The Barbarian King - Finished and Reflections

I painted the base last night, did the final touchups and put the Barbarian King all together.  I took the finished photos, and uploaded to Putty and Paint!  Here is the link:

http://www.puttyandpaint.com/projects/13479

And one of the photos of him all finished up:

I have a number of reflections about this piece.  Firstly, I think this is probably my most cohesive and colour coordinated piece.  I think all of the choices I made reflect nicely the theme I was going for, the scheme has no primary colours and feels a lot more harmonious because of the shading and highlighting colours I chose.

Contrast is something I am always banging on about, and I think it is starting to come together for me.  This model has contrast higher up towards the focal point, whereas the lower areas have lower values. I have a good separation in most areas where I have a low value colour beside a high value colour, and overall the intensity of each section from dark the light is pretty solid.  I perhaps needed to consider it a little more with the base, and the cloak colour was maybe too pale compared to the skin.

I wanted to experiment with colour in the skin, and across the model, and I think it was a successful experiment on the whole.  I think looking back, I didn't push it far enough.  I wanted to go really wild with colours, have lots of incredible tones in various areas, but when I glazed and smooth I lost a lot of that vibrancy.  I think next model I will really concentrate on pushing it further and further.  The process I started with when I was painting his skin was a wet in wet, and it was extremely, extremely fun and made the basic volumes easy to get into position.  I will try that a lot more I think.

A weakness of mine is still metallics, I cannot seem to get them right.  Perhaps I will try some NMM, because maybe it is the actual properties of the metallics paints that I am struggling with, as opposed to the placement of the colours.

I spent a bit of time on the base, probably three or four hours, and I am really happy with it.  I used a lot of glazes, airbrushing some colours on and pigments, constantly going back and forth. I think I am finally starting to get the handle on basing in general, which is good because it was one of my goals for this year to improve my basing.



My biggest issue is that I do not think I have photographed the model all that well.  It was a real struggle to get the face in focus and have the colours and transitions look as they do in real life.  These are the closest ones I took, but unfortunately I think they do not quite do the model justice.


I think this sits in one of the top three or four models I have painted.  I am really pleased with it, one of those rare few where I am proud of the paintjob and think that it is reflective of my skill level currently.





Onwards and upwards!

Trent