Mirri: Cloak, Metal

Finished the highlights on Mirri's cloak and put back some of the black base. Then I moved on to the metal bits, base coating the gold and steel. Got in a first round of highlight on the gold. All that's left is finishing those metal bits, and then her base. Hopefully she'll be wrapped up tomorrow or the next day. Not quite by the end of the month, but close.

Mirri: Leather, Cloak

I spent some time on Mirri today. I put the rest of the highlights, 2 more layers, on her leather. I need to go back and smooth out the breast plate some more, but other than that it's done. I also started highlights on her cloak using one of my favorite highlight colors for black, Dark Elf Skin. I'll do another layer or to of highlight and also put some of the black back in in a few spots. I think some of those first level highlights are too broad.

Mirri: Leather. Ebonwrath head.

I went back to Mirri's leathers and did a base coat, a shadow, and a first round of highlights. I'm quite happy with how she's coming together. She'll also be done pretty quickly. I'm going to aim for end of the month.

I did get some work in on my 4th head for the diorama. This is just a base coat. Black may end up being a poor choice as it's a pain to deal with and may not make for great color balance, but I'm going to go with it for now. He looks like he wants to be a black dragon.

Mirri: Clothes, Gloves, Cloak

Shaded and highlighted Mirri's clothes, though I may go back and highlight on her left thigh smaller. Then I did a base coat on her gloves and her cloak. I used RMS Faded Black, which is a nice off-black. I'm not sure if I'll go right to shading and highlighting that, or if I'll do the more interior leather bits first.

Mirri: Eyes, Hair, Clothes

I did Mirri's eyes and her hair, as well as starting her clothing. I might finally be learning on those 'partially covered' eyes - I didn't try to fill everything in. You wouldn't be able to see it anyway.

Mirri: Skin

I've decided to do a one-off quick piece next. I'm aiming for something better than a Bones figure but I'm not going to stress over it. So, here's 'Female Assassin' from Dark Sword. I'm going to call her Mirri.

Dark Sword minis tend to have a lot of very tiny, fine detail, so it will be something of a departure from the things I've been doing late. That being said, after switching from the large scale bust it's amazing just how much you don't have to blend carefully at 32mm.

Eyes and hair will be next. I think she's going to be a brunette.

4!

I think I've finished up Skarre. The horns aren't the greatest ever, but I'm very much ready to be done with her. Really I will set her aside for a few days, then come back this weekend, touch up a spot on her hair I just saw in the pictures, decide if there's anything else I want to do, and then plinth her. After that, she'll be really and truly done. But I'm close enough now that I'm going to count her and move on. I probably will post more pictures once she's on her plinth.

Skarre: Armor, Horns

So, finished off Skarre's gold armor, did the touch up and the jewel on her neck piece, and then started experimenting with her horns. I think that is what I will go with, though I'm going to bring the dark color down farther and smooth and lengthen the transition a whole lot. The idea is that I like the lighter color on her horns, but I don't want that light color pulling attention away from her face. I like the dark color, but I don't want it blending in with her hair. So, light toward the bottom of the horns near her face and hair, but darker away from her face.

Skarre: Armor

The pictures don't show it very well, but I have finished shading and highlighting Skarre's steel armor. I don't think it's great - my TMM clearly needs more practice - but it's time to finish this up.

Also put a base coat on the gold metal parts, though they still need another coat or two to fully cover the green undercoat.

After finishing the gold I'll do the touch up around those areas and highlight the belt, and then the last thing will be her horns. Still haven't figured out what to do with them yet.

Kallaguk Done!

Or his head, anyway. I do still need to seal him and glue the head to the plaque, but the painting is done. I like this guy; I think he has the most character of them all. Probably because of the tongue.

Tomorrow: Skarre. Really got to get her finished.

Kallaguk: Base and shading

This is the next of the heads for my diorama. It's Kallaguk, Troll King... or at least, what's left of him. This is a base coat and some shading. His chin isn't base coated because I'm going to blend in a lighter color, like a frog's throat. He's probably going to get yellow eyes, a purple tongue, and I haven't decided about the warts. Maybe brown, maybe also purple.

His plaque is already done, so I'm hoping to finish him off in the next day or two.

3!

Finished Turanil. Kinda rushed the end, mostly because the casting of those detail bits is bad enough that it wasn't worth trying to pretty them up. I learned what I wanted from the piece, which was how a couple of the new metallic paints I bought behave.

Tomorrow I'll probably work on a shield, or maybe Skarre. Time to get some of those things finished up.

Rauthuros & Skarre

Finished Rauthuros's head and put him on his plaque. I like him, pink warts and all.

