Violinist part 10 - still trucking

Got cracking on things this week and got a few bits done.  First up was finishing up the ground work.  This was painting the weeds (made from jute twine) a few different shades of olive green/yellow.  The pebble path was painted and needs some pigments to finish it off.  I’ll do that after pieces (i.e. wall/fence) are glued down to avoid smearing the pigments.

Violinist

On the figure itself I got the bag, puppets and the violin arm done.  The other arm is glued on and once the glue is set I’ll need to do some putty work on it before painting.

Puppets on the bag

The two puppets are of death and a woman.  For death I went for more brown/blacks on the bottom and faded greys on the top of the figure.  I still have to glue on the scythe but will do that as the last step as it is the most fragile part of the whole figure.  The woman I did in purples (based off the old Citadel Warlock Purple) to add a bit of colour but by keeping her purple she tones in with the figure’s cloak.

Violin

The violin I used VGC Parasite Brown mixed with some VMC Smoke as the main colour.  The edges were done in VMA Mahogany.  I used VMC Smoke to shade down every part of the violin to again tone the various colours together.  The sculpt on the violin is fantastic.  I was able to paint the violin strings by painting with the edge of the paint brush.  I used some yellow in the shades/glazes at the top of the violin to lighten up around the face area to draw the eye there.

The right arm socket is not a great fit for the arm so I pinned the arm and used a lot of two part epoxy glue to fill up some of the gaps.  I will also need to use some green stuff to fill in the gaps as well.  Then it’s down to painting the arm and all the painting is done.  Well except for the touch ups where I’ve missed something or some paint has rubbed off (on the base of the cloak for example) from me handling it during dry fit test runs.

I’ve also spent some time putting all the pieces on the base, to see how everything is starting to go together.  I’ve decided that the German shepherd dog will probably go and although I was going to put the violinist on a box I think I will drop that as well.  Kind of annoying as I spend a week making multiple boxes and painting them.  On the plus side, I can make pretty good boxes.  The cat was going to be near the fountain between the pots but I think I will move it to the garden peering around the fence.

Next week, finish the arm and touch ups.  Then the final touches to the base and maybe start gluing things together.  Almost there!

Speed painting base coats - 15mins

Finally, while waiting for glazes to dry I speed painted the base coats on a Dungeon Saga figure and undercoated some skeletons.  Might teach the kids about dry brushing and see what they can do..

Violinist part 9 - return of the ground work

I got a bit lost this week as it seems that I’m back to not making much progress.  So I decided to focus in on getting the last of the ground work across the line.

Pond life

I did the bricks around the pond in a similar paint scheme to the garden fence.  The base was VMC Tan Yellow with highlights in yellow and white and shade colours of medium and dark brown.  For the algae I used my favourite, the Coat d’arms Russian Green.  I really wanted to get the aged feeling so did many layers of glazes and a few times (more by accident than design) had to rework the algae layer from scratch.  On the plus side this gives much more depth to the algae.

Algae scum for all

I finished up with some Vallejo pigments and used the Chrome oxide green and Natural Umber/Burnt umber on the lower sections.  On the higher sections more European Earth and Secret Weapon Ash Grey were used.  Still fumbling around with pigments I find.

Ground work

For the ground area I painted it with VGC Earth and then used some pigments (mixed with PVA/water) and painted on some of the above pigments colours.  Once dried I used some of the numerous flock/scatter/painted sawdust terrain materials I have and put down some  ground colour.  Rather than the standard static grass puff balls I used some jute twine (thank you Mr Paine) as the grass.  I still need to paint these once the glue holding them into the ground has dried.  I may put on a few more grass tufts to brighten up the area.  Once the grass is done then the base is pretty much complete.  When all the components are glued on I’ll add some more autumn leaves.

Jute twine grass

On the wall I’m still thinking about rain streaks.  I redid the glaze on the bricks (using light yellow) to warm up the wall colour.  I found the wall and the cloak on the figure were blending too much.  This wasn’t an issue originally as cloak was going to be blue.

Green pants

On the violinist himself I repainted the yellow pant stripes on his pants in a light green.  The yellow was just too bright and when looking at the figure the pants were the focus point, not the face.  So bye bye yellow, yellow light green.  Bit sad as that yellow was probably the best yellow I’ve ever done.

