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.