1643 Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come

[Wren]

And of course we also have the last of the Dickens Carol Ghosts. Another option for your 12 Days of Reaper qualifying purchase.

 

 

 

[Glitterwolf]

This one I totally  adore!

[Disciple of Sakura]

I think, of the three ghosts, this one has the most in-game potential for me. Your paint job looks phenomenal. That robe looks like black velvet.

[rubegon]

27 minutes ago, Disciple of Sakura said:

I think, of the three ghosts, this one has the most in-game potential for me. Your paint job looks phenomenal. That robe looks like black velvet.

 

No kidding!  This both makes me want the figure and makes me want to snap my brushes in two and throw my hands up in the air.

 

@Wren I love the way you’ve done the faces on these!  That side eye is just perfect.

[Wren]

1 hour ago, Disciple of Sakura said:

I think, of the three ghosts, this one has the most in-game potential for me. Your paint job looks phenomenal. That robe looks like black velvet.

 

For highlighting black, I don't like to use neutral gray. It's a bit dull looking. This was done with the Dusky skin tone triad. Other paints I like are Dark Elf skin triad, and the Stone Greys triad.

[Sanael]

Hmm. I think her name might be Susan.

 

Really great work on all three of these. I love the face on this one!

[Darcstaar]

Wren, do you get this result on black in one pass?  Or are you doing a lot of blending, pushing/pulling?

 

This looks so great.

[Disciple of Sakura]

5 hours ago, Wren said:

 

For highlighting black, I don't like to use neutral gray. It's a bit dull looking. This was done with the Dusky skin tone triad. Other paints I like are Dark Elf skin triad, and the Stone Greys triad.

Thanks for the tip. I regularly use the Dark Elf skin triad, too. I don't have the Dusky skin or Stone Grey ones yet...

[Wren]

3 hours ago, Darcstaar said:

Wren, do you get this result on black in one pass?  Or are you doing a lot of blending, pushing/pulling?

 

This looks so great.

In the first few years I was painting I would paint layering wet paint over dry, and aiming to make each layer as smooth a transition as possible. I used a lot of transition mixes and thinned my paint a fair amount. Focusing on smoothness often meant losing my midtone and not using enough contrast, but those are also general issues at that stage of painting. 

More and more lately I lay down the basic layers aiming for a decent looking blend but worrying more about placement and contrast than a perfectly smooth result. Or sometimes I'll do some wet blending to get the basic transitions down. Apart from that I work wet over dry almost exclusively. Once the basics of the transitions and where they should be are set, I go back in and stipple/layer paint over the transition lines and rough spots until there aren't any. I no longer thin my paint much. Fresh/well-maintained Reaper paint is pretty close to the consistency I like, with maybe just a touch of water or a little more water on very opaque colours.

I've always sort of painted black in the latter way. The first round I layer up the highlights to as light as I want to go. It's generally kind of rough looking and the highlights will be applied over too broad of a surface. Then I come back down from the lightest highlight smoothing the transitions and tightening up the areas of highlight to be smaller to keep the thing looking black. I hadn't thought about it, but I guess in a way I've started to paint almost everything the way I figured out how to paint black. There are some WIP pics of the armour in this blog post that illustrate what I mean, though the first pass isn't always that rough. Or occasionally it's even rougher. 

https://birdwithabrush.com/2018/12/03/caerindra-thistlemoor-roughing-in-lights-and-shadows/

Whether I'm layering or wet blending I use far more colour step mixes than the average painter, even the average display painter. Seven is probably the fewest steps I would use, on something like skin or somewhat transparent colours like the red and green. Occasionally fewer for stuff that is very small in area. Somewhere between 9-12 for tougher colours or when it's a large and/or flat area that needs to look super smooth. Including black and white I have a total of 12-13 paint mixes I use for steel NMM. I premixed neutral gray half-step mixes into bottles to make my life easier, but for most colours I mix on the palette. Gray is much fiddlier to blend than other colours, and often NMM goes the full spectrum of black to white. I premixed a few steps for gold, but need a smaller set for that overall. And often I like to customize to the colour scheme of the figure, so I don't use the premixes as much. I customize the neutral gray NMM through glazes once the blending is done.

[Darcstaar]

Thanks, Wren.  It’s very helpful.

[Glitterwolf]

These ghosts are actually quite versatile, I could easily use her as a vampire or banshee.

The Laurel isn't even exclusive for Christmas, paint it in different colours like a white and it's a pretty standard funeral arrangement.

 

 

[Cicciopiu]

Your paint job on this fantastic model is gorgeous! Love how you painted the black, is the color I hate most to paint, I can't simply reach this smoothness.
Thank you for sharing all the info on the painting process, really helpful!