Vargr: Shading Skin

I got back to Vargr today, and put in the first round of shadows on his skin.

11!

Here's Kay, with her base finished.

I started on my next couple of projects today as well. One is a commission piece, which I won't show here until after it's been published by the manufacturer. But I also started this guy. This is Vargr, another Arena Rex gladiator.

Kay: Everything else

Finished up Kay's armor, feathers, and the details on her bow, and then went on to the base. I'm waiting for the glue on the base and some water effects that I put on there to dry, so then tomorrow I'll paint up the vegetation on the base, and she'll be done!

Kay: Bow, Metals

Finished off the bow except for the gem details, and put down a base coat on the metal bits. 

Kay: Leather, Bow

Continued on with Kay. I highlighted her gloves, boots, straps, and quiver, and then went on to the bow. Oh, also did some more highlights on her pants. Next will be finishing off the bow, then doing the metal bits.

Kay: Cloak, Boots, Gloves

Got some work in on Kay's cloak, adding in highlights. I promptly found the highlights against the dark base looking too stark, so I reduced the shadows some. Still not really happy with it, I might futz some more later. In the meantime, I base coated the gloves, boots, and such.

Kay: Cloak

I adjusted the color of Kay's cloak to a cooler, darker red. Then I added shadows. Don't worry, it'll go redder when I put the highlights in. 

Deck: Done! Kay: Face, Tunic.

I finished up the platform today. Here's what it looks like all painted:

Here's how it looked before paint. I'm showing both the top and the bottom, so you can see how it's built.

Here it is next to the foam one I made a couple weeks ago. The new one looks better, but it was definitely more work to build, too. I might make another foam one and see about doing a better job on carving the planks. 

To make sure I got the corners right, I borrowed an idea from my woodworker husband and made a jig. A jig is just a tool to help perform a repeated task consistently. In this case, it was a frame I could use to hold the pieces while I was gluing them to make sure they were at the right angle.

After I finished all that, I got some work in on Kay. I finished her face, did her tunic, and then started base coating a couple areas to do a color check. I think I have a couple adjustments to make, but it's close to what I want.

Terrain, v2. Kay: Face

As planned, I started working on an alternate build of a wooden platform. This is much slower, but will probably look better when it's done. I've been gluing pieces together for most of the week, but then at the end of the evening the piece would have glue everywhere. I didn't want to get glue on my photo setup, so I skipped pictures. Today I finally remembered to take pictures before gluing.

Tonight I finished laying the planking. Next will be to trim off the overhanging ends.

It's far from perfect - It doesn't quite sit flat, and it's not quite symmetrical, even though I used a jig I made to get those corner angles right. Still, for me, it's not too bad.

I also got a little work in on Kay. Her face has been base coated and shaded, no highlights yet.

Back!

I've mostly been working on a commission for the last couple weeks. It's almost done now, so I should be back to my own projects in a day or two.

I've spent a little time working on other things...well, this one other thing. I wanted to make a raised platform for the gladiator game I'm playing. Thought of a couple different ways to do this, and started with the one I had all the stuff for, which was just to make it out of a block of foam:

They are adequate, but could be better. I forgot to put board lines on the sides. I also should have put some end-of-board breaks, but forgot. Still, for a first attempt, it's not awful. I may try again to see if I can do better. I also have a second method I want to try, which is basically just to build it out of coffee stir sticks.

Once I finish off my commission, this is my next small scale piece. It's Kay, my character for the Reaper Errant D&D game I've started participating in. It's on Reaper Miniature's YouTube channel if you are curious.

I've cleaned her up, glued her to a base, and put some texture paste on to blend in with her integral base.