Brom Hard Bark

[bailey03]

This past weekend I started painting Brom, the 54mm scale dwarf from Enigma. The sculpt has got a mix of equipment and, to be honest, I'm not even sure what all of it is. It gives him a lot of character, but presents some challenges with the painting. I've been putting a lot of thought into how I want to approach the piece and finally decided to pick a color scheme and let that tie the figure together.

 

I started with the face. Considering most of it is hidden by the hair, the beard feels almost as important as the rest of the face.  I used a mix of Reaper's Ruddy Leather, Secret Weapon's Orange Rust, and Reaper's Burnt Orange and Fair Skin Highlight.  I find the light skin tones are nice for highlighting hair, I'd do the same with brown hair.  For the blood stained cloth on his head, I used a mix of Carnage Red and Walnut Brown.  I wanted it to be darker near the center, so more brown, and the moving to pure red near the boundaries.  I applied the red as a glaze over the white cloth to give it the right look.  Instead of using the well palette that I'd normally turn to for glazes, I ended up mixing them directly on my wet palette.  Normally that produces a mess, but I used a bit of paint and then added a bunch of matte medium (plus a little water).  The matte medium is thick, so it creates the right transparency without causing the glaze to flow all over the palette.  Then I then it down slightly with water for a consistency that's easier to paint with.  The effect is the same as a regular glaze, but since it's on the wet palette it's easier for me to mix paints and create different colored glazes.  It's also easy to vary the consistency/transparency by changing up the ratio of matte medium and paint.  So I can quickly make a section more opaque and another more transparent.  Not something I do for all glazes, for in situations like this it's a nice option to have in my tool kit.

 

And here's the full figure.  Still a lot left to paint!

[Darius Glenwell]

Really digging that beard, and the skin tone is great. Nice work. Looking forward to seeing how he progresses. 

[TheMandolin]

Wow! That hair and beard is awesome!

[ThirstyBob]

Just threw away all my paints and minis, gg. This is amazing stuff.

[lowlylowlycook]

Yeah, before I scrolled down and started reading, I was pretty sure this was a bust...

 

Amazing.

[bailey03]

Thanks, everyone!

 

Taking this guy one part at a time.  Most recent work was on his pauldrons.  The sculpt has a random mix of equipment cobbled together from various sources.  So I envision it all as pretty beat up.  So I'm giving the metal a pretty heavy dose of weathering.  I'm working with the Secret Weapon weathering acrylics (their rust and verdigris shades) to create the effect.  Started by laying down some undertones of the rust shades (red/oranges for the iron, greens for the bronze) and then applied the metallic paints over it.  Finally I went back with the rust/verdigris colors applied them liberally over the metal.  Plenty of stippling to create a mottled pattern and then some streaks here and there.

[Glitterwolf]

Super!