Living Nightmare and Klaus CopperThumb

So this week I tried the wings on the Living Nightmare figure from Ex-manus.  Or more correctly I tried the wings three times.

Attempt one

For the first attempt I went for a yellow/orange look.  I used Leprous Brown and JS Cadmium Mid Yellow and VMC Bright Orange.  However I couldn't get enough contrast between the body and the wings and they all kind of blended together.

Scrapping that I went for a purple scheme (sorry, forgot the photos).  Got some nice shading going on but the wife mentioned that the purple didn't match with any of the other colours on the figure (and she was right).  After some more sighing I had a third attempt.

Living Nightmare by Ex-manus

For this one I went with green to tie the wings into the mid body section where I use an aqua green for the blue to yellow transition (kind of a mutating body change).  I started with a very blue/green mixed from the VMA Blue and JS Cadmium Mid Yellow.  However as I shaded up I went for a more standard green by adding more yellow (and then white) to the mix.  I kept adding a small amount of blue to keep tying the mixes back to the base coat.  For the shading I add some VMA Red and VMC Violet/Red to get a rich very dark purple.  This mix I think worked.

Along the way I also decided that the head wasn't right.  I decided to do the head as bone and the same for the horns.  This makes the focal point of the head also the brightest point on the figure.  I attempted the Ben Komets loaded brush technique on the horns.  I had distant glimpses of success :)

I have realised that I'm not glazing as much any more.  I think this is a bad thing.  I'm highlighting and shading but forgetting to go back and do the transition blend every 3-4 coats.

I was going to put this figure on a wooden base, but in the end went for a 40mm lipped base.  He didn't quite work out for me.  I big part of that was insufficient planning.  I need to go back and do the colour charts for the mixes I want to use before starting the figure rather than work it out on the fly (and have 3 attempts like I did on the wings).  I use to do this to really work out how to get the blends working.  It also meant I could see all the colours together before they went on the figure.

Klaus Copperthumb

Finally I started the face of the new Reaper Bones figure Klaus Copperthumb.  He is this weeks project.

Started painting again (at last)

So got back in the groove this week with painting two figures.  The first up is "Baron Meliadus of Kroiden" from Eureka Miniatures, part of the Hawkmoon range.  Who doesn't like the Order of the Wolf?

Baron Meliadus by Eureka

As an experiment I decided to play around with painting in grey.  My idea was a black wolf cloak.  However rather than have the head black I lightened it up considerably to make the head/shoulders the focus area of the figure.

On the cloak I tried creating texture where there wasn't really much there to begin with.  By doing what was close to pointillism I slowly added in "waves" of highlights to try and mimic the flow of fur.  Under these highlights I then shaded to make the highlight appear to be higher from the surface. It worked a bit, but would need a lot more to really start to come together.  The good news is that I tried a new technique and it kind of worked.

For the armour I got a bit muddled and was alternating between NMM and TMM.  I stopped before I made it worse.

On the shield I tried for some more extreme contrast.  Getting better there but I'm struggling as my colours keep dulling down.

Living Nightmare

The second figure I worked on was the "Living Nightmare" by Ex-manus who has been sitting around for some time now.  I finally got some colours in my head to use on him/it.  I'm going for violet blue on the lower section, yellow on the top and brown/orange on the wings.  Pretty much blue and it's two complementary colours.

For the blue I started with VMA Blue.  I shaded down with Liquitex Purple ink added to the blue and then added some black for the final shades.  Later I went back and added some old Citadel Leprous Brown into the mix as orange is the complementary to blue.  This is the push the colour contrast a bit more.  On an aside all the Citadel paints I have remaining are the oldest ones which came in the hexagon flip lids.  Anything new than those have all dried out.  Highlights were done by adding in white and more blue to stop the mix chalking out.

On the body I used Leprous Brown, JS Cadmium Mid Yellow and white.  Shading was done by adding some of the blue to green the mixture slightly.  For the area between the body and lower area I did some intermediate glazes to try and ease the transition between the two areas.

Klaus Copperthumb from Reaper

Finally I found a nice Reaper Bones figure "Klaus Copperthumb" which I thought would suit Dungeon Saga really well.  I trimmed off his base and glued him onto a Dungeon Saga base and sculpted up a small money sack to sit behind him.  Another "just for fun" figure.  I need to just paint more and stop taking 3 months to paint one figure hoping that it is competition standard.  I learn a lot more from 5 smaller 28mm figures than one 54mm figure.

Next week onto the wings of the Living Nightmare

Ex-Manus Living Nightmare and some Terminator Genisys

This week I fiddled around with the Antarctic Explorer, mainly on the base.  I think I just wasn't ready yet to call that one done.

Ex-Manus Living Nightmare

My next figure will be the Ex-Manus 'Living Nightmare (COM-011)'.  I picked this figure up at MOAB last year.  Haven't ever done a demon figure so this one looked like a nice example of the type.  The base is integrated into the figure and just needed a bit of putty to fill in the gaps.  Other than that a pretty clean figure.  I did my usual black undercoat with a white highlights pre-shade.

I thought I had a colour scheme all ready but once I sat down I realised it wasn't going to work.  So I've put this on pause while I think about things a bit more.  I thinking rolling clouds/smoke.

To keep some paint flowing I started doing the base coats on a couple of Terminator Genisys figures.  Still not sure when I will ever have a game of this to be honest.  Maybe with the kids where they are older.  But I'm enjoying the terrain building and ideas from it.  I really should get back to doing LotR figures as I have 17ish Gondor knights to paint up.  So many horses to paint...