I actually started working on this yesterday, but got interrupted just a little bit in. I've shaded and highlighted the dryad's body, and put a base coat and a shadow on the wooden armor parts. I think I need to do the hair and helmet before I can put the back piece on.
I worked on smoothing that first round of highlights on her hair tonight. Would have been nice to get a second round in, but she's got a lot of hair. Also, you can spend forever futzing with hair...trying to figure where the highlights should go, how wide they should be, and so on. I'm going to be second and third guessing her hair until I stop working on her. But, her hair looks darker again, so I'm happy with that.
Finished the base coat on Adriana's shirt. It took an additional 3-4 coats. Bleh. Then I went back to her hair. I roughed in a first round of highlights. My goal there was to get a general idea as to placement, and also to determine if I'm going to like warm highlights, or if I should switch to a cool color for the hair highlights.
After I'd roughed in the highlights and looked at the results, I came to two conclusions. One, I like the warm highlights so far and will be continuing that way. Two, the addition of the highlights made her hair color start to read lighter than I want. Well, that's probably going to be OK, because those highlights are also wider and possibly more widespread than they should be. I expect that when I come back to blend them in, they will get smaller, and her hair will look darker again.
However, in the meantime, I also went back in with the original darker brown and put that in some of the shadow areas. I made a thin ring of it around where her hair meets her skin, the undersides of some of the waves and curls, along the bottom of the back where her hair tucks back in toward her neck, and so on. I think that made a noticeable, if subtle, difference.
I also need to start considering what colors I want to use for her jacket. I think I want to stay with a cool color, and I think I want to stay away from brown...which is too bad, because that looks very much like a leather jacket to me. Maybe gray?
I finished (at least for now) the detailing on Adriana's face today. That's finishing off the eyes and eyebrows, adding a red glaze on her cheeks, and a little bit of a purple glaze on her chin. I'm not currently planning on doing more with her face, but I may come back and futz with it a bit once I've got the other parts farther along.
After that, I had a little more time but not enough to get into her hair. Instead, I started the base coat on her shirt. I'm happy with the cool green and its contrast against the warm browns in her skin and hair, but...oh, cool green, why must you vex me so? It's a relatively transparent paint which will take a few more coats to get solid coverage. Sigh. I thought about undercoating it with something, but I was having trouble finding a paint that I wouldn't have to worry about shifting the color in a direction I didn't want. So, unlike the GW tree guy I'm working on, on her I'm just going to suck it up and do a lot of coats of that green.
I am kinda wishing that she wasn't looking down. I wonder if I tilted her forward when I put her on the plinth.
I continued working on Adriana today. I did highlights on her face and started on details, though there's still a fair bit of work to do there.
I'm pretty happy with how her face is coming along. There are definitely flaws - I think the shadow on her left cheek is too heavy and dark, for one - but by and large I like the way she's looking so far. Faces really start to come alive when you get to the point where you're adding details like the lips and eyes. I barely started on that today, but coloring the lips and adding just the irises for the eyes has made a big difference.
I need to finish the eyes and eyebrows. I'm probably going to try giving her a bit of eye shadow and liner. I don't usually do that, but I think she'd wear it. I've already given her nail polish. Once I've got those details in place, I'm probably going to do a couple glazes on different parts of her face to add some depth and complexity.
I put some more Arena Rex stuff together today, which took some of my time. I did get back to Adriana and shaded her face and hand. It feels like not enough shadow area, but I think it's actually a reasonable amount. I did lose my first shadow in a couple places and may go back to put some of that back in. I might also see if I can narrow the shadows on either side of her nose just a bit, it seems like too much.
Next will be highlights, and then detailing.
I spent most of my time this afternoon putting together another Arena Rex guy, but I was able to get the darker base color on to the dryad here before I wrapped it up. It looked pretty solid in live, but in the pictures it's still pretty blotchy. I may need to go over it again. Or maybe not - most of it is going to be covered.
I did what I planned to do with Adriana's hair - I went over it with a slightly lighter, warmer brown. I think it had the effect I wanted, and I'm happier with it now. I also went back over the base tone of her skin, making it a bit darker and redder, which I think will better match the reference image that I'm using.
Next will be shading and highlights on her face.
I have another project I'm starting. This is a figure from GW that I bought recently. It's been a looong time since I worked with a GW figure...I mean, the last ones I worked on were actually metal, and only slightly over-priced as opposed to the fairly crazy pricing they have these days.
Anyway, this guy started as many, many separate pieces. I've put together as many as I could and still have him paintable. There are five or six pieces that I'll be adding as I go. I will say, I really enjoyed putting all the pieces together, and GW did some wonderful engineering to get them all to fit snugly. It would be really difficult to put it together incorrectly, as all the pieces are shaped to fit together in just the right orientation.
Today's work was getting the main body attached to the base, checking my intended color palette, and starting a base coat. Putting him on the base was a little interesting. His other leg, which is not yet attached, will have its foot up on that skull. So I had to try to get him placed so that the other pieces would fit together correctly. Time will tell if I was successful. Yes, I could have not put the skull on the base until I had the pieces attached, but I wanted it to be set in the ground cover, not on top of it.
Anyway, once I had him attached in (hopefully) the correct spot, I started my base coat. I actually laid out the color palette I plan to use before starting:
The box art has him all teal and green...he has this leaf-looking skirt/armor thing which they do all green, but I'm going to do in autumn colors. I'm still going to do the main body in teal, and the brown is for some bark-like armor he's got.
I don't usually lay out my colors like this, but sometimes it helps to look at everything together to make sure it'll work the way you want. It can also tell you useful things about the specific paints you plan to use. For instance, I was going to use the teal that's second from the left as my base coat for the guy's skin. However, I learned it's very transparent, and would take many coats for that to cover. So I'm starting with the next lightest color, which covers better, and then will go over it with the darker teal.
I finished, pending review, the commission piece I've been working on. Time to go back to something I started a while back and didn't get very far with. Here's Adriana again. I got to her at the end of my day, so I didn't have a lot of time. Rather than start shading the skin, I just went to base coating her hair. I wanted a warm dark brown. The brown I went with is dark, but I don't think it's got the warmth I was looking for. Rather than finish my base coat in this color, I'm going to switch to a somewhat lighter but warmer brown. I'm hopeful that having this darker undercoat will help the brown I'm switching to come across darker.
I got in a fair bit of work on Vargr today. He's mostly done, I just have to finish off the base and any other last minute details I decide to touch up. Maybe the hair, I'm definitely not loving some of the highlights.
