Barbarian: Necklace, Bracer

Got back to the barbarian today. I might push to finish this guy up, we'll see. I did the details of his necklace today, and put a base coat on that armored sleeve. I'm going to have to go back and do the metal rings separately...that's going to be a lot of work. I'm also not sure I love the reddish brown with the yellower brown of his hair, but I'm going to press forward. Once there's shading on it, and the metal rings, it might be different.

Diorama: Base

I got in to the diorama's base today. I wanted to figure out how to put some grooves in the base to look like stone blocks, and how to put some chips and irregularities into the edges. For the grooves, I used a dead ball point pen. It made a line by compressing the fibers without cutting them, so it didn't leave behind messy bits. (Also learned that running a dead pen over wood really hard will apparently get it working again. Go figure.)

The breaks in the edge I did with a file, then used to sandpaper to soften the edges. Over all, I'm pretty happy with the physical texture. The paint still needs work. I want to put in some speckling and color variation, for starters. The paint lines also need some cleaning up, which I may or may not do since this is a practice piece.

Barbarian: Hair Highlights

Put the top level highlights on his hair. Awesome? No. Done anyway? Probably.

Barbarian: Hair

Got back to the barbarian's hair. I still need to do another round of highlights, but it's starting to get there.

Barbarian: Clothes

I worked some on a commission item today, so all I got to on the barbarian was base coating his...let's go with 'kilt', though I don't think I'm going to put a pattern on it. I've always seen this guy done in red, so I'm doing something else. Besides, I think the blue will go nice with the skin tone.

I should have worked on his hair. I'll get back to that next time.

Diorama: Swords

I've started trying to make swords out of plasticard to use in the diorama - I want to hang a couple of swords on the wall behind the throne.

So far, it's just experiments and practice. Straight swords are harder than curved, it turns out.

They are quite flat, but since they're supposed to hang on a wall I'm hoping I will be able to add enough depth with paint that it'll be OK. Paint on a couple of these will be the next step.

I've also got the final base piece for the diorama and have been doing a bit of gap filling with it. I plan to start putting paint on it soon.

I've also picked up a couple of commission pieces, so posts will be a bit more infrequent while I work on those as well as these other projects.

Barbarian: Skin, Hair

I got back to the barbarian today. I brought some red back into the shadows and put highlights on his skin. I wasn't happy with the highlights initially. They seemed a little too stark, a little too pale. I also wasn't sure I was thrilled with the skin tone for him overall. So, I went back and glazed over everything with Bronzed Skin. That knocked down the highlights a bit and gave everything a less pink tint.

After I glazed the skin, I was still trying to decide if I was happy with the skin or not. It looks more contrasty in person that in the pictures, but I still wasn't sure about the tone. I decided to fill in the face details and his hair to help me decide. This is when I noticed his face was cast a little funky, so I think I have some work to do there. He also has surprisingly tiny eyes for a 54mm figure.