Marcus: Leather

Highlighting on the leather. I probably should go brighter with the highlights.

I found his shield today while I was looking for his base. The shield is supposed to be strapped to his back. I'm not sure if I'm going to do it or skip it. In a lot of cases, there's a spot meant to receive the piece that will not look right if it's not there. Here, his back looks fine without the shield.

Marcus: Net, Leather

Today I finished Marcus's net and started on the leather bits - his boots, the belts, and so on.

I added highlights to the net and painted the little weights along the edge of it gray. Then I went on to base coat the leather in dark brown. I debated about brown vs. black; I was concerned that he's already got a lot of brown with that skin tone. But using a really dark brown seems to have worked.

18!

As I hoped, I finished off Rasia today.

Her base has some odd texture I wasn't sure what to do with. I could have tried covering it with flock or static grass, but that wasn't really the base I wanted for her, either. I ended up just painting it dark and figuring it could be ignored as not really part of the display.

I also got back to work on Marcus.

That's the fringe on his loincloth and a start on the padded bits on his arms, the net, and the cuff on his armored shin. The padding is mostly done, though it won't look right until the leather straps also get painted. The net still needs a fair bit of work. I'm not real thrilled with it so far. However, if you note, I've put blue in the shadows of the padding and the net, just like on his skin and the loincloth. It's actually the same blue, which I also used as the base color on the fringe. It will help give him a cohesive look.

But there's really not much more to him - I'll do the leather parts next, which is most of the boots, his belt, the strap that holds on the shoulder plate, and the straps on the padding on his arms. Then it'll be the armor plates and the spear.

Rasia: Almost done!

I've done everything except her swords and the base. That is, shading and highlighting on the purple scarf thingy, and doing all of the gold bits. The swords have a base coat but need their shading and highlighting.

Rasia: Green Highlights

I finished off Rasia's pants and head band with a couple more rounds of highlights:

This is two additional layers of highlight, the first in Jade Green, and the second with a mix of Jade Green, Linen White, and Lemon Yellow.

I also put a purple base coat on the strappy things attached to her bra.

I'm thinking I'll do her jewelry, bra, and whatnot in gold - she'll have Mardi Gras colors! But also, with gold on those pieces and then a light steel for her swords, she should have some good contrast as far as light and dark areas on the figure. Her skin and the swords will be light colors, the hair and gold will be more in the middle, and the green and purple areas are relatively dark.

Rasia: Clothes

I put some shading and a first round of highlights on Rasia's green pants and headband today.

I shaded with purple, of course! It definitely needs a round or two or lighter highlights.

Rasia: Hair, Clothes. Marcus: Loincloth

I finished up Rasia's hair, and started the base coat on her pants and head band.

I don't usually do much shading of hair. I just base coat it in the darkest color that I want and then highlight up, maybe putting in a little bit of darker shadow in any really deeply shadowed areas. However, for her, since she has such a stylized look anyway I decided to do a little more with her hair. I've added more shadow than usual, and I've done it in purple to add some hue contrast as well.

Let's talk a bit about her eyes. The way she's posed, she's definitely looking to the side, not straight ahead. So, I put her irises in the corners of her eyes so she'd clearly be looking the way her face is pointing. Here's a close up.

I also got some work in on Marucs, shading and highlighting the red cloth.

I shaded it with he same blue I used in the shadows on his skin.

Sadly, somewhere along the line Marcus lost one of the tynes on his trident:

I have a spare, so I could try to replace the whole head of the trident. That seems fraught with danger, though, so I think it's more likely that I'm going to leave it as-is and paint it as battle damage.