Pingo hurtles with 77109: Fire Dragon into the unknown

[Blubbernaught]

The blue does seem a bit jarring, at the moment.    I'm waiting to see how Pingo does that magic which will Pingo the paints into submission and bring it all together.      I have a strong feeling that the blue we're seeing at the moment, is not going to be the end effect and we will be amazed at the transformation.    

 

I don't think I'd have been able to resist the temptation to do a similar reflection/shimmer effect on the wing membranes themselves.    

[dsmiles]

I have to agree, even really shiny copper (or brass/bronze) doesn't pick up colors that well.

[72moonglum]

I don't know if you're getting the effect that you are looking for, but it looks pretty cool! I've always enjoyed how you play with colors and lighting.

[Pingo]

I guess one of the things about how I paint is there's never any reason to assume that a color is the final color.  There's so much that can be done with paint and glazing and layers and illusionistic effects.

 

Anyhow, so today I mixed up a dark, blueish near-black out of Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber.  Normally I mix such things out of Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna, but Burnt Umber has a near-black intensity of its own that gives a different effect than the firey Burnt Sienna.

 

I started working in the shadows.  Lights are going to come into them later, but first I wanted to get the shading in the correct places.  As a note, later in the painting day I decided to paint the undersides of the wings with bright sunlight coming through them so the shadows there become moot.  This is one of the trade-offs of seat-of-the-pants painting.

 

So I'm building up the shading under the wings and the body and on top of the wings, increasing the rounded effect.

 

 

 

 

Once I had an idea of where the shadows went, I started to paint darker bits on the skin.  I am still working on the notion of reflective skin, so I think of them as reflections of the shadows of the wings.  Or something.  Anyhow, I am seeing how they work visually.

 

 

 

 

And now, as Tom Lehrer once sang, "Ha ha, begins the fun!"

 

I mixed up a bright yellow from Hansa Yellow Opaque and Yellow Oxide to show sunlight.  Both of these pigments (despite the name) are only semi-opaque, so they make a yellow that highlights what's below it without obliterating it.

 

I started on the wings.

 

 

I also added the yellow to the membranes on the spine  and head where I thought sunlight might strike them or come through or reflect off the ground -- you'll notice there are a lot of possibilities here and they are not always internally consistent.

 

Now I'm painting the undersides of the wings as if bright sunlight was shining through them.  This will take a buildup of several layers of the yellow.  I'm not too worried about getting a bit on the wing bones, since I will be tidying them up later.

 

I also started introducing a little of the yellow color into the shadows under the wings and where filtered light from them would strike the creature's body.

 

 

I wanted a truly intense yellow.  I added some white to my mix and scumbled it on in the most transparent parts of the wings, as well as where I thought the spines might be translucent (well, possibly not on the cheeks -- I'm still thinking about that).  I also added some thinned-down scumbles of it in the shadowy areas.

 

 

 

Then I took the thinnest of glazes of the yellow and laid it over the whitened yellow wherever I had used it.
(A really transparent bright color works best for this, but I have gotten some amazing results with even pure Yellow Oxide, which, by the way, is the same color as Reaper's "Palomino Gold.")

 

This sort of layering is the best way I know to get  really eye-poppingly bright color.

 

 

 

This is how the dragon looks from above at the moment.

 

[Pingo]

You know, I was just trying to be too clever with all that reflection stuff.

 

So I jettisoned it and went back to my method of adding more colors until it looks sort of okay.

 

To begin with I thought the yellow under the wings was just a little too cold.

 

So I pulled out a color, Pyrrole Orange, which I only have in regular acrylics, not my favored matte fluid ones, because it is brilliant. 

 

Literally. 

 

Like boiled-carrot red-orange. 

 

Like International Safety Orange. 

 

Eye-bleedingly bright.

 

But almost glass-transparent.  Very useful, that.

 

On the left is the dragon with the warming orange glazes.  On the napkin on the right you can see blodges of the pure color where I blotted my brush.  Who needs fluorescents?

 

I am trying for an effect of light transmitted through the wings onto the creature's body.

 

I then mixed a transparent purple from Phthalo Blue and Quinacridone Magenta (Actually I first tried an experiment using the Pyrrole Orange, but it came out a shade I will charitably call violet mud) and started to glaze shadows under the wings and around the muscle forms, as well as adding some depth to the orange shadows under the wings and the fingers.

 

I decided that part of the problem with the blue I used earlier is that it was the wrong blue, a Phthalo-based turquoise shade rather than an Ultramarine-based sky shade.  So I mixed a new medium blue and started glazing it over the dragon.

 

 

 

At this point I was using all sorts of colors, smoothing blends, brightening yellows, glazing golds, deepening shadows with browns and violets, adding tiny touches of red.  I'm not entirely sure of everything I did.

 

 

I painted the eyes and more Pyrrole Orange bits.

 

 

It is very close to done, I think.

 

... I'm not at all sure how to describe its color, though.

 

I

[dsmiles]

It's still reading as very coppery. Very well done.

[Dr.Bedlam]

Looks coppery to me. Lovely work, particularly on the wings and eyes.

[falstius]

That eye is looking at me, I think it thinks I'm tasty. 

[ShadowRaven]

I can never get over the way you paint. It's so different and unique, and when things come together I just sit back and go 'wow' 

[pcktlnt]

Wow, the eye. Impressive recoloring of the dragon.

[Sanwah]

I love this, the way you paint is so different, but I adore it. 

[Pingo]

I had it on the gaming table Saturday and over the course of the game decided there was more to do on it.  I wanted to make it look lighter and more reflective.

[Pingo]

Whoops.  Dang, I'm tired.  I hit "post" instead of uploading pictures.

 

So here they are.

 

 

 

[Pingo]

Show Off thread is up: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/61266-a-copper-dragon-of-the-desert-77109-fire-dragon/