Color Inspiration

This week I'm traveling again. When I travel, I like to pull inspiration from what I see. Light & dark contrast, color proportions, texture, and my favorite-- the challenge of mixing paint to match colors I capture in the pictures. It may just look like a bunch of pictures of junk, but here are the creative challenges I see lying within each image:

I walked outside after a long day, looked up, and stopped short when I saw this sunset after a stormy summer's day. I need to recreate this color scheme and with the challenge of creating a soft, warm lighted contrast that seems to glow in comparison to the rest of the miniature.

I've started traveling with a small collection of mobile paint supplies. One thing I miss, my paint water cup I use each time I paint. Sometimes it shows me a nice pattern for a future freehand motif. Surprise!

1. Clouds: I love the rich blue transition paired with the soft texture of the clouds. Maybe inspiration for a fur-lined cloak!

2 & 3. Drinks: Studies of glass jars with liquid in them. One day I want to be paint the way different light shows through glass jars.

4. Coffee: I love the rich browns in my delicious, half-full Cappuccino. I mix brown colors so often for leathers, it gets monotonous so this would be a fun color-matching challenge. 

5. Apples: A challenge to blend equally vibrant red, yellow, and green transitions between themselves.

6. Twitter Image: An inspiration for an overall color proportion scheme for a mini someday. I was surfing Twitter while waiting for my flight to arrive and I just love that bright blue-- reminds me of Reaper's "Surf Aqua" paint color I used on the Maralise mini. 

7. Magnolia Tree: I love the waxy leaves and about-to-bloom flower bud. I like the white contrast and bits of brown yellow from the older leaves. A great challenge in color proportion and choosing where to include a pop of clean, stark white somewhere on a mini to create visual interest.

8. School Building: I love this older Catholic girls' school building. Despite the sea foam green and aqua, its overall look is quite haunting. It would be a great challenge for painting faded, textured surfaces weathered by years of rain and hot Louisiana summers.

Infinity Hacker WIP

Happy Miniature Monday! Yesterday was rainy-- the type of weather that makes it impossible to tell the time. A perfect day for painting! This weekend I realized that I've been unwittingly putting off painting my Infinity miniatures due to their small size and delicate assembly. So yesterday I decided to start my first Infinity miniature-- a Djanbazan Hacker.

First, I picked out a precast base for her and went with one of my desert wasteland options: 

After the preliminary dance of cleaning, assembling & priming, I made some significant progress. I wanted to paint her in more Earth-based/camouflage colors and give her clothing a sandblasted look to them. So far so good!

My biggest challenge here is to avoid obsessively blending my colors. I want her pants to look like well-worn twill-- a sturdy fabric that has faded over time. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm getting closer. Right now, they look too clean so I'll probably mute the highlights with some subtle glazes. I'll see how the rest of the miniature turns out before I go back & fuss over the pants. Here's a WIP picture after I painted the front of the pant fabric:

Contest Entry

I did it! I finally entered my very first online contest. Long story short, I became involved in the Reaper Miniatures forum after I attended their convention. I check back often to keep up with the community. A month or two ago, I saw a post about one of the forum members holding a casual, space-themed miniature painting contest. I decided to enter so I dug around in my miniature hoard and found this:

I instantly knew she'd be a great experiment for non-human skin tones. Since she has a lot of exposed skin (I mean a LOT), I wanted to practice painting the female figure. At first, I had a few initial painting challenges with her, but after I achieved the right mix of paints, I enjoyed the seemingly-endless task of layering, blending, and then blending some more. 

However, once I finally finished painting her, I didn't immediately enter her in the contest. I had some doubts:

  1. What if my miniature isn't good enough?
  2. What if her base is too boring? Should I have tried to do more with it?
  3. What if her... lack of pants is seen as offensive?
  4. I don't have nice camera and it's hard to take decent pictures.

I had to get over my self-defeating questions. Of course it could be better. But I don't have until eternity to paint this mini or come up with an epic base I sculpt from scratch. In fact, I'm sure I could paint this same miniature better only after a few months-- and that's a good thing! Otherwise, I'm not learning or growing as a painter. This miniature is a nice snapshot of where I am now in terms of painting skill & execution. I accept that about myself and will use this small contest as a learning experience. 

Whatever the outcome, I'm better for entering the contest. It will build my confidence as a painter and help keep me involved in a helpful and talented community! I took new pictures of the mini after I cleaned up the base and painted over a few chips. Whether I'm recognized in the contest or not, it doesn't matter-- I still had a lot of fun painting this miniature and it's great to be inspired by the other entries!