Auberon Paints Village Attacks

[Auberon]

As some of you may have read elsewhere, I have been playing Village Attacks and painted the vampire.  When I did I kept close to the concept art because I figured if I ever get someone else to play they'll be looking at the game cards, so the minis should look like what the player expects.  When I looked closely at more of the cards though, it became apparent there was a bit of a problem.  The monsters all have inhumanly pale skin and generally dark color schemes.  The peasants look drab as well. While that is cool as concept art, having a couple 20 minis on the table that are all kind of muted colors is going to blend together more than I would like so a new plan is needed.  That is to stick close to the concept art, but make everything a little more vibrant.  I figure as slowly as I'll be painting these there will be plenty of time to stop for pics, so why not a thread. 

 

Next I'll be working on the banshee, but first a bit of background.  You see there is another mini I would like to pull down off of the shelf of shame and work on but it has a problem.  I want to paint part of it jade, but the jade paint I have kind of sucks.  I like the color, but the paint itself is super shiny and too translucent.  So I picked up Reaper's cool green triad to try out.  The color swatch showed me Reaper's Jade wasn't quite what I wanted, but real jade comes in several variations of green.  I'll find a use for it somewhere.

 

Here's a sampling of some of the greens that I have.  You can see the Reaper Jade 09015 is nothing like the VGC Jade 72026, but real Jade comes in both flavors so it's fine.  I have a plan, but first I want to try the Triad out on its own just to see how it looks.

 

 

Enter the banshee.  Her concept art has her is a very desaturated garment with some green accents.  The new cloth color will instead be the Reaper Triad and then put the green accents beside them.  She will be very green. First 09013.  I had originally painted the cloth but decided to texture the base before I went any further.  It was messy and got some grit on her.  I wasn't very thorough in removing it.

 

 

Next is 09014.  I just blocked it in to see what it looked like.  It is noticeably warmer than the shadow color.  At first it seems to stand out but...

 

 

Once the jade is slapped on it really falls back into the shadows, as you can see below.  My highlighting here isn't exactly accurate, but that's why we call it tabletop. There should be a step between 09014 & 09015 that I'll have to mix at some point.  Under normal lighting the green just goes from dark to jade.

 

 

Actually if you look at the colors there is another problem.  This triad has no pop.  Fortunately pop is easy.  It's called VMC Ivory and solves (almost) all your contrast needs.  Here it's actually mixed with the jade to create a highlight that will actually stand out.

 

Just remember your painting lesson for today.  VMC Ivory = POP and eliminates those pesky "more contrast" comments.

 

 

Given that the real purpose here is to learn the triad, I'll be going back to refine things later and see how I can get it to look.  Before that though I want to block in everything else so my green has something to work with.

 

That though, is a project for tomorrow.

[Auberon]

Tonight I blocked in the skin and the other green, which is the green to follow the concept art.  The skin from the midtone up is so pale that my camera doesn't seem to like it, but I won't worry about levels for a WIP shot.  Under normal lighting her lower legs are shadowed enough to almost disappear.  This is good because the trailing leg is miscast and I'd rather it be out of sight.

 

 

And the green, which is from the SC75 green set.  Much like the Reaper cool green triad though, it lacks a true highlight.  So back to mixing in Ivory.

 

 

Once I block in the hair I think it'll be time to go back to the Reaper greens and see what more I can do with them.  I don't want to spend too much time on a poorly cast mini, but the fact I don't really care about her makes her a good piece to practice with.  Either way it's a project for next week as I'll be heading out tomorrow.

[Glitterwolf]

Very cool!

[Auberon]

I got around to a little more painting this afternoon.  First I made a half step on the greens between jade and grass and tried it out.  While I'll go with it for tabletop I would possibly make another step for anything above that. Her concept art has white hair shaded with green so to start I slathered some titanium white on her hair.

 

 

Still, greenish hair with everything else is probably too much green.  Instead I went with a blue-grey.

 

 

 

Then I took care of a few details. The only thing left are the strings on her cloak, but only a few of them made it too the plastic figure.

