Ral Partha Death Dealer part 2

Death Dealer (with shield of failure)

Taking a break for the horse I spent a few hours working on the shield.  At the end of that I had a big pasty yellow failure and just painted over the entire thing.  Try that again later.

The next part I worked on was the fetlocks of the horse.  Again I spent a lot of time looking at various horse pictures to see how real horses look.  Surprising me was that many dark horses have white fetlocks and thus are more likely to have light hooves.  Normally the colour of the hair just above the hoof determines the colour of the hoof, which makes sense as the hoof is just hair.  So white fetlocks, light coloured hooves.

To blend the fetlock area I base coated the lower leg in a light tan colour and then did a number of rounds of wet on wet blending to try and get the transition from dark to light tan to white.  I used the wet on wet technique as I didn’t think glazing the dark brown to the light tan at the start of the fetlock hair would work very well.  So instead I did a light base coat and once that was dry put on the dark brown and tan and blended the two together with a fair amount of one brush blending (thanks Ben Komets).  This was then repeated for the tan to white area.  Finally the bottom of the fetlock hair was touched up with white using some very small brush strokes.  The brush strokes were done in the direction of the hair to enhance the effect.  I did a number of rounds of the blending until I though I was there.  Then the wife mentioned that the white needed to go further up the leg so I got to do it all over again.

For the mane and tail I wanted to start near black (as dark bay horses normally have black(ish) manes and tails.  My base colour was VMC German Black/Brown + VMC Dark Sea Blue + Black.  I’m finding these mixes are looking much better than just a straight colour out of the bottle.  They seem to result in a more nature looking colour.  I then highlighted (only) up with VGC Beasty Brown, VGC Bone white and some VMC Flat yellow.  I added in the yellow more an more to try and get that sun bright look.  I didn’t want to just highlight with tans and off whites as that would end up looking bleached.  I kept with the zenithal lighting idea but when highlighting selectively choose a few hair stands each time to paint.  This way the hair had a bit of dynamic lighting to it.  I’m ok with the tail but think the mane may need some more work as the upper neck area will the lightest area.

Love that saddle blanket.  

As there were no reins on the figure I made some.  I took some easter egg foil wrapping, smoothed it out on a hard flat surface and then cut out the reins.  These were then superglued into place.  The advantage of the foil is that you can shape it and it retains the shape perfectly (being metal).

The saddle blanket was a bit of a disaster zone to start but in the end came out quite well considering the loss of detail over time from the mould.  I would love to see an earlier production run of the figure as the saddle blanket has some great sculpting work on it but in areas it’s just all but gone as the mould has deteriorated over time.  So in order to try and work around that I ended up choosing some detail to highlight (and in some cases it wasn’t there on the figure) and repeatedly highlighting that same part again and again.  This way the paint layers actually started to build up and a near lost detail could be recreated.  I got a bit distracted and didn’t really keep track of the base colour.  Pretty sure it was VGC Khaki.  The shadows were AP Soft tone and in the very dark chevron I used VMA Armour Brown.  The highlight colours were VMC Light Sand and white.  The highlight and shading went back and forth a number of times as I keep making the shadows deeper to pop out the highlighted details.  I don’t remember how many layers I did on the top of the blanket but over 10 at least.  However it’s the part of the figure I’m liking the best at the moment.

I’ve started the armour, axe and cloak so hopefully next time round they should be well under way.  Yes, VMC Dark Sea Blue is used a number of times.  It’s almost becoming the unifying colour of the figure.

Ral Partha Death Dealer

I took a few days off this week as I just wasn’t in the head space for painting.  I find ever couple of months there will be a week were I’m just not interested in the actual process of painting.  One night I tried and 5 minutes later gave up.  Good news is I got to watch the movie “Red Dragon” again.  I think the real reason was that I was fearing starting on a new figure so subconsciously avoiding the task.  Probably needed some more teddy bear hugs.

