The King: Skin highlights, face, hair basecoat

Highlighted the skin today, including the other hand. I think I'm done with the skin for now. I may come back and lighten the highlights a bit, or I might not. I'm waiting to see what it looks like when there's color on the rest of him. It can be hard to judge when there's still so much white.

So then I moved on to his face. I'm not entirely thrilled with the eyes, but I'm not sure I can make them better. Once again, moving on.

Base coated his hair. I started with a lighter brown, but it was too close to the flesh and shadow color and blended in to that too much, so I went to Walnut Brown, which can almost read as black. I like it...and it already makes the skin look better.

The King: Yes, still shading the skin

I worked on smoothing the shading today, and darkened his lower legs a bit. That'll be more obvious once the highlights go in. The shadow color is awfully dark...I may glaze it up a bit.

I also worked on the other part of him - his hand that's attached to the throne.

The King: Still Shading Skin

I decided to deal with using the wrong shadow color by re-base coating and using the proper middle shadow. Then I went on to the deeper shadow. I need to go back and put in more of the mid-shade and smooth things out.

I'm also not sure about his legs. They are super bumpy, and it looks...a little weird. The box art deals with it by putting almost all of his legs in some level of shadow, leaving just the tops of the thighs highlighted. That downplays all those shapes in the legs quite a bit. I'm thinking about doing something like that.

The King: Shading Skin

Started roughing in shadows on the king's skin. It's really rough; I was mostly focused on checking colors and getting an idea where the shadows should go. I was aiming for a similar palette as the barbarian. I should have actually looked up what I used on him rather than trying to do it from memory. This first layer of shadow is darker than what I used on the barbarian. I think I can make it work, but it would have been better if I'd checked my notes. :p

Diorama: The King

I've moved into the people for the diorama now, and spent most of the week cleaning up the king for painting. That was trimming down mold lines and uneven bits, filing down some of them, filling in bubbles with green stuff, and brushing over rough bits with clear sealer to try to smooth out the surface.

I also attached his arms, which was a bit of work as they had to be positioned just right so he'd sit in his throne with everything correctly lined up. This involved changing how the arm with the sword was positioned. It's meant to sit on the floor next to him, but the platform his throne is on is smaller than the one that came with the piece. Getting everything to sit right left a big gap between the arm and his shoulder, so I had to fill that in with putty.

The prep took a lot longer than I expected. But I finally got primer on him today, and started painting. I need to really pick up the pace or I won't be done in time. At least he doesn't have a lot of fussy bits.

While waiting for putty to dry, I also started on a cup I'll put on the base. I'll probably have it on the floor with some spilled wine. That was something else I experimented with this week - making something that looks passably like wine. I'm going with Realistic Water with magenta and purple ink in it.

Base: Weapons

I got back to the weapons I was thinking of putting at the top of the wall in the diorama. Here they are:

The club is done, the swords still need work.

So I tried placing them temporarily to decide which one gets hung on the wall:

I like the club, so that's probably what I'll go with. I'll likely have the bigger sword leaning against the wall.

On the heads...the big head at the top isn't working for me, particularly once the weapons go up. So I may end up not using it after all.

Diorama base

Panted some cracks on the back wall and put some shading on the vertical edges of the steps and the parts of the throne where Conan will be sitting. I may also darken the outer edges of the floor like I did with the wall, but I may wait until I've placed the other figure to do that.