls are even better.

[Slendertroll]

My stock wash advice is to use your fingerprints. The wash will behave the same on your fingerprints as on your minis, so if it settles into the crevices of your fingerprints and really makes the pattern obvious, you have it at just the right consistency. If it gloops up and just leaves a dark streak, it's too thick, and if it doesn't make much of a difference at all, it's too thin.

 

Anyway, your rats look great! I just finished mine, and didn't bother with most of the little details that you did. I love #1's little pink paws!

[CashWiley]

For washes I tend to use a welled palette. That said, as someone who has really taken to using the wet palette regularly (short infrequent sessions, and slow painting so I like the open time), it probably looks worse than it is. Use your mixing brush to get it mixed up again and test it on some paper. It'll probably be a bit thin, adding another drop will usually bring paint (and I assume RMS washes) back. Most of the time I'd rather revive something with a drop of paint than start over, but you'll get a feel as you use the palette more.

 

The one thing to watch out for is clumping. If the edge of the pool starts to dry, don't use it anymore.

[OneBoot]

Thanks Slendertroll, that's a great quick way for me to see how a wash will behave! I will definitely be trying that in the near future. :D

 

@CashWiley - Yeah, the edges were starting to dry, and I'm honestly not planning on using my wet palette to hold washes; they were just left over from when I was messing around earlier.

 

I have gotten a cheap welled palette, and after testing the black wash out in it I've determined that it's definitely too thick. Funny story: I'd accidentally grabbed my Pure Black instead of the wash and put a drop in one of the wells. Realizing my mistake when I stuck my brush into it, I put a drop of the Black Wash in the well next to it. Just sitting there, the two drops looked identical.

 

After trying Mistimp's suggestions on testing wash consistency, this was the result for straight-out-of-the-bottle Black Wash (the drop in the left well is the Pure Black):

 

 

Clearly, thinning is in order. I should also note that I shook the wash for a couple of minutes before using it, since it really likes to settle.

 

Since my local tap water is hard enough that it could probably break someone's foot if I dumped a glass of the stuff on it, looks like a gallon of distilled water will be my next purchase. I'll try mixing up my own wash for my next rat, I'm feeling brave. :)

 

Huzzah!

--OneBoot :D

[Slendertroll]

Hey, I think I have that same palette!

[LittleBluberry]

I bought some empty dropper bottles a long time ago, thinking that I would use them for custom paint mixes or something. What I've actually used them for is distilled water and a super-thin 'magic wash' (can't remember what the formula was, but it was mostly water). It's very handy being able to dispense water by the drop, and I use the wash a lot on chain-mail.

 

Oh, and the fingerprint trick is cool, I'll have to share that one. Don't know if it would work for me personally, but it's been well established that my finger prints are barely there. (Fingerprint readers hate me.)

 

Edit: I forgot to mention that your rat is adorable. I don't think I put nearly as much work into the first batch of rats I painted. :)

Edited July 8, 2013 by LittleBluberry

[CashWiley]

I also keep distilled water in a dropper bottle. I bought a little pack from the hobby store, but I also have a few from Reaper (you can buy empty bottles from them!).

 

I have a couple different mediums in droppers but I've mostly stopped using them in favor of water.

Edited July 8, 2013 by CashWiley

[OneBoot]

Yeah, 2 packs of 3 empty dropper bottles are currently sitting in my Reaper shopping cart, waiting patiently for me to be able to make a purchase. One is going to be for water with a wee drop of soap, and another will be for my Glass and Tile Medium, since it's great stuff, but it's packaged in the same kind of bottle as every other craft paint I have, and the opening is just waaaaay too big for stuff that runny. I'm sure I'll find uses for the others. :)

 

Huzzah!

--OneBoot :D

[Doug Sundseth]

I think if you were to try using a premium Kolinsky sable brush (Winsor & Newton, da Vinci, Raphael), you would get better results with a #1 or #2 than you are getting with that Reaper #30/0. The larger belly holds a reservoir of paint that will wick to the surface as you use it, which allows consistent, umm, consistency* as you paint. And the premium brushes can hold just as fine a point as that #30/0.

 

Do what works for you, of course, but that was my experience.

 

*

[OneBoot]

I will definitely keep that in mind, but I made the conscious decision to learn on the Reaper brushes, since I'm learning what to/not to do with brushes, brush care, etc. and they're much cheaper to replace than Kolinsky's. lol At this point, if I were to get one, I probably wouldn't use it much because I'd be too afraid of ruining it. But they are definitely on my list of things to get when I've gotten the basics of both painting and brush care down.

 

Huzzah!

--OneBoot :D

[CashWiley]

Nothing has made a bigger difference to my painting than buying a good brush. Cheap brushes cost me so much money, time and frustration!

 

But I understand being on a budget, getting up to speed with good tools is far from cheap. That's part of why I haven't done any decent bases, I need more darn supplies!

[Jasper_the_2nd]

But I understand being on a budget, getting up to speed with good tools is far from cheap. That's part of why I haven't done any decent bases, I need more darn supplies!

 

Can you ever have enough basing supplies??

Every time I think I have a good assortment someone posts up a picture with something I've never seen before...which reminds me that I need to place an order tonight...

 

OneBoot, just got caught up on your work (I was on vacation). Nice work. Really like seeing someone willing to experiment.

I have the same problem trying to do multiples of the same figure at once, I prefer to focus on one at a time.

 

Really like the one you have finished, although I think I would have left him looking like he was feeding on something and made a little pile of something in front of him and painting it like the remains. But I guess you were looking for "cute" so that wouldn't have worked....

[OneBoot]

Thanks! :) And don't worry, I plan on making Rat #10 (Pure Black) a little vampire rat, with nasty big pointy teeth and glowing red eyes and everything.

 

Huzzah!

--OneBoot :D