Kaladrax In Seven Days! Buglips is Crazy! WIP

[buglips*the*goblin]

Buglips,

You are doing a great job! Your drybrushing skillz are awesome. I haven't been able to get my skillz up to par yet.

 

You will with practice. I honed mine mostly on armor model kits and prop skulls, but anything will work if you want it to look like it has texture. Which is why this isn't any good for cloth and skin. Not so much on this board, but drybrushing elsewhere gets a bad rap - and I don't think it should. Skin and cloth should look smooth; rock and bone should look textured. Denying drybrushing is self-limiting and taking a tool out of the box. Combining nice drybrush texture with smooth highlighted stuff might even produce a superior finished product than either method alone.

 

Maybe this WIP will help bring it back into vogue.

 

It was you who had the drybrush questions (I confused you with pocketcthulhu - we have a lot of cthulhu's running around) so I took a picture that might help a bit in figuring it out:

 

 

Drybrushing in this case is actually not expedient. It's taking a while, but I think the look will pay off. Anyway, as I mentioned earlier the key to real nice drybrushing is the same as the key to nice layering: good transition from dark to light. With layering, we achieve this with thinned painted in multiple passes. With drybrushing, you do the same only it's built up with small amounts of paint on the brush and a light touch.

 

In yellow there is the first pass of Bone Shadow. Hardly see any at all. It's like a ghostly hint. But circled in blue is what it looks like after 7-8 passes. Now it's starting to look a lot better.

 

This basecoat will take the longest time, and it's taking longer over the semigloss Coat D'Arms black, but once I power through this and start my highlights progress should be very rapid. And, if it all works, Kaladrax should look ready to leap off the table and bite your nose.

 

Sometimes when I paint, especially beasties like this, instead of thinking of it as painting I imagine I'm in an old school special effects Creature Shop.

 

starting to look a bit Geiger ish.. nice!

 

You mean H.R. Giger, right? I'm not trying to be pedantic and correct your spelling, just making sure we mean the same dude. I think we are talking about the same one, in which case you're absolutely right and I'm glad it's noticeable. There's a definite influence of that here. I had a big book full of his biomechanical art that somebody later stole (this is why I can't have nice things) so I'm mostly going from memory. But, yep, that's the idea.

 

Ancillary to that point, these wings totally feel like I'm painting facehuggers.

 

 

 

So that's some drybrushing on the boney parts of the wings. I left a lot of white so as not to waste paint (I think I have enough CDA Black to do the job, but I'm being cautious). This combined with the semigloss made it hard to see progress.

 

So I decided to fill in the membrane with Dark Elf Triad Shadow. I'll probably smear Bone Shadow on this as I go, but that's easily fixed. At least now I can see what I'm doing. I also found more mold lines, so it'll be an adventure trying to cover them up so they don't stand out too much.

 

 

For the next day or two this is probably what most of the work will be, so it might get a little boring. But once all this set-up is done, the plot should unfold rapidly from there.

[buglips*the*goblin]

 

 

Almost done the basecoat here. Well, on this side. Still have the whole other side to do. I took some time to fill in his purple gasbag, inner liner, whatever thingy.

 

Which brings me to something. In our sometimes passionate debate about the merits of craft paint for the budget-conscious, one of the counterpoints against the economy of craft paint (i.e. look how much you get for so little, as opposed to how little you get in a Reaper bottle) is that Reaper paint goes a long way.

 

Well, I have proof of that. See that bottle cap? That dot in there is what remains of only 5 drops of Dark Elf Shadow. Which was enough to do all of Kaladrax's purple gasbag on both sides (the previously done neck area got a second coat). Undiluted. 5 drops.

 

So we're not leading you astray when we say you get a lot of mileage out of one of these bottles of paint.

[Vortex Rikers]

Watching this has been one hell of a ride, the base alone blew me away, I adore what you've done with it.

 

Can't wait to see the dragolich in his full glory. God's speed.

[cthulhudarren]

Drybrushing in this case is actually not expedient. It's taking a while, but I think the look will pay off. Anyway, as I mentioned earlier the key to real nice drybrushing is the same as the key to nice layering: good transition from dark to light. With layering, we achieve this with thinned painted in multiple passes. With drybrushing, you do the same only it's built up with small amounts of paint on the brush and a light touch.

 

In yellow there is the first pass of Bone Shadow. Hardly see any at all. It's like a ghostly hint. But circled in blue is what it looks like after 7-8 passes. Now it's starting to look a lot better.

