Guindyloo and Buglips paint DHL 03100: Thanis the Bonecaller

[Darcstaar]

Great thread, you two!

 

Fantastic work.

Very helpful.

[buglips*the*goblin]

It's interesting to watch because, of course, I just did this figure so it's fresh enough in my mind to remember the painting of it*, but she is doing many more steps for things than I did.  The lips in particular, because for me that was just "darken mouth; paint chestnut".  The extra effort pays off and gives more depth to the mini, so it shows it's worth doing when you have the time to spend.

 

*This might seem a weird thing to say, since I finished less than a week ago, but I have since completed a Ral Partha lady barbarian and by tonight I will have finished a Reaper Marbrezuk Demon (the Bob Olley one) so it feels like a long time ago.  (In February, I acquired a Ral Partha Red Dragon of Krynn that I bought, had shipped, stripped, and painted so fast I'm still surprised when I see it on the shelf.  I have legitimately forgotten ever painting it.)

 

Also, my Thanis had no weird lip bump to contend with.  Nice lips, and that hair is looking great!

 

 

Edited November 11, 2017 by buglips*the*goblin

[kristof65]

This is a great topic guys.

It's weird seeing better painters than I write about hating to paint things like black hair, though.  Me, I just blunder in.

[chaosscorpion]

It looks gorgeous. The darklining around the eyes seems so much more pronounced with the black hair. 

[Guindyloo]

39 minutes ago, kristof65 said:

This is a great topic guys.

It's weird seeing better painters than I write about hating to paint things like black hair, though.  Me, I just blunder in.

Thank you!

I think that just blundering in is a great method! You learn a lot from just doing things, even if it doesn’t turn out the way you’d envisioned. 

I think it’s really easy to get bogged down by the technical methods of doing something, when really it’s the practical application that’s going to teach you the most in the long run. 

That’s why I gave up on things like mixing paint by ratios - I learned much more by just diving in and mixing paints and seeing what works and what doesn’t in action. 

 

I also think it does far more good for me to share my thoughts on what I like and don’t like and what scares me and what I’m not comfortable with. No one becomes good at something without having to face down fear, uncertainty and lots and lots of mistakes. 

 

21 minutes ago, chaosscorpion said:

It looks gorgeous. The darklining around the eyes seems so much more pronounced with the black hair. 

Thank you!

Agreed, and if she wasn’t a necromancer, I’d try to tone down that darklining around her eyes. I left it very dark and thick to give her more of a gothic look. It would be far too dark in most cases. 

It’s neat to see in action how different colours affect the colours around them!

[OneBoot]

This whole thread is just so awesome! Not only is it a lot of fun to read, it's great seeing two different approaches, plus all of the difficult bits and how to tackle stuff you're nervous about.

 

 

Huzzah!

--OneBoot :D

[Guindyloo]

Ok, so next up I started painting the cloth on the skeletons. I want the cloth to be dark and dingy and not pull too much attention, so I basecoated one with MSP Mahogany Brown and one with about a half and half mix of MSP Ritterlich Blue and Blue Liner.

 

Next I started working on the stones. I wanted to pre-line these so, I made a wash with Blue Liner.

 

 

I'm going to end up deciding that's not dark enough and re-do it, so this was kind of a wasted step. Btw, I really like when you find the sculptor's initials and I like to leave them visible and will paint them up just like they're any other part of the sculpt.

 

Next I basecoated the dirt areas with Brown Liner.

I don't know why I didn't crop that picture, but I don't feel like going back and doing it now.

 

Next I basecoated the stones with MSP Shadowed Stone.

 

That's when I realized that the lining had not been dark enough, so I went back over the stones with more Blue Liner wash and then re-basecoated the stones with the Shadowed Stone.

 

Next I made a lighter grey mix by adding some MSP Wolf Grey to the Shadowed Stone.

straight Wolf Grey at the top, straight Shadowed Stone to the left and the mix to the right.

 

Whoops, that's awfully blurry.

 

Then I added a little more of the Wolf Grey.

Also very blurry. Good job, Guindy.

 

 

I started to do just straight Wolf Grey after that, but it wasn't much of a colour difference, so instead I went up to straight MSP Rainy Grey.

 

Next I wanted to highlight the dirt areas. Now the dirt parts are flat, but have a good amount of texture sculpted in, so the most effective technique for something like that is going to be drybrushing. Obviously the dirt parts are in between a lot of finished areas, so I wanted to be very careful about it. I used the size 0 crappy brush that I'd primed with.

 

You can see how much priming with it shredded the bristles, but that makes it perfect for some light drybrushing in small areas.

So I took MSP Brown Sand and drybrushed very carefully.

 

Then I drybrushed carefully with MSP Green Ochre.

 

[Cyradis]

This character must have very small nipples and aerolas (that is the word for the stuff surrounding a nipple right?). I think she has less coverage than my lady necromancer "Mel". 

[Guindyloo]

Ok, so I went about highlighting both of the skeleton cloths at the same time.

So to my base Ritterlich Blue/Blue Liner, I added a little bit of MSP Ultramarine Blue. To my base of Mahogany Brown, I added a little bit of MSP Brown Sand.

 

Then I added a little more Ultramarine Blue and a little more Brown Sand.

 

Then I used straight Brown Sand and straight Ultramarine Blue.

 

That's where I left the blue, but I added some MSP Green Ochre to the brown mix.

 

I didn't like how the brown looked, so I made a glaze of Mahogany Brown and went over it to smooth things out.

