16! (Larry done!)

Finished him up. I think there's probably some bits I could fiddle with some more, but at this point I think I'm out of time. I need to put some sealer on the pieces I'm going to take and start getting things packed up for the trip. OK...maybe a bit of lining around some of his medallions, if I remember tomorrow.

I toned down the yellow of the OSL on the cowl, though it still looks awfully yellow in these pictures. I did his base, which I kept to painting the broccoli base and putting some static grass and clumps on.

New camera

My husband declared that, when compared to the real thing, the pictures I've been taking do not do the figures justice, and therefore I should get a better camera. So, we bought one today. I am still experimenting with using it and I expect that to get better over time.

As for Larry, I think he's about done but the base. I'll get back to the base later, but for now, I finished the metal bits, did the globe, and then the OSL from the globe. OSL is not one of my strong suits.

So, here he is with the old camera:

New camera with the lens that came with it:

New camera with a macro lens:

I'm not seeing a huge benefit to the macro lens. The new camera seems to have a little more saturation and higher contrast overall. Both of them show the yellow from the globe as being a little more prevalent than I think it looks in person, though I may go back and look at that again.

As for his base, I didn't have a plan in mind when I started. I should have. I'm not going to take him off the integral base - it would have been difficult before I painted him, and now I wouldn't be able to without destroying the paint job. I thought about putting him in a lipped base of some kind and then build up around it, but he doesn't fit. :p So, I think I'll leave him as-is, paint the base, and then put some grass and/or rocks on it to dress it up a bit.

Fiddly bits

I had the day off today, so I tried to get in a few more hours than usual. Shaded and highlighted the brown bits, and worked on the metal. All I have left is some shading and highlighting on the silver, and then doing the globe.

Ooops...I missed on of his little gold pocket watch-looking things. (In front, tucked up against the edge of the cowl on the left side.) Have to go back and do that. Little bit of touch-up here and there, too.

Moving along.

I shaded the cowl and put the base brown on a few other bits.I'll need to reline a few spots. Next will be shading and highlighting the brown. I'm debating whether to use NMM or go with true metallics on the medallions and sword hilt.

More colors in.

I didn't get as much done as I'd hoped tonight, but I did get base colors in for a couple of the remaining chunks.

I see I've got a couple thin spots in the base coat to go back to. That green will be shaded with the same indigo as the rest, though probably a darker shade of it. Then I might use that same color as the glow of the orb he's got. We'll see. I was originally going to use yellow for that, but with the highlights on the orange robe going to yellow I'm not sure that's such a good idea. On the other hand, since that indigo is the shadow color for everything else, maybe using it as the OSL color isn't such a good idea, either. We'll see.

There will probably be more dark brown on him when he's done. The pouches, the scabbard for his dagger, his belt, maybe those armor(?) plates.

Probably not a competition piece.

So, I don't think Larry here is going to be good enough for competition; at least, I don't think he's going to be as good as the elf girl. I'm going to try to finish him anyway and take him for feedback. I'm honestly not sure if I'm screwing something up or if it's just that I'm using a color palette I'm not used to, with a level of contrast I'm not used to. So I'll at least get some opinions on the thing.

Anyway, today I darkened the shadows on the orange robe back down a bit and did the sleeves and trousers. I need to re-line a couple of spots by his hands.

Ug.

It looks like Larry is going to fight me every step of the way.

So, that's the shading and highlighting on his robe. I used a blue-ish purple in the shadows, made it too stark, then had to back it off with some glazes. I probably spent three hours on those shadows today. Then I used a yellow-orange for the highlights. The pictures are really not very good representations of the colors on this figure; in person it's smoother, and the shadows are a little deeper than they're coming across. I do see a couple spots that need some more work, though.

Sigh.

So, I sat down to get started today, and saw that his robes were not put together quite the way I thought they were from looking at just the front of the figure. I did a quick reconfiguration of my color scheme. Same colors, just laid out differently. This is done in Paint .NET the same as before, just less carefully.

Then I sat down to get started. As I was putting down the base coat, I found three pits in the back of the cloak that I needed to fill. Of course, I didn't find them all at the same time, so it took a couple rounds of filling and waiting. Sigh.

I'd hoped to get much farther today, but it just wasn't happening. Maybe I can make it up tomorrow.

I did clean up the highlights on his nose a bit, but nowhere else. It looks rough in the pictures, but not in person. I am wondering if I should knock some of those highlights on his skin down just a tad. Also, the orange is much more day-glo in the pictures than in person. It's still a very vivid orange, just not quite as glaring.

Picking Colors

So, I worked a bit on Larry. I upped a few of the highlights on his skin just a bit, gave him eyes, and did his eyebrows. Then I stopped, because I still hadn't picked a color scheme for this guy yet. Looks like I need to go back and smooth a few spots out on the skin, and fix the bright spot on his nose. Oh, there's some unfinished spots near the eyebrows; I think he's got gold rings there.

Once that was done, I wanted to work on color schemes. So, I opened the picture in Paint.NET, gave it a transparent layer, and drew in colors over top to get some ideas how things would go together. Now, because the colors were put on transparent, they look more pastel-y than I'd really use. But, it still gives some idea what it'd look like.

So, that's a beige robe with orange and olive wraps. The globe I'll try to make glow yellow. I'm going to give it some more thought, but so far I like the plan. Though, that chunk of beige robe between his legs, I might make orange instead of beige. The sculpt is a bit vague in that I think it could be considered part of the orange cloth or the robe. I think I want it to be dark because it's very much in shadow, and I think the orange base heavily shaded might work better than the beige base heavily shaded.

The next trick will be deciding what order to paint stuff in so that I'll have the least risk of slopping paint over finished areas.

Competition #2

So, getting the second figure done in time for ReaperCon will be a bit of a trick, but I'm going to try. So, here he is. This is 'Lamann, Sorceror' from Reaper. I will call him Larry.

I did his skin tonight. Next will be finishing the eyes and eyebrows (he has some serious eyebrows). I don't have a color scheme in mind for him yet, so I'll need to think about that, too.

15! (Competition Elf Done!)

Here she is:

I changed the leaves to green because, while the yellow wasn't too bright, it did seem like it was drawing attention up to her staff, which is not the first place I want viewers looking.

Next I'll start on what will be a second piece for competition, if I finish it in time. What about the diorama, you ask? Well, I kinda suck at dioramas. So, rather than try to finish it for competition and do an extra-poor job because I'm rushing, I decided I'll work on it some and take it with me to ReaperCon as a WIP to get help from people there.

Almost.

Per feedback, I lightened up the highlights on her top a bit. I also detailed the jewels, and did the feathers. The yellow feathers look awfully bright in the picture, but more balanced in person. Tomorrow I'll give her a final once over before doing her base, but I think she's pretty much done.

Back to it.

I'm on to the fine detail work on the elf. Today, that was freehand on her clothing, the highlights on the staff, arm wraps, and sandals, and the gold jewelry. I also put the base color on her gems.

Progress is slow

Yesterday I felt awful, so I didn't paint. Today I'm doing much better. I got the highlights on the elf's dress, and base coated her staff, sandals, and the (I'm going with) leather wrapped around her forearms. I thought a bit about freehand on the hem of her dress, debating if I really wanted to do it or not, and if so, what the pattern would be. I also spent some time touching up her skin; most of that isn't really visible in the pictures.