Ellen Stone - Master Series

[Auberon]

I haven't done a WIP here in a while, except for the occasional exchange piece, so I decided to give one a go and see if I keep up with it.  Those of you that follow the "Getting to Know Each Other" thread will remember this piece, but for the rest here's a quick recap.  We were asked to try something new.  As I don't sculpt I decided to try my hand at something simple.  Enter the Master Series Ellen Stone that I received in the Secret Sophie exchange.  While she is a hot cowgirl, she is unfortunately not wearing a hot cowgirl shirt.  I made her one, though I did run into a bit of a problem.  You see, Ellen has a bandana wrapped around her neck and I thought I could work around it.  Turns out that I couldn't (though an expert would have likely managed), and so she ended up with the collar on one side being a bit off.  She's still good enough to paint and experiment with so here we go.

 

This is what Ellen looks like after a bit of green stuff.  You can see where the knot on the bandana got in my way.  I should have pressed the collar down a bit more as well, but live and learn.

 

 

and here is why.  Proper style of shirt.

Spoiler

 

 

 

I considered it likely that the hat would get in the way of painting her eyes so I left it off to start.  I also added three buttons onto her shirt.  They are heroic scale buttons, which is why they are a little larger than normal.

 

 

So i started with blocking in a lot of the colors just to cover the white primer.  Her duster is an excuse to try out the Scalecolor Fantasy & Games line of paint that I picked up a few months back.  First impression - Blackert Brown is not a good color for basecoating, even over plain white.  It took a few too many coats for solid coverage.  With a good bit of the primer covered I moved on to  the eyes.  You can always make a pretty good argument that zenithal lighting + hat = no dots in the eyes but it seems to be the thing to do with minis.  I guess everyone now is just used to seeing stage lighting and camera flashes (as the girl above).  Of course, tiny white dots never end up in the right place on the first attempt.

 

 

So we have to fix them.  I touched up a few places while I was at it.  Turns out that my old basecoating brush doesn't have quite the point that it used to.  It still holds a lot of paint but the precision isn't there anymore.

 

 

One last thing to do before attaching her hat is to get some color on her face.  I put a shadow directly under the brim but did the cheeks and below in a fairly standard manner.  Her face needs some more work but I decided it was good enough to stop and attach her hat.  With the eyes done I seem to be able to reach the rest, and I don't want to call her face "done" and then screw it up gluing the last piece on.

 

 

I don't have any major plans for tomorrow (beyond continuing to watch basketball) so I expect to make some good progress.

[Loth]

'Heroic scale buttons,' ha ha ha 

 

looks good 

 

Loth

[Glitterwolf]

Nice!

[Auberon]

Since I'm trying out new paint I'm going to post an update on how it's working.  I've moved on to Sharpnel Red for my shadows.  The idea was to block in the shadows and then smooth the transitions, but that's not quite how it worked.  Now that I've use two F&G colors my initial conclusion is that the paint may have a different consistency and matteness than the original line, but the paint opacity remains the same.  If I were glazing in my shadows it would have been great (and it's something I do so they'll still get some use) but I'm not so it was annoying.  Now that I have two mostly solid colors I'll see what I can do on the the transitions w/ S&G.

 

[SGHawkins09]

She is looking great and I can feel your pain with the F&G line as I am trying them out on a mini for the first time as well. Their opacity is definitely takes some getting used to.

[Auberon]

Yeah, I certainly won't be using them as a basecoat.  With their other line there were certain shades that were opaque enough to start with, so hopefully F&G has some as well.

 

I'm practicing stippling at the mini scale, but my stipple brush is terrain size so I trimmed an old reaper synthetic to make something smaller.  I actually need another one to really get into details as I'd rather not use a sable for that.  When I've done this in the past it's either been on paper or on relatively flat surfaces.  Something I'll need to work on is keeping the angle higher.  When the angle gets too low you make small dashes instead of dots. Here's where her hat stands.  The nice thing about stippling is I can just go back over everything with more dots to smooth it out and add depth.

 

[knarthex]

Looks awesome!

 

I have all the Scale color and Fantasy and Games lines of paints, and I have not found any of the F&G paints that work for base coats...

They are great for layering, but the formula is so different from the Scale Color line....

 

[Auberon]

1 hour ago, knarthex said:

Looks awesome!

 

I have all the Scale color and Fantasy and Games lines of paints, and I have not found any of the F&G paints that work for base coats...

They are great for layering, but the formula is so different from the Scale Color line....

 

 

That's too bad.  I'll just have to base with another brand then. 

[knarthex]

1 hour ago, Auberon said:

 

That's too bad.  I'll just have to base with another brand then. 

The SC 75 are great for basecoats...

[Auberon]

I have a good chuck of their original paint series, which is why I decided to try the F&G paints.  Arbuckles Brown had good coverage over the lighter brown; dark enough that I might be able to start from it but I generally don't like painting dark to light unless I want the overall effect to be dark.

 

Anyway, one last update for the night.  Her duster is being painted by pointillism as well.  It is still very WIP, especially the lower portion.  The highlights are a mixture of light yellow and off-white dots, but it looks like they are getting washed out by the camera.  If I don't get any faster at this, it'll be a technique that I reserve for special occasions or small accessories.

 

 

 

[Loth]

I like those colors and how it looks 

 

Loth

 

[Auberon]

I've done some more work on her duster this week, mostly on the lower backside.  I've also started to add dots to the front, but will probably return to her back before the end.

 

[Glitterwolf]

The stippling effect looks awesome, I'll bet it is very timeconsuming?

 

 

[Auberon]

2 hours ago, Xherman1964 said:

The stippling effect looks awesome, I'll bet it is very timeconsuming?

 

It largely depends on the complexity of the area and the consistency of your paint.  In her case yes, it is pretty time consuming.  There are the little folds and the paint I used for my basecoat doesn't stipple well.  I can't add more dots of it to refine an area.  Instead i have to glaze over the area that's gone too far one way or the other (it does glaze well at least) and then touch-up with my highlight or shadow color.

 

OTOH the surface below went pretty quickly.  It was a flat surface so I was free to create texture however I wanted and all of the paints worked well for the technique.  The column in the upper right was painted using stippling as well.

 

 

 

[Gargs]

Looks great!