Painting: Annyssa Ryvaal WIP (3)

Here is part 3 of the series for Annyssa.  This model has definitely consumed more of my time than others because it is more complex.  She has belts, metal and leather and wood and hair etc...

To do the base I used my "Dead Earth" technique I normally use, which I talk about in detail here.  But to summarize, I base in any acrylic black > Grave Yard earth > Desert Yellow > Bone White > Skull White.  Except for the base color I mainly dry brush all these colors so that they contrast on the material like dirt or rock.

I took a couple of additional steps to ensure that the cork material would end up looking closer to a slab of stone than earth so I added a dark grey > light grey > skull white dry brush step.

After working on the base I tried doing some work on Annyssa.  Now, from this experience so far I have a couple of thoughts that I'd like to share.  If you are ever going to do this model, do yourself a favor, don't glue her to the mount.  I believe it is probably easier to deal with painting the model without the hassle of getting the paint brush into hard to reach places.  In fact, I am at a point where I am still considering somehow prying her off of it to finish it.

So far I've done her skin to my normal specs of Legion.  Base white > blue wash > dry brush icy blue.  I am very bad with faces and in fact will confess to having tried to get "fancy" with her face for practice sake and at the end I re did it as I mentioned above.  She looks a little more manly than I'd prefer but it will do "table top" quality for now.  I will probably do a little more with her hair so that it's much more distinguishable from her skin.

The horns of the mount got a simple Greyphone Sepia wash over the white base and I'm pretty happy with the results.  The metal covers (in fact all the metal) will get the treatment of Bolt Gun Metal > dry Badab Black wash > dry brush Silver.  If it wasn't for the forces book I couldn't tell you what parts of her bow are metal and which are wood or another material.  It looks like there's some room for interpretation if you wish but I'm just going to follow the pictures I have for reference (not sure she's actually in the forces book but maybe the PP site).

The leather on the mount covers is an attempt to recreate the color I made for my Ogrun here.  It's basically GW Scaly Green and a dark Blue mixed together.  Overall I like it.  It's quite subtle on her but I will most likely be washing it a tiny bit and then dry brushing or highlihgting in some fashion with a lighter color mix maybe adding some icy blue to it.

On the last picture I tried to capture the work on the mount's skin.  The picture doesn't do it much justice as I think it turned out pretty well.  The previous picture might be better.  It's really just a Light Grey > Wash Devlan Mud > dry brush Light Grey again.  I might do one more run of dry brush white.  I'm using the same technique on the hair of the mount and mouth.

Overall this model has served as a great learning experience but also a bit of frustration.  I'm hoping to press through and finish it and see if there are any other tricks I can gain off of this.  So far I still have to finish her equipment, armor, and the mount's hooves as well as the mount's bridle details.  I hope this has served as some inspiration!  If you have any tips for me let me know or your own Annyssa WIP article!  More to come...

Painting: Scythean WIP (4)

So, here we are in step 4.  What I do now is take the main / highlight color and basically dry brush it on the flesh parts of the beast.  I do start by what I call over brushing which is just dry brushing with the brush slightly more saturated than it would be for dry brush. [dry brush main highlight / main color]

I try to make sure I get all the obvious raised areas like the spine and the leg, and arm muscles, as well as ripples throughout the arm.  There are times when the brush is simply too saturated for my liking and that's ok, one of the things I like about this hobby is that to me there is almost nothing you can't come back from.  You could either repaint white then rewash or simply rewash an area that has "too much" highlight to bring it back down.

After I get done with the over brushing I do quite a bit of dry brushing just to make sure the figure isn't just flat out too dark in contrast with the raised areas.  Again, you could go overboard but you could just rewash if you did.

There are times in this process that I break out into a little bit of feathering and wet blending simply because the areas covered by the dry brush or over brush are too distinct and I want a more seamless transition.  I will be continuing on the step by step but I may actually return to this guy to accomplish more on the highlighting, I really just wanted to concentrate on table top worthy for now.  More to come...

Painting: Scythean WIP (2)

Ok so as I showed you last time this puppy is primed white.  I do that because in this particular color scheme I'll be using there are a lot of light colors as main colors and I'd like to save myself sometime with multiple coats growing from grey or even worse black.

Like I talked about before on my Typhon post I start by adding Black to the base.  Truth is I normally don't care what black, GW, Vallejo, and even Americana or one of those cheap acrylics at a hobby store work ok, just want to get rid of the white and have a nice dark base.

After the black is dry I apply a more brownish earth tone.  This one in particular I used Grave Yard earth from GW.  I do a saturated Dry Brush, basically still use the dry brushing technique with my hand movement and how much of the brush touches the material but with more paint than I would normally use while just straight up dry brushing.

The next step is Desert Yellow from GW.  This color I use because of how much closer it is to yellow than the others while still remaining earthy looking.  It provides a nice contrast in my opinion.  Again not quite dry brushing but saturation is probably 50% less than when I applied the Grave Yard earth.

The following color is Bone White.  This color is more of a khaki color and "ties" in the contrast from the Desert Yellow.  For this particular color I straight up Dry Brush normally.

The last step on painting the base for me is Skull White.  This color is just straight up white.  I lightly Dry Brush this one to accent the edges of some of the rocks or tips of gravel.

Well, that's my current technique for what I'd call dead earth look.  After this I usually go for painting the model to table top quality (coming up in other posts).  After that I slowly consider adding more embellishments like snow, dead grass, etc...   I have considered washing at the end with some sort of dark color to give the rocks more definition and maybe re-highlighting but honestly that wouldn't be part of my "table top ready" methodology.  Perhaps another time...  More to come!

Painting: Typhon (Finished)

Finished Typhon yay! Only to table top quality (which I may or may not have mentioned before) which  it's what I've decided to do for now so I can get my stuff painted already! After priming it Skull White I washed it with blue Wonder Wash as mentioned in the WIP article.  The next step was to paint the base.  Painting the base (at least the way I do it since I mostly dry brush) sometimes messes up the other colors so I do that first.  I usually do the base Chaos Black > Graveyard Earth (Heavy Dry Brush) > Desert Yellow (Dry Brush) > Bone White (Light Dry Brush).  After the base paint, I touched up any portions of the model that got any of the base paint on them.

Next was the Icy Blue for the skin.  I do this in a combination of Dry Brushing and Over Brushing.  Basically just right to not get too much in the cracks of the muscles but not too little like dry brushing only so make sure there's some good definition.

Following the "Highlights" I touch up the parts that I need staying Skull White to get them ready for the Gryphon Sepia Wash (GW) then I wash them.

Next I do the gums with Dwarf Flesh > Wonder Wash Red to give them a "live" look.

To wrap things up I "clean" the edges of the base by painting them black.  From here I may or may not add snow and such to the base.  I have a couple of my beasts in queue to paint but after those any that I start I'll try to do a step by step with pictures so that my method is more clear, and after that I'll probably do an article or more on my madness method lol... more to come!