 

 

Woah. I didn't realize that drybrushing was such a slow process. I thought it a pass or two and it was done.

[araziel]

 

Drybrushing in this case is actually not expedient. It's taking a while, but I think the look will pay off. Anyway, as I mentioned earlier the key to real nice drybrushing is the same as the key to nice layering: good transition from dark to light. With layering, we achieve this with thinned painted in multiple passes. With drybrushing, you do the same only it's built up with small amounts of paint on the brush and a light touch.

 

In yellow there is the first pass of Bone Shadow. Hardly see any at all. It's like a ghostly hint. But circled in blue is what it looks like after 7-8 passes. Now it's starting to look a lot better.

 

 

Woah. I didn't realize that drybrushing was such a slow process. I thought it a pass or two and it was done.

 

 

I think that's partly why it gets such a bad rap. People put some white on their brush, dry it off and swosh over the model once and call it done. (Me a few months ago :P)

 

If you take your time and gradually lighten it up the results can be really good. In fact if you do a wash or glaze afterwards it can end up looking pretty similar to layering and blending in the end.

And for rough surfaces it's great, like the allmighty goblin already said.

[klarg1]

Woah. You are making some excellent progress, Buglips. Your drybrush tutorial also has me thinking of how to tackle some of the larger Bones as I push through the lot. Keep it up!

[Magnus Mercury]

I honed mine mostly on armor model kits and prop skulls, but anything will work if you want it to look like it has texture. Which is why this isn't any good for cloth and skin.

 

I think I never realized (until now) why my previous attempts at skin have turned out looking "wrong". Until recently, I've had a strong tendency to use the basic "base coat + shading wash + drybrush highlights", and the skin has never looked quite right. I'm working through the LTPK #2 which is giving a much better result. I just never realized that maybe it was the drybrushing that was to blame...

[SamuraiJack]

Yeah.. giger was who I was thinking of.. I shouldn't try to apply thought this close to a project deadline..

[flygyrl]

Looking great buglips!!! Go, go, go!!!!

[Shogun]

This wip on dry brushing is so helpful, thanks.

 

Im trying to practice it. I tried it on two models one complete success and one fail

 

Success:

I base coated my green dragon ....Dark green(some GW color) and used ur advice of layering . I dry brushed a slightly lighter green and moved up from there washing every so often and it's turned out great. The scales turned out really well and the dragon looks very deadly nearly ready to fill some adventurers full of poison.

 

Fail:

I did the same trying to paint a troll as if it had been turned to stone. It was working well and I ended on aged bone but I was a little heavy on paint on the last dry brush and it then made it have basicly white splatter type marks and it set me back all the way to the base coat to fix it (its now table top ready but im not that stoked ) so I have acouple questions!

 

How do u fix your mistakes of dry brushing (or ideally not make them)?

 

2nd how much paint do you have on the brush and how often do u add more paint to the brush

 

Do you dry brush it until the "dust" starts ,or before or thats the perfect point?

 

Again great wip , amazing base. Thank you for inspiring me (and alot of others) to dry brush and talking about its pros and cons. Great stuff.

[buglips*the*goblin]

This wip on dry brushing is so helpful, thanks.

 

Im trying to practice it. I tried it on two models one complete success and one fail

 

Success:

I base coated my green dragon ....Dark green(some GW color) and used ur advice of layering . I dry brushed a slightly lighter green and moved up from there washing every so often and it's turned out great. The scales turned out really well and the dragon looks very deadly nearly ready to fill some adventurers full of poison.

 

Fail:

I did the same trying to paint a troll as if it had been turned to stone. It was working well and I ended on aged bone but I was a little heavy on paint on the last dry brush and it then made it have basicly white splatter type marks and it set me back all the way to the base coat to fix it (its now table top ready but im not that stoked ) so I have acouple questions!

 

How do u fix your mistakes of dry brushing (or ideally not make them)?

 

2nd how much paint do you have on the brush and how often do u add more paint to the brush

 

Do you dry brush it until the "dust" starts ,or before or thats the perfect point?

 

Again great wip , amazing base. Thank you for inspiring me (and alot of others) to dry brush and talking about its pros and cons. Great stuff.

 

Drybrushing can get a bit tricky. It's overall easier than layering, but it still relies a lot on "feel". And to an extent you still have to give thought to your highlight placement like with layering. Where it gets easier is that it's a lot more forgiving, but most of that is because the textures you want to use it on generally have variation anyway. So you can get away with more.