Cleaned up cloak

So next week, the bag and puppets on the figure and maybe the arms.  I’m sure some more base work will creep in as always.

Next knight costume time and some violinist work

I did quite a lot of painting this week, just not on the miniature front.  It’s almost time for book week at school and my son wants to go as Axl from Lego Nexo Knights.  So I was in full cosplay armour manufacture and painting.  All of the armour pieces are made from foam garage mats and painted with either rattle can sprays (for the undercoat and metal colour) or airbrushed with enamel paints with my trusty Paasche model H.  Just need to add the straps and it’s all done.

Axl Shield

Axl armour chest piece

Axe time - wood handle and foam axe head

Leg and arm pieces

For the few hours that I did get to do figure painting I tried a new technique of sketching the light patterns on an area first before doing the neat paint work.  I tried this on the violinist cloak.  The paint sketch took 2-3 minutes and was really fun.  Painting without too much worry about neatness.  I did get a bit too wet and some paint lifted off on the lower cloak.  However I then used this sketch to start the neat work.  I’m also really happy with the colour hue (a mixture of VMC Violet Red and VMC German Cam. Medium Brown) and the tonal range I’ve gotten so far.

Sketch work

Need to keep working on it and clean it up some more.  The front left shoulder I got ok, then messed it up three times before finally getting back to where I wanted.  After all that I realised that most of the area will be covered up by the violin.  This issue is because my base has two colours and all my highlight and shades also have two plus colours so it’s very hard to keep getting the same results on every mix.  Sometimes too purple, sometimes too brown, etc.  But the colour is great.  Have to work out the deep creases as currently I go too dark and the result is much too stark.

Starting the neat work

I’m also surprised on how quickly the coat progressed.  With just the arms and the bag left he is getting towards finished.

Violinist part 8

Repainting the base

Things kind of went to plan this week for once.  I redid the ground work and built up the area under the fence posts.  I also started painting the edges of the base.  Giving up on the stained wood look I repainted everything in matt black and then started the multiple layers of gloss black.  I find it takes 3-4 to get a decent finish from the gloss black I have.  The pond bricks got undercoated but are on hold until the edges are done.

Ground work prep colour done

On the figure I worked on the shirt, the tights, shoes and the jacket.  Still not sure on the green jacket but I think I will press on with the cloak before deciding for sure.

Progress at last

I had a lot of trouble with the highlights on the green.  I was making the jumps between layers much too large and the blends were not working at all.  My first colour chart was

base - VMC German Uniform + Coat d’arms Russian green
highlights - VGC Khaki and VMA Light Brown
shades - more Russian Green and VMC Dark Sea Blue.

I found the highlights just weren’t working at all.  For the highlights I instead tried used some yellow, a bit of Russian Green (to stop the green going to lime) and some VMC Dark Flesh (which despite the name is a very light flesh colour).  I’ve read of a lot of people using flesh colours as highlights.  I’m starting to see why as most flesh colours have some yellow and brown in them making them great for highlights.

Show some leg...

I also rediscovered my old Coat d’arms Dark Angel Green and used that as the shade colour with some black.  I need to leave the coat for awhile and come back to it later and make a final decision before I glue on the arms.

For the stockings my colours were

base - VGC Khaki + VMC Dark Flesh + VGC Bonewhite
highlights - glazes of the base with yellow, white, lighter flesh colours added
shades - glazes of base + browns

I was wanting the stockings to look like the flesh colour was coming through.  On the areas that the stockings were stretched (knee, shin bone) I kept highlighting almost up to white.  Super thin glazes were used and on the extreme highlights almost point painting (i.e. small dots of colours) was used.

Another technique to do stockings is to paint the leg as flesh, then glaze over repeatedly with the stocking colour.  Guess I’ll try that next time :)

The shoes were based with VMC Leather Brown and highlighted up with VGC Khaki.  I made the mistake of trying brown as the first highlight colour but that failed and then I remembered the VMC Leather Brown (note, not the VGC Leather Brown) works better with the much lighter Khaki/Bonewhite colours.

So next is the blue for the cloak.  I’ll start with the area on the front of the figure so I can figure out quickly if the blue is going to work or not before I get to the large back area.