Five coats of paint later...

However Thursday/Friday I was feeling the mojo again and did some more trials on my practice horse.  Part of this was from re-reading Shepard Paine’s “Building and painting scale figures” which includes a nice section on horses.  I learnt so much from those few pages on horses and markings that it made me realise how bad I am at seeing things in real life.  I’ve seen hundreds of horses in my life but couldn’t tell you what body colours go with what leg markings, etc.  So after the quick read and few hours of horse pictures from the net gave me a clearer idea of what real horses look like.  So research pays off, even on subjects that are totally familiar.

I pretty much have given up on using the airbrush and just went for a light/dark almost sketching process and after an hour or so was getting some good results.  I repainted (again) my trial horse and went to an extreme highlight on the flanks and neck of almost pure bright yellow to try and emulate the sunlight look of the Death Dealer painting.  I ended up with tide marks and spots but I had achieved the result of near black under the belly to near yellow on the top of the horse.  Time for the real thing.

In a painting lesson on glazing from Mark Soley he mentioned that you should start at approx 75% lightness as your base colour rather than starting at a mid colour base as normal.  It’s easier to get darker with glazes than get lighter.  Finally took that advice and although I want the lower sections of the horse be quite dark went for a lighter colour.  This made the lighter glazes easier as I needed to do less of them to get that sun yellow highlights.  After all black covers pretty well, yellow not so much.  Also I didn’t want to end up with a black horse with no tonal variation.

My dark to light combo was

Black
Black + VMA Yellow Olive + VMC Dark Sea Blue + base
3 parts VMA Burnt Umber + 1 part VMC German Pale Brown - Base
VMC Brown Sand + Base
VMC Iraqi Sand + previous
VMC Flat Yellow + previous

The pale rider

This results in near black (looks slightly purple) under the horse, dark brown on the sides to a very pale yellow brown on the top.  The legs of the horse are quite muscular so I have been using that muscle definition to try and pop some contrast a bit more.

VMC Dark Sea Blue is a new colour I picked up after seeing (via youtube) Ben Komets use it a lot.  Pretty much Paynes grey so I can see why he likes it.  I was using VGC Night Blue for the shading but that is quite intense and makes things very blue.  So looking forward to some more trials with Dark Sea Blue.

I trialled some pale fetlocks on my test horse and they are looking ok.  It makes the horse look a heck load better than the 28mm gaming “brown horse, black hooves” look.  One of those things that without them the horse doesn’t look quite right, but you can’t say why.  However once done you immediately think “oh, that looks much better”.

So more horse next week with the fetlocks, mane, tail and tack to be done.  Should give me some time to figure our how to paint the figure.

Dungeon Saga Keldan figure

Finishing off my month of Dungeon Saga is the limited edition (Kickstart only) Keldan resin figure.  AKA he of the ear where an ear should not be.

Keldan - with new ear

Although I like what I have done with his blue armour, it doesn’t really match in with the rest of the figure.  I ended up with lots of browns/red on the bulk of the figure and then this very cold blue armour.  It’s quite striking, but not matching.

Paint still a bit wet and glossy

My light to dark for the blue armour was based on the blue scheme I had used on parts of some of the other Dungeon Saga figures.

Black
VGC Falcon Turquoise (1/4) + VGC Night Blue (3/4)
VMC Light Turquoise - Base
VMC Sky Blue
VMC Glossy White

For the shades I started with a 1/4, 3/4 mix of the Falcon Turquoise and Night Blue and then added more Night Blue.  Finally some Black was added into the mix.  Once I have finished the highlights the final white highlights was a bit stark so I did a number of bright yellow glazes (80% water) to warm up the chest piece slightly and tone back to the warmer browns.

On his cloak I went for the dusty warrior look and glazed up with some VMC Tan Yellow to get a nice road dust effect.  Again very little paint and a number of glazes to build up the effect.  I always need to stop myself from getting a bit heavy handed and impatient.

