Tribal Warrior done and Viking bust started

After a bit more of a break I finished off the Tribal Warrior.  Or more correctly gave up and just finished it.  My heart just wasn’t in it to be honest and I never should have started it.  One of those “well I bought it, I should paint it..” times.

Tribal Warrior

For the metal's I kept them very cool and that seemed to work out.  For the highlights I used some Vallejo Metal Medium.  Basically the sparkle in metallic paints, not pigment at all.  Makes the Aluminum paint I have look dull :)

For the shield I couldn’t work out what to do so after doing a whole lot of brown shading I covered the shield in AK Worn Effect chipping fluid and painted it red.  Then I wore back the paint to uncover the wood.  The end result wasn’t too bad.

Top view

It needed some more work but by this stage I was done.  The figure got based and into the cupboard with it.

1/16 Viking Bust

Recently I purchased a 1/16 bust of a Viking.  He has very squinty eyes suggesting that he is looking into the sun.  So I decided to try for a very directional light in the shading (instead of the usual zenithal approach).  I didn’t want to go the whole OSL ‘lantern in the dark’ look, more of a sun bleached look.  I’ve just blocked in the shirt, cloak and hair so far.  I did a lot of work on the face and then the wife told me I had made it too yellow (trying of the sun look).  Yep, he had some serious health issues.  So I’m now repainting it with more red in the mix.

Attempts at directional lighting

Instead of the normal flesh colours from the pot I’m mixing my flesh again.  I’m using a base of

VGC Leather Brown
VMC Red
Jo Sonja’s white - really liking this white, seems warmer than the VGC Dead white.
VMC English Uniform
VGC Plague Brown
VMC Golden Brown

Shade down with
VMA Armour Brown
VMC Violet Red
VMC Dark Sea Blue

Highlights with
VMC Light Yellow
more white

The small amount of red is needed to stop the attack of the yellow skin condition.  However it is really a tiny amount in the mix.  Any more than a pin head and it’s pink city.  I’m wondering that as my flesh mix ends up close to the standard Vallejo flesh colours am I just make a rod for my own back?  Jury out on that one.

I’m trying to get the whole ‘shade with a complementary colour’ technique to give a wider range of colours to make the figure pop some more.  The idea of having the full colour spectrum in an area and using the natural grey of two direct complementary colours to enhance (read pop) the features.  I found at Cancon my figures looked really flat compared to the better figures.  I’m also trying to do the shades in cool colours and highlights in warm colours.  Most times I fail and over use yellow (see note about unhealthy skin above).

Hair too light, darker now

Since the picture I’ve redone the hair to be much darker.  It matches the skin a bit better as I was finding the beard highlights were getting very unnatural on the original hair colour.