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.