77163 Male Storm Giant Bones

[stevelabny]

Following the female cloud giant, my gf tackled this guy while I started trying to figure out how to paint the tiny scorpions, put down some colors on the Marsh Troll and started my copyright-infringing Large Earth Elemental. If we take pictures this weekend those might go in a WIP thread. But as always, hers are way better than mine anyway.

 

Based on the comments to the Female Cloud Giant, she tried to up the contrast on this guy by darkening shadows and brightening highlights. She didn't do it to the metallic parts. ( do those have to be done any differently?)

 

Comments appreciated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ShadowRaven]

looks great. You can shade and highlight metalics the same way, or by blending in a non-metallic colour. For the most part though you don't have to. Although it helps to put a darker colour under the metallics, browns for golds, greys for silvers, and then put the metallic over that, otherwise they tend to seem a bit transparent.

[Laoke]

Also, doing a black wash over metallics can really help with definition. What I usually do is a base-coat of black (although I'm going to experiment with dfferent shades), heavy dry-brush of the metallic, fairly strong black wash (I use black ink normally) to knock down the shine and define, and then highlight with the metallic.

 

It's a very rough and ready technique, pretty much designed for bulk painting of tabletop quality figures not display. But it's worked well for me.

 

I really like the blending on the cloth. Much better than what I do : )

Edited July 28, 2013 by Laoke

[Darkmeer]

I love your skin tones and the cloth. You've done a great job with those, and you should be proud of them!

 

I'd recommend looking up "black highlighting" for the black cloth areas, there are a couple of theories on this. I favor the black-dark blue-pale blue-gray highlighting myself, but there are too many ways to count to do this.

 

I'm with Laokeon the black wash over metallics/basing with a darker color.

Here are my recipes, mind you I use some non-model color paints in my recipes, I hope this to be helpful:

 

 

My silver/steel metallics look something like this in order of layer (all vallejo Model color)

Base Tone: German Grey (awesome, super useful color).
1st metallic: Gunmetal Grey
2nd Metallic: Oily Steel
3rd Metallic: Natural Steel
4th Metallic: Natural steel
5th metallic: Natural steel plus a super tiny amount of white.

Depending on how graded I want, I have been known to mix various paints as I move through them, blending steps one and 2, 3 and 4, and then, on the highest highlight, using pure white.

For golds/brass/bronze (multiple paint companies used):

Base tone (golds): Vallejo Game Color Scorched Brown
1st metallic: Liquitex Artist color old gold (plus liquitex matte medium).
2nd metallic: Liquitex artist color gold (again, including the matte medium)
3rd metallic: Liquitex artist color gold as above, plus Vallejo model color White.

Brass:
Base tone: Vallejo Game Color Beasty Brown
1st tone: Vallejo Model Color Brass
2nd Tone: Vallejo model color Brass plus the Liquitex old gold.
3rd tone: Liquitex Gold (note: This is the highest tone on my brasses, you want a lot of brass to show through, but it needs to be less bright than gold),


Bronze:
Base Tone: Vallejo Game Color Beasty Brown 2:1 with Vallejo Model Color Russian Green.
1st Metallic: Liquitex Bronze
2nd Metallic: liquitex Old Gold plus bronze
3rd metallic: Liquitex old gold. (This will end up darker than brass regardless of what you do, and this is perfectly fine :) )

High tone on this one ends really "dark" versus the others, as it should be. All the liquitex paints are mixed with the liquitex matte medium and thinned to be the same approximate thickness as model paints. I've had no problems with my metallics showing this way. Mind you it takes a few layers of each colors. Again, mixing the different steps in bronze gives you a different grade. You can even wash after step 2 with the base tone, adding more green, although after step 2 the original base tone can be washed over the metals each time. That's a matter of opinion, but that's mine.

 

All of these can be weathered, although look up Verdigris/weathering for each of the metals and mix to your heart's content.

Base tone (Bronze)

 

[ultrasquid]

I'm used to using artists paints which generally have unmixed pigments (metallics are notable exceptions, but are still relatively straightforward formulations), so it might not make a whole lot of sense in terms of modeling paints.

 

To paint silvers I start with a gray (TiO₂ White and Carbon Black) base layer. I paint on thin layers of Iridescent Silver (it comes out of the tube gummy so it needs a fair amount of thinning and whipping to flow smoothly) until I'm satisfied with the opacity. If I want something slightly darker, I'll use stainless steel instead (yes, this actually does have powdered stainless steel in it. Other powdered metals are too reactive with water to use in acrylics, but stainless steel seems to do fine). I'll use Graphite Gray to do any shading that's required using what amounts to what people around here call two-brush blending, even though I do it with one brush.

If that's still not dark enough in places, I'll pick out the deepest crevices with a Carbon Black wash, and blend that in too where it makes sense to do so. After all that washing and blending the silver tends to darken, so I'll drybrush a little more iridescent silver on top, then hit the highlights with iridescent/pearlescent white (name varies with the brand, but it's still TiO₂ coated mica flakes).

 

I do similarly for golds, but I shift to a brown palette (burnt umber, bronze, gold, bright gold, iri. yellow). Sometimes I'll use red iron oxide for the base coat.

 

Graphite Gray actually contains graphite, and if applied in an opaque layer it can be buffed to shine like metallic lead, if you have need for that sort of effect.

 

Interference colors are great for adding magical tints without degrading the metallic sheen.

I probably ought to repost this comment in painting tips, oughtn't I?

[pcktlnt]

Was scrolling the pictures and came upon the facial shot. He looks kind of sad. "Darn those adventurers, sneaking a peek at my girl, stealing my treasure, and getting away" :(

[youwashock]

He looks pretty awesome. The metallics could use a little of the TLC shown to the skin and cloth, as the extra effort there really shows. A dark wash, a couple of highlights, like others have suggested. I like the eyes.