Adokul the Monk part 2

Creases redone

So last week I wasn’t that happy with the skirt, especially around the left knee.  I later worked out I had the shadows wrong which is why it looked off.  I had shadows uniformly in the creases (like the old days of army painting) instead of just having shadows under the ridges of cloth.  So I had a few attempts at redoing that but the colour was just off.  I couldn’t get a shadow colour that looked right as I was using various browns but the shadows were getting too purple.  So I did some experiments and found that VMC Smoke worked best as the shade colour for the warm white.  In times past I have vague memories of using the old Citadel brown ink which is a very similar colour.  So happier now with the skirt.

Before I started the blue armour I did some tests on an old 28mm Grenadier figure.  That took on a bit of a life of it’s own and I took a bit more time on him than expected.  I also started experimenting with using inks in the colour mixes.  I used some red ink on his hat to add some vibrancy.  For his sash I used red and yellow inks to make an intense orange and then darkened it with some blue.  This ended up with a super rich brown that I really like.  I also discovered once some paint was on the figure his wasn’t wearing boots, instead he has clogs and stockings.  An odd choice with plate mail, but why not.  Then I had to remember how to do 28mm faces again.

Back to Adokul I started on the blue armour.  As I was lightening the blue with white I would add in a small amount of blue ink to avoid the blue going grey (an issue on the 28mm figure).  For the shading I used some VMC Light Orange mixed with some yellow and red inks.  There weren’t many large expanses for the shading except for the back of the figure.  For all the trim on the edges of the armour  originally I was just going to use the blue highlight colour.  Now I’m thinking of gold trim after the work I did on the chest eagle and skull motif.

On the chest of the figure is a large eagle.  I pre-shaded this with JS Yellow Oxide/Light Yellow/White and then did a light glaze of the VMA Gold.  This was very nice but with the blue around it the gold was definitely looking green.  For the skull on the leather tassel I pre-shaded with Indian Yellow/Orange and then glazed with VMC Gold XX.  This gave a much more orange tint to the gold that seems to work better.  So I will probably redo the chest eagle.  Once I’m happy with that I will then work out the armour trim.  I think using a few shades of gold on various bits of the trim could be really add some pop to the figure.

Adokul the monk and some old school 25mm Ral Partha and Grenadier

Adokul the Monk by Andrea

I did a lot of prep work on Adokul this week.  First up was drilling and gluing in pins in all the parts to hold him together.  I always pin my metal figures together and then use two part epoxy to glue them together.  The fact that the two part epoxy have some bulk helps filling the gaps as most metal figures don’t have that good a join between parts (compared to plastic figures).  I glued the legs and body together and then filled in the gaps with some Milliput.

Adokul wooden base underway

For the object under the left foot I played around with a number of options and in the end went for a dwarf stone statue head.  Makes him more fantasy based but that is ok.

I had to wait until the weekend to undercoat him as it’s a bit cold at night in the shed.  I did the usual two stage undercoat of all over black, and the white on the highlights.

Ral Partha thief

While waiting for undercoats to dry I wanted to try doing some armour and do some colour/enamel like effects.  So into the stash of old school Ral Partha/Grenider figures.  I found a nice plate mail figure and a thief to do while I waited for the plate mail to dry.  I ended up doing the thief first, she was a bit hard as the face was obscured by her hood.  Also my eyes needed to be trained back to doing 25mm again.  After all the broad brush work on the Anonymous bust hard to go back to super small work.  Plus the eyes aren’t what they were 15 years ago when I was painting these more often.  Kept her pretty dark as that fitted with the thief idea.  Thieves don’t want to stand out too much.

Grenadier fighter underway

For the plate mail guy, I decided to go for a dragon skin cloak and practice on getting my reds better.  Wanting coloured armour I mixed some Jo Sonja’s Phthalo blue with the AP Plate mail.  I bit more subtle than the standard metallic blue.  I do like the AP metallic range, I find them very smooth and the mica is really ground fine (so no silver flakes).  I need to do the armour highlights/shades still and more on the red.  His face was a pain as it is quite recessed and the left arm of the figure gets in the way when trying to get a brush in there.  I think I did the eyes at least 6 times.  Definitely lost the touch there.