WIP update 20/02/15

My level of motivation has been rather low this week, so I do mostly short session, progress is slow, but satisfying. On the bright side, I got all the gold skulltullas ( That's been hanging over me since 1998)
Anyway, pictures:

A big great bunch of shading done, went a bit lighter on the face, I will define it more when I do the details later on. I will do the lights next, probably going more towards sandy colors than flesh ones and do some texture work to imply fur at places, but not too much so it don't compete with the muscle definition.

I'm so lazy that's all I got for now, thanks for watching.

palette view for this stage:

WIP Update 15/02/15

It's about time I learned how to sculpt.
This conclusion was prompted by the increasing need for custom bits in order to have the bases and characters tell the story I have in mind. Namely on these two next projects:

This reaper lady will feature two sculpted props, the first being a streetlight the second a pair of feet sticking out of a bush.

I also received these two rackham Ogres ( Well, I dont know what they are actually.) in a miny exchange a while back and thought they would fit well together in a little scene... however it turns out
I have only one head for the two of them... rather than decide which one will be turned into spare bits I opted for resculpting... using my brand new army painter hobby saw ( A good buy btw) I hacked the head of a very old and useless mini. Only the face details will be usable as I need to add a lot of volume to fit but I thing this could work out. If I learn how to sculpt that is.

Besides that and some craft related stuff, not much news in the way of painting, only this little piece if metal and a gem.

Thanks for watching.

Happy mini day!

On February 14th 2006, either to fight boredom or loneliness, I put a brush to metal for the first time.
Interests in life come and go, so does love, but I always find myself coming back to minis, and ever since it has been my medium of choice for whatever part of creativity there is in my life.
Not being a romantically minded person, in the conventional sense anyway, I associate this date a lot more with acrylics and pewter than I do with Flower-scented-chocolate-hearts, or oral sex.

So I bid you all, ladies and gentlemen, attractive or otherwise, no one needs to feel rejected, a very happy and colorful mini day.

WIP Update 04/02/15

Hurray, I have new fully functional brushes ! Now let's see how long they last...

I have finished the first pass on both the NMM and red 'life support gears' I wanted to advance them at the same time to see how they worked together.

She now has paints on all her parts, so next I guess would be a crapload of glazes, nitpicking and tweaking, picking up the freehand and details and finally repainting a gazillion light points.
Who said painting minis was easy! ( Probably no one, ever.)

Also painted the base some, not unhappy with the marbling/granite floor.

And in order to avoid sci-fi overdose, I advanced the other projects, lot of rough and prepping; and thus, Queen Libby on her generic 'big cat' is ready for painting.

Thanks for watching.

WIP Update 31/01/15

I didn't have internet all day yesterday, felt like forever, I was lonely and frightened...
Forsaken offline, I roamed realityland a bit in search of usable brushes, that took me a while but I found a decent Michael's craft store at a reasonable driving distance. I am now armed with renewed brushes and various studio improvements and looking forward to the next session.

Meanwhile, some more progress, another round of highlights and general fixes of the orange armor parts, also picked up the leather and some details.

Now working on the NMM bits, the one brushes blending is helping a lot with that, I figure by the time I finished all those I should have a good grip on the technique. Abit concerned by how the tone
is gonna fit in composition wise but I'll see how it balances when I'm done with this step, namely on the knee pads, crotch and breast 'protectors' and guns.

I remotivated myself to advance the pirate dude by moving the complicated basework forward, I painted him some, picked up the belts and added some color variation to the pants.


Thanks for watching.

WIP updeate 28/01/15

Yesterday felt pretty good.
After the last couple days that felt mostly like crawling backward, was good to see her take a definite step towards completedness. Still ( tentatively) using wet-on-wet, loaded brush, technique. I find it a lot more effective especially for lighting round surfaces. Still very imperfect mind you, but moving forward at a more satisfying pace.

WIP update 27/01/15

Always biting up more than I can chew, I got somewhat carried away with the transparent-yellow Idea. While transparency effect is something I tried before, the case with yellow is quite different.
So lack of planning and a fairly improvisationnal approach left me with unsatisfying result, a very overworked surface and a lot of redundant steps... well, this is the color she is now, I moved on to shading the orange power-armor material and keep all options open for the yellow part, including resurfacing ( Which in my book sounds a lot like losing.) Not being too result-oriented I'd mention that I found the whole thing very formative.

On a side note, the orange shading was done mainly with wet-on-wet techniques, which is a first in my case. I'm happy to be unblocking on that front, as a good wet-on-wet technique will help a lot towards churning out more than one completed project every othe month or so.

Though I'm finding little dedicated painting time for the serious painting of late, I still manage to progress on the little, less involving stuf, so, en rafale, some sketching of over-the-top directionnal lighting, a sail, a big cat and a pretty rough base for the lady in orange.

Thanks for watching.