 

Then...well, I had been fighting with myself over something else. You guys probably know how this goes at this point. I think about doing something, I go back and forth with myself about whether I'm going to try it or not and then I fuss at myself for arguing and dive into it. 

 

So when I painted the skeletons, the thought occurred to me that to make them look really glowy, I should make them, you know, glow. With OSL. Which I've only done once before on All Hallow's Eve. So, no, argumentative and stubborn me said, I'm not going to try to do OSL on this. But I probably should, reasonable and trying to improve me responded. But I'm just going to ruin all of the work that I've done if it doesn't turn out right, lacking in confidence me whined. It's only paint, rational me remembered and won the argument.

 

So, OSL. There's one thing that I regret the most and that is that I didn't take any pictures of the process. I meant to, but I got caught up in really concentrating on different spots all the way up to the strongest colour before moving on to the next. I should have taken pictures at each section, I guess.

But so what I used was straight MSP Moth Green that I thinned to a wash consistency and very gradually built it up, concentrating it in areas that were closest to the bones up to complete opacity.

 

 

Now what I found worrying here was that I didn't feel that it was obvious enough that the skeletons were the source of the glow. So I took MSP Candlelight Yellow and thinned it down to a glaze and went over all of the OSL areas with it and also went over the skeletons with it to try to re-enforce the fact that they are actually the source of the glow.

 

 

I don't hate it, but honestly I don't love it. I don't think that I planned well enough for it. I still don't think that the skeletons look like they're the source of the glow and I know it's because they're not bright enough, but I don't necessarily want to mess with them. But I probably should. But I don't wanna. 

I'm going to sleep on it. Let me know what y'all think.

[Glitterwolf]

Amazing!

[buglips*the*goblin]

OSL is a risky bet, but I wouldn't like you so much if you didn't have guts. 

 

YOLOSL!

 

(wait... wasn't that the handmaiden of Lloth?)

[Guindyloo]

So the OSL wasn't sitting well with me because the skeletons weren't bright enough to be a light source. This is because I didn't plan for OSL from the start. To really sell OSL, you need a lot of contrast, so things need to be darker to really make the light show. Since I didn't do that from the start, it was never going to work fully. So you have 2 choices when OSL goes awry. You can either repaint all of the areas to get rid of the OSL attempt, or you can keep fussing with it to try to make it work more. I chose to fuss with it.

 

So I started out by taking MSP Moth Green and adding some MSP Green Liner to make a duller version of Moth Green.

I went into all the rocks and whatnot that I'd painted to show the glow to try to knock that back some.

 

 

I decided that wasn't dark enough so I added some more Green Liner.

 

And knocked back the glow a little more.

 

Then I needed to make the skeletons brighter, so I took MSP Maggot White, thinned, and went over the highlighting.

 

Then I took Moth Green, thinned to about a glaze, and went over the white.

 

Then I went back in with the Maggot White. At this point I also decided to try to help the glowing effect by darkening up the grown and cloths, so I went in with Brown Liner.

 

Then I went over that with MSP Candlelight Yellow.

 

Then I went in for a final highlight with the Maggot White.

 

I'm still not very happy with it, I liked the skeletons much more the way they were. I really think I should have gone the other route and painted over the OSL attempt. But this is where we are, so I think I need to play around with the areas where the glowing light is being thrown to make it more translucent. Unfortunately, sometimes this is the way it goes when you go for an ambitious paint scheme, especially if you don't plan well enough for it. 1 step forward, 2 steps back.

[Guindyloo]

Ok, so in order to try to recapture the translucency of the glowing areas so that they look more like light is being thrown on them, I took MSP Ritterlich Blue and thinned it down to a glaze and lightened up some of the areas of the cloth on the skeleton. Then I took MSP Dirt Brown, also thinned to a glaze and went over the dirt areas.

 

 

Then I thinned MSP Shadowed Stone to a glaze and went over the stones and thinned MSP Rosy Skin to a glaze and went back over the skin.

 

 

And for better or worse, that's where I'm going to leave the OSL. I could work on this for the rest of my life, but sometimes you have to reach a point where you call something good enough and move on, armed with the knowledge that it's something that you need to keep working on for future figures.

[Guindyloo]

Alright, so I needed to do the crystal. First I lined the inside of the bones that hold the crystal with Blue Liner. I SHOULD HAVE done the outer portions at that point with Brown Liner, but I didn't and I was kicking myself later for not having done so. I also basecoated the crystal with the Moth Green and Blue Liner mix that I used earlier.

 

Now I have no idea how to paint a crystal other than there should be dark points and light points and you line the edges with white. Now, you may have noticed that when I don't really know what I'm doing and/or there are no clear step by step pictures to take, I just mess around with things and we wind up with a done picture. Sorry about that, but yeah, I just messed with it until it looked crystal-like. Also, someone convinced me that I should do OSL with the crystal as well, so I glazed in some Moth Green in the highlights of her hair on the side that the crystal's on.

 

 

Then I Brown Linered the whole staff, again, totally kicking myself for not doing so before I painted the crystal.

 

Then I proceeded with the same steps I used to paint the bone parts of her armour.

So NMM Gold Shadow.

 

Then I added some Graveyard Bone.

 

A little more Graveyard Bone.

 

A little more Graveyard Bone.

 

Then Graveyard Bone with white added. I also glazed in Moth Green to the bits closest to the crystal.

 

 

And with that, Thanis is DONE!

 

 

Edited November 13, 2017 by Guindyloo

[Reaperbryan]

Love it!