Luz, New York, Part 2

I put the question out to Twitter what colour hair I should give her.  I've done a lot of brown and red hair recently, and I've also never really nailed a blonde or white hair, so I would probably default to something safe and I wanted a bit of a challenge.

In the end I ignored Twitter because I had an idea which I thought was cool, black hair with purple ends.  Not really fitting in with the palette at all to be honest, but I felt like it would have some really nice impact and fitted in with the highly saturated look.

The more I painted her, the more I wanted her to feel like a Necromunda Escher ganger, in a very Resident Evil wasteland type place.  Possibly could have made better choices had I figured that out before I started painting, but nevertheless, here we are!

So with that vision, I began adding some colours and textures to the base using pigments, and blacked in Luz's hair to get things happening there.  Building up the browns was the next part, and I wanted the two leather components to have different appearances.  The boot legs I wanted to be a bit more rough and worn, whereas the upper cloak I wanted to have like a striated texture.  Still similar palette although I mixed a little purple into the upper cloaks shadows.

One thing I've not really done well is tie bases into the model, and in fact I've been struggling with my bases taking over the model.  This one I really wanted the base to feel a part of the model. Unfortunately with the bright orange pigments, it was really distracting and didn't feel at all a part of the model.  I decided I needed to start tieing the two together.

That pattern is the same pattern that is on the tile on the floor.  I also cracked on with the purple tips.  To try and keep it all together I added a bit of purple shading into the red, and suddenly it started to come together.

Added some grass, and started decreasing the value of the base.  I sprayed a few layers of varnish mixed in with inks to tone it down.

I painted the little ropes, and little ermine trimming things she has hanging from them, and added a spot of red to the cloak freehand.  I also started working on a theory that I saw from Kujo Painting, called the rule of three.  Anywhere you paint a colour on a model, to try and keep it harmonious it should be used three times, in kind of a rough triangle shape.  I've tried to use that concept, with the browns, the blues and the reds.  Unfortunately I've broken the rule with the purple, but I do feel like it has helped create a really nice, harmonious figure that makes sense.

There is the base value decreased a lot.  Luz now stands out a lot more beside the base, thanks to the Purple, Red and saturation of the skin overall.

Here you can see in a bit more detail the skin, the subtle tones I've added in there, the brown, and how it is all shaping up.  At this point I wanted to reall start pushing the contrasts a little bit more, and then work on the metallics.

At this point all the fine details were done with the metallics and I decided to add her to the base.  I have a habit of gluing models down too soon, but this time I really felt like I waited until the right time.  From here if I want to add extra colours and glaze things in, or push a highlight here or there I can do it without too much difficulty but it really lets me see how the whole piece looks together.

I added a bit more grassy moss stuff, painted all the various bits and pieces.  I am putting her down for a bit now, and I will come back and make sure I am happy with everything before finishing her off and taking proper photos!