July Speed Paint Challenge

This Speed Paint Challenge was more like "Panic Painting Challenge". I did get a head start on him last week, but after getting sucked into playing co-op Minecraft until midnight last night, I woke up at 6am this morning in order to complete him on time. (I probably need more discipline in my life). In any case, I finished in time and met my own expectations. While the Speed Painting Challenge time limit is 4 hours and the paints are limited to 7 colors + black and white, I wanted to challenge myself with a more ambitious timeline. I successfully clocked in at just under 3 hours and only used 6 colors + B&W. Huzzah! I chose the Reaper paints below for on "Scroll Guy" (aka "Darkrasp" from Reaper's Bones line):

  • Blue Liner (instead of Black): Robe, eyes
  • Linen White (instead of White): Scroll, bone scythe blade, eyes, jar highlight, chains
  • GREL Flesh: Skin highlights, jar
  • Tanned Shadow: Skin base, beard
  • Shadowed Stone: Scythe weapon handle, beard, jar, chains
  • Clouded Sea: Robe highlights, jar, eyes
  • Aged Bone: Scythe weapon handle, beard highlights
  • White Sand: Scroll 

In hindsight, I probably could have gone without White Sand on the scroll and mixed in a drop of aged bone for the shadows. However, I wanted it to stand out and the yellowed paper effect was my goal. I'm also very pleased that I was able to focus on the weapon rather than the cloak. I love painting fabric and I often fall into the trap of spending all my time on leather and fabric rather than weapons (see a previous Speed Paint Challenge). If I chose to spend more time on him, I'd focus on more interest and smooth blending in his robe and create a glowing rune effect on the scroll, but as it is with Speed Paint Challenges, you have to choose a focus that's important to you and just go with it! Ready for some work-in-progress photos? Oh yeah. 

WIP Photos after 1 hour:

At the 2 hour mark:

The last hour I spent on details: highlights on his weapon and chains, smooth blending on the mystery jar, his beard, and (crazy as I am) his eyes. I just have to paint the eyes! Even though his eyes are in shadow under normal lighting, I wanted to include these close-up pictures as well:

Without further ado, here's "Scroll Guy"! I can't wait to see what everyone else came up with too!

Slowly but Surely - WIP July 9

Wednesday was a long day. My boss is going on some well-deserved mini vacation and I'm attempting to keep things moving in her absence. While I consider myself a fairly smart cookie, evidently the world decided to speak a different language overnight and forgot to inform me of this "small change". Today at work I was feeling quite capable, right up until I was met with a barrage of e-mails asking for favors, files, and projects I knew nothing about. Only then did I realize that over half of our team is on vacation and/or out-of-the-office. Not wanting to start my first day flying solo hitting "Reply All" and saying the equivalent of, "I've read your e-mail three times and I still don't have a clue what the **** you're talking about" (but I daresay I thought it), I remembered that scene in Zoolander and had a good laugh. After that I jumped in and did my best to figure it all out. They say immersion is the fastest way to learn, right? Bring it on!

Fast-forward to the painting. I watched the latest episode of Tabletop while we ate dinner and I prepped my table for painting. The deck-building game "Legendary" was featured and the guest line-up this week was great-- Allie Brosh from "Hyperbole and a Half" blogging fame, Brea Grant from Heroes, and Mark Fischbach, whose voice is so nice I just want him to narrate my life. Or just talk about anything. Probably about Marias (you'll have to watch the episode-- I posted at the bottom). 

Fast-forward to painting. I'm making painfully slow progress on my very first Kingdom Death miniature. I've been able to sneak about an hour's worth of painting in every few days and I've been blocking out dark sections for painting NMM armor, prepping the head and cape before I can attach it to her body, and starting on her sword. Since I'm practicing high contrast and a non-conventional skin tone with this model, I'll need to make sure I spend a good amount of time painting her armor and sword. I've started blocking out sections of the sword with some rough blending. This miniature will be stylized and I'm not too concerned about making her look too realistic. However, I will need to do some more research on swords to see exactly how I want to paint it. I'm not sure I want to place the highest highlights in the center of the blade-- that seems too obvious and boring. Maybe I'll offset it enough where it's the brightest somewhere in the top 1/3rd of the sword height to add interest. In any case, the head and cape are primed and drying and I'll pick back up where I left off this weekend. I'm hoping to get much more done on Sunday and finally start my 75mm project :) Stay tuned!

 
 

I also took the time to find "Scroll Guy" (Reaper Bones "Darkrasp") after digging around in several moving boxes. I was able to scrub him with dish soap and dry him off for a future #SpeedPaintChallenge. Hey, remember those? Yeah we should do that again. Who's in? 

Greaves Lightning!

Go, Greaves Lightnin'
You're burnin' up the quarter mile
Greaves Lightnin', go Greaves Lightnin'...

I had John Travolta and "Greased Lightning" stuck in my head as I painted Bailey's greaves yesterday. I've started saying "greaves" now since I had to Google "metal shin guards" and realized they have a name-- I needed to brush up on my knowledge of armor! Here's a wonderful reference I found that may help you too:

I haven't painted on Bailey since June 8 and I've been in a serious creative funk. Now that I finally have my desk back and the construction repairs should be completed today, I powered-through my apathy. I downloaded a new audio book, prepped my brand new palette and refused to leave my chair until her greaves were painted. Here's where I left off:

I researched a few metal greaves online and found a few not-too-shiny green-gold references I could use. I also tried to imagine where the light would fall within the concept of zenithal lighting. While this diffused, overhead lighting angle doesn't work for everything (especially realistic lighting techniques like other-source-lighting and hyper-realistic NMM), I'm practicing painting NMM one step at a time starting with the basics. Here are some of the references I found online that helped me imagine how light would reflect off different metals-- so far, Bailey's metal matches Antique Brass the best!

Putting all of this information together, and adding an extra touch of high-contrast in the corners as a stylistic choice, she turned out pretty well considering my current skill level. I painted up her boots and bodice leathers. Now I can finally attach her arm and start painting her gloves and weapons-- last but not least will be her cloak!

...Greaves Lightning! Go! Go! Go! Go-go-go-go-go...