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.

WIP update 22/01/15

More thechnicalish post now...

Started the serious stuff on space girl, already a couple hours in ( Im a slow painter.) Starting from the inside out, sorted out the little flash of skin, base is corkbrown and beige red (all paints are VGC VMC), shaded with chocolat brown, cavalry brown ( Was on my palette) and darkseablue, mostly, with no real order or mixology. Highlighted with custom warm off-white (White, yellow and fairypowder.). The face and teal tattoo will be subject to further highlight when the surrounding areas are finished.

Went over the yellow with a mix of base color with ochre because the gold yellow was much too strong and also dried glossier than enamel. Then proceeded to shade down the ochre through hot orange, chocolat brown, and darkseablue. Shaded yellow down this path to recall the skin tones because the fabric there looks nylony and stretchy.
It's a bit messy now because, I'm a messy painter and yellow is a messy color ( Even when cheating by doing it more ochre.) Some cleaning up will be in order to redefine the mid-tone before I move on to the next step.

Thanks for watching

WIP update 20/01/15

Things have got a bit cloudy between me and the matey, when I took a closer look at his mug...

Let's just say it started okay and then went horribly wrong when I got to the eyes. He never been the same since :(

It must be tough indeed to sculpt good eyes at this scale, but thats no reason to leave me with two needlepin holes to paint on... 
He's gonna see the showcase someday anyway but the face war and subsequent fixing session got me a bit frustrated with him for now.
So that's when when I remenbered that's the reason why I keep more than one ongoing project :D

So space girl is in the early stages, all basecoats, don't tell me to amp the contrast just yet.
Not sure where the color came from but that scheme kinda painted itself ;)

Now marvel at Poupée's incredible sculpting finesse, also the cast was really well made for metal, so props to CMON miniatures for that.

I had some tribulations with a 8yo bottle of Gold Yellow doing some funky stuff, but nothing that cant be fixed easily at this stage.

Either way, I win

And, to keep the ongoing trilogy of project going, I getting this fella ready for the big game, he will make for a nice and simple side project, singlepiece, ho, joy!

Thanks for watching

By the way, if anyone has a clue what species this guy might be, lemme know ( All I know is he's WOC and old.)

WIP update 16/01/15

Beastman completed and added to gallery
CMON Voting link
All the full size pictures here
Meanwhile, mostly in the rough basework so not much to show for, but Captain babyface is starting to look like something, I felt like working on my freehand so he’s getting himself a fancy coat, the lucky guy!

For 3 years, I hardly held a brush, and then, it came back. It always does, and nothing that has been learned ever goes away completely. If anything, this long hiatus allowed me to shed a lot of bad habits and get a fresh perspective.  So two weeks in this new/old ventures, I find my confidence and enjoyment redoubled and I am looking forward to see what stories the brush will have to tell this time.