 

The easiest way to avoid problems is to start off lightly. For drybrushing practice or training, one of the best tools is the Testors White Handle Medium brush - it's cheap and you won't feel bad about destroying it. I could save half the time I'm spending if I sacrificed one or two of those, but I don't have many and need to keep them as mixing brushes until I can get more (there's a severe lack of hobby shops in my area). You can use these to practice the most basic drybrushing method, the "scrub" method - where you load the brush, and then scrub almost all the paint off on some paper towel in a circular motion. It's very easy to figure out basic loading and how much to leave on the brush this way, and the Testors brush will unload more easily than a taklon or hair brush. This is basically just to train yourself to recognize the proper baseline of how much should come off. Any model mostly all of one large surface (a dude in full plate, a giant skeleton) will work for this practice because it's hard to get wrong.

 

Assuming whatever brush you're using you don't mind destroying, the key starting out is to scrub most of the paint off before you apply it to the model. So on the dracolich here, the very first pass I'm doing is with a brush barely loaded at all - it's scrubbed off on paper towel until I can't see any coming off onto the towel. This will be the paint at it's most grainy, and I'm going over very lightly to just catch the surface. Depending on how that goes, I'll get a feel for how much the brush is unloading. On the next pass, I might leave a little more on the brush, and again lightly brush to catch the surface. At some point I'll hit the sweet spot and know exactly how much to leave on the brush to do the job I want.

 

Because the raised bits will need the most paint, these are your "corrective" zones - so when you load your brush you will always start in the area you have done. That way if the brush is unloading a bit too much, it's not unloading it where you don't want it.

 

If it does unload too much where I don't want, there are several remedies. If I can catch it quickly, I can just wipe it off with a damp cloth. If not, then a wash of the base underlayer thinned about 50/50 might correct it. So say with Kaladrax here, if I'm doing the next highlight (50/50 aged bone and bone shadow) and wind up making a gloopy bit, then I'd try a wash of bone shadow. But if that failed I'd paint over with bone shadow and do that part up again from scratch.

 

As you practice you'll discover different paints and different loadings will have different properties and effects. There's also an in-between stage that's part layering and part drybrushing. I'll sometimes use this on reds because they can be problem colours. I'll add an illustration of this to this post when I do my next Kaladrax picture update. But basically, if I have a cloak I want to be a very bright red and know I'll be layering it up nice and smooth with red, rather than do a kajillion passes with red to bring it up (red being generally translucent) I may thin the paint just a little and, using a small brush, "dry-layer" the topmost folds with my midtone - so it's rougher than layering, but smoother than pure drybrushing. Then when I properly layer, I'm basically working the transition zone between this highlight and the shadow while also layering this highlight to smooth it out and enhance its brightness. When it works, it looks nice with a lot less effort. This is also what I used on all the green bits of Kaladrax's base, because it was a fast way to do it. It's also handy for dragon scales, particularly if there's a lot of them.

 

This method does not, however, work on skin. That's why Vanessa Redstorm's face turned out so badly, but Janan's turned out so nicely.

 

But in general the rule for drybrushing or dry-layering will always be "less is more". Start off with very little paint and go lightly, then work up as you get a feel for what it's going to do.

 

 

Here's Danar the Assassin done up as a PC Swashbuckler, showing the intense red I got on his cloak by "dry-layering" reaper pro paint blood red over the aged red brick base, layering reaper blood red over that to smooth it out, and then adding a highlight of much more intense coat d'arms blood red as a layer over the reaper blood red.

Edited September 10, 2013 by buglips*the*goblin

[Corporea]

 

Either that or that whole Nike campaign thing. Whatever motivation works!

[buglips*the*goblin]

 

More painting bits black. Almost done with this now, finally. If I'm lucky, I might get all the Bone Shadow drybrush basecoat done by tomorrow night. Leaving me with thursday and friday to do the highlights. I hope so.

[Thes Hunter]

I don't care if you finish him 'in time' or not. I'm loving the wip, and am excited to see the final product, when ever it is done.

[Caffiene]

Kally is looking good. Ill be interested to see how the guts come out looking with the rest finished. Id say "paint like the wind", but that carries an implied risk of getting downwind of a goblin.

 

paint a troll as if it had been turned to stone. [...] white splatter type marks

 

Damn pigeons!