Hmm, time to base coat again?

Now that Dungeon Saga is on hold for a bit (other than playing, got another game in today with the family) I’m going to have a go at the Ral Partha Superhero (aka Death Dealer).  I’ve got a spare horse that I will do some tests with first as I play with pre-shading and using my airbrush to paint the horse.  I really need to get the bottom of the horse to be near black and the top in full sunlight and with a lot of yellow.  But that’s way spares are for.  Lots of recoating in primer.

Dungeon Saga Human Mage figure

Dungeon Saga Human Mage

This time round I worked on the Human Mage figure.  Being a city born pretty boy I went for lots of bright colours for him.  Yellow for the pants, blue for the loin cloth (why does he have one, he has pants on??) and flame red for the tunic.  In the game most of his spells are fire based so the red matched up.  Plus he wears no armour so the blood doesn’t show too much either.  He doesn’t really have any fingers on his left hand so I’m guessing that fireball spell didn’t always work so well.

Dungeon Saga Human Mage

For the red shirt my dark to light range was…

Black
VMC Red
VMC Flat Red (base)
VMC Vermillion
VGC Orange Fire
VMC Flat yellow
White

The yellow/white was only used as a series of very light glazes on the top parts of the figure from shoulder height and above.  I also glazed some red over the upper parts of his staff too.

I screwed up the face about three times so the end result is a bit lumpy due to too much paint, but in the photo is doesn’t look too bad.  The symmetry of the face sculpt is a bit off (one eye normal, one eye half sized) which kept throwing me off.  Plus painting at 9pm when you have been up since 5am is never a good idea.

Keldan base colours (and dodgy ear)

The last Dungeon Saga figure I will do for a bit will be Keldan.  He’s been on the shelf long enough for me to get over the ear horror.  I tided up his base coats and changed his clothes to be VMC Leather Brown (instead of VGC Leather Brown).  On the mage figure I used the VMC Leather Brown (highlighted with VMC Iraqi Sand) and really liked the effects I got from it.  I never get leather to look like leather but using this new VMC Leather Brown as the base I got something much closer to what I see other people doing.

Dungeon Saga Human Barbarian figure

Have axe, will smash

This week was the Human Barbarian figure from Dungeon Saga.  He is very much the typical half naked, big axe, lots of skulls kind of barbarian.  The hair is totally Dothraki from the Games of Thrones TV series.  Yes, those are leaves stuffed into his belt.  When this barbarian has to go, at least he is clean afterwards.

Green leaves are best to wipe with

For the flesh I tried something different from my usual.  Being an outdoor kind of guy I made the skin colour a bit darker than normal.  I started with VMC Medium Fleshtone and shaded down with VPA Shadows Flesh.  I went darker with one of my new favourite colours VMA Armour Brown.  This brown has a fair bit of purple in it so shades down flesh very well.

Flesh shading that is finally looking ok

I’ve been trying to shade down with dark blues on most colour ranges but this time instead I used VGC Cold Grey.  This kept the dark shade with a purple tone rather than going too blue which was my problem using dark blue on flesh.  My final shades were pretty much half Armour Brown, half Cold grey.  I’m pretty happy with the result as the shadows have that purple tone I have struggled to get but which I see some much of in other people’s figures.

The highlights were VMC Dark Flesh and then a small amount of VGC Dead White.  Since finishing the flesh I purchased some VMC Light Flesh.  This flesh colour is very pink so will work well on female figures and on the large scale figures where you have more room for a range of shading/highlighting.  Also I can get lighter without getting whiter.  I find most of the Vallejo flesh colours have a bit of yellow in them so will see how this works out.

Pick me!

Next up is the last of four standard Dungeon Saga characters, the Human Mage.  Then maybe Keldan, Death Dealer, and finally back to some 54mm figures.  Need to start working on the figures for Cancon 2017.