 

[Auberon]

I painted the laces and called her good, then moved onto the next one.  Now that I've tried the Reaper triad out for jade, it's time to make my own.  For the experiment I've chosen one of the villagers and am once again following the concept art.  Once I army paint the rest I plan to move the colors around to create some variety, but the first one gets a green dress.  For this green it will be Reaper Forest Green -> SC75 Boreal Tree Green -> VGC Livery Green.  Livery green will stand out so much from the Forest green that there shouldn't be a need to take the highlights to Ivory, but I probably would on a larger scale mini.

 

 

And what do you know; it looks like the VGC Jade and it's shadow, but with way better coverage than either.  I'll call it a success and put it in my recipe book.  Also, for the peasants I'm just going to keep it simple and give them all  a black base.  Stippling the texture on actually doesn't take a lot of time if you're just paining a few figures but it would add up over a few dozen.

[Auberon]

Unlikely to get another painting session in today, so the progress of the moment.  First of all I tried to speed up my fair skin painting by turning the shadow paint into a wash.  It must be all the green around her in the photo because her skin looks a bit too red.  Also I tried to quick-paint warm off-white.  I don't know that any kind of white and quick go together, but it's kind of whiteish.

 

 

Next her sandals and bodice were painted brown.  With something not green her skin looks less red and the darker brown gives the warm white something to contrast with. 

 

 

Hopefully I'll get a session in tomorrow and be able to call her done.

[Warlady]

Love those greens!

[TGP]

I just bought a bottle of green paint today from a Warhammer store. It was the bottle they use for ghost-wraith haunt-dead things. 

 

It was kind of a jade color. 

 

I just looked up Jade. There’s about a dozen (or more) colors. There are two different minerals!

...nephrite..and...jadeite. 

 

Jadeite

 

[WhiteWulfe]

5 hours ago, TGP said:

 

I just looked up Jade. There’s about a dozen (or more) colors. There are two different minerals!

And then  you have things like regional factors that change not only their colours, but how they react when carved.  For example, New Zealand jade is quite different to BC (Canada) jade, especially for colour and how intense the colours are. 

[Auberon]

Yeah, back when I first decided to paint something "jade" (I believe it was some armor on a dwarf) I went on the internets and looked at a lot of carvings.  It's part of why I'm largely unconcerned with Reaper and Vallejo jade being so different.  Both are jade, just not the same.  OTOH, that does get back to the issue of companies causing confusion with their paint names. 

[TGP]

26 minutes ago, Auberon said:

...Reaper and Vallejo jade being so different.  Both are jade, just not the same.  OTOH, that does get back to the issue of companies causing confusion with their paint names. 

It looks like from what I learned yesterday that a company could create a rainbow of ink colours and legit name them phrases ending in the word “jade”. E.g.:

 

Fire Jade...

Woodbark Jade...

Dragonclaw Jade...etc. 

[Auberon]

Sure, in the same way you could for wood, dirt, minerals, and all sorts of things that come in a variety of colors.  I'm not the best person to argue on behalf of the paint naming crowd as I've learned not to care, but I can see why hobby paint names come across as somewhat arbitrary.  For example, the Reaper Cool Greens triad consists of Forest, Grass, and Jade green.  I could just as easily have named them "Ming Jade Shadow" "Ming Jade" and "Ming Jade Highlight" and marketed it as the Jade Triad. 

 

One last WIP shot on the peasant.  My use of a wash to lay down shadows failed me around the eyes.  It's just not dark enough around the whites of her eyes, but I'm not starting them over at this point. Shaft, belt, metal, touch-ups, done is the plan.

 

 

 

[TGP]

Maybe a pin wash in the eyes?  I think that is what putting a wash in a tiny area is called. ( Not that I have sufficient skill to do that. )

[Auberon]

I'm not sure what the term is myself but I have tried it and it works... IF the eye is actually sculpted properly.  In her case one of the eyes is just a flat surface that I've applied paint to.  Without any grooves to flow into I don't believe I'll accomplish much trying it here.  Besides, I've  several dozen more peasants to get the eyes right on.  Must think like an army painter...

[SisterMaryNapalm]

Really great work!

 

Any further progress? Or are they done?