I put together a stand for holding the heads as I finish them so that they don't get dinged up while waiting to get placed on the diorama. It's just some cardboard folded over, and then I put the pins that are in the heads through and use an earring back to hold them in place.

Also started re-shading Skarre's armor. I may put on some purple and I'm still going to need to fiddle with it to get smoother transitions, but I'm happier with it, I think.

Rauthuros Head

I worked on my next head for the diorama today. Here's Rauthuros's head. I need to do the eyes, horns, and some other growths he's got that I'm going to do in a different color...probably pink.

And his mounting plaque. The dark smear across the middle is the shadow of where he'll be placed when he's done. Yeah, there's some rub-off in there from when I checked the placement of the head. It'll get fixed and/or covered up. I am still considering putting a gold frame on the rim of that inner piece, but I haven't decided on that. I think I'd also have to put a matching on on the outer edge.

Turanil: Cloak, Shield

Moved on to Turanil's cloak and his shield. Got on a base coat and some shading. Turanil, the very grim Peacock Knight!

It won't take much more to finish him, but with the weekend coming it'll be back to other projects for a couple days. Probably a head and a shield, and Skarre. I'd really like to get her wrapped up.

Turanil: Finished Armor

Shaded and highlighted Turanil's armor. I used Blue Liner to shade the steel, and then tried out my new alcohol based silver metallic for the highlights. I got it because I had heard that it was super bright. I dunno about super bright, but then it was going on an already pretty bright metal. I do like how nicely it blended over the base coat, though. Also, since it's an alcohol based paint, you can't use water with it at all and have to use alcohol to clean your brush after. I suspect it's a brush killer of a paint. So, kind of a hassle to work with.

The gold is very sloppy. But, the golds I've had for a while so don't need to experiment with them, and I'm about ready to wrap this guy up and move on to something else, so I'm not going to sweat it.

Turanil: More Armor

Base coated the gold bits on Turanil. He probably would be better off with a cooler gold, but I'm not changing it now. Put that in the 'lessons learned' column and move on. Might also need one more coat of the base gold - it took three coats to cover the green undercoat as much as it does.

I also covered up the shading on Skarre's armor with the base metal and will try again with her from scratch.I really wasn't liking the way the shading was going on her armor. No picture of that because it looks pretty much like it did before.

Turanil: Armor. Agramon: Horns, Eyes, Teeth.

For starters, I finished off Agramon's head by shading and highlighting the teeth and cleaning up around them, then put highlighting on his horns, then did his eyes. I did try using gold metallic for the eyes and I'm undecided on how it worked. Sometimes it looks great, other times not so much but it might be just the standard eye-type problems, too. But the bottom line is they're hard to see in there (and would be unless I paint them something super bright, and maybe even then) so it's probably good enough.

Then since I had the metals out, I put a base coat on Turanil's armor. This was a trial of the new Vallejo Air metallic paints I just bought. This one is 'steel'. It is super bright with a very definite blue tinge to it. I was very happy with the new paint- very bright, very shiny, covered very nicely. My only complaint so far is that of the 6 colors I bought, three of them (Steel, Aluminum, Chrome) are sufficiently similar that I don't know if there's a reason to use one over the others. You might be able to get along with any one of those three just fine.

Dude has some super shiny armor.

Turanil: Hair, Armor. Argamon.

I did Turnail's hair (quick and dirty) and then put doing the solid base coat for his metal armor. He is kinda funny looking, but it does tickle me to have him in powder blue armor with such a dour face. Ha!

I didn't get more done on him because I worked more on Argamon's head:

I need to finish the teeth, horns, and eyes, but I like him so far. Since his eyes stick out, I'm going to try doing them kinda like fish eyes, which it turns out are round with kinda metallic/iridescent looking irises. Interesting to see how that comes out.

Turanil and Agramon

New projects! For starters, I just bought a few new metallic paints and I wanted to try them out. Enter Turanil, who's got a lot of armor. And a shield. And  sword. Lots of metal. I'll do his hair next time and then start on the metals.

Also began one of the heads for my diorama. This is Agramon...well, part of him.

Last night, in order to decide what colors it would be safe to use for the head I did some color studies of the diorama. I did this by getting a picture of the layout, adding a transparent layer in Paint.NET, and then adding colors over the top to get a sense for what they'd look like.

I started with gray stone on the bottom and a reddish wall behind the throne. The head plaques are brown, and one of the heads is green. I still kinda like the red wall, but I think it'd be a little too attention-grabbing. The focus should be elsewhere.

So then I went with a beige wall.

I'll probably go a bit darker than that and add in some texture and dark spots, but overall I think the neutral wall is better. So that's what I'll go with, and it means I can paint the heads whatever colors I feel like.