A step by step of the Father of Asgard by Scale 75. I'll let the pictures do the talking again. The wet in wet blending stages early on shaped the whole model's scheme and it was pretty much unplanned.
Sunday 11 June 2017
Strength and Honour, and Some Thoughts
Been a little while since a blog post, but I am not sweating the lack of them. I tend to spent more time painting than posting, which I figure is a good thing!
I have been struggling a bit lately with my perceptions of my work. I look at the work I have done recently and I am unhappy with the way it looks. I feel like I overuse white, and that I focus on brightness as my only source of value contrast. That results in a lack of saturation, where the overall colours can appear pastel, or lacking power.
Some examples of what I mean.
The difference in these works vs my own (obviously outside of the hours that get put into them), is how the colours have more power, because they use saturation to control the contrast. One of the best exponents of this is Marc Masclans, whose work very rarely goes up to a white highlight, even at the brightest points.
My other problem is that all my work seems to look the same. And that stems from the fact that I use the same colours, I have default colours that I like to use because they work well, or I like how I paint them. Skin colour is a key one, I tend to use the same colours and it always results in the same look.
I wanted to try and challenge myself out of my comfort zone, and it started with the Minotaur that I painted a few weeks ago. I wanted to push the colours and use different stuff, and one of the bigger challenges was NMM. I've never painted it, I've always lacked confidence in it. I decided to give it a crack and see if I could pull it off. I was happy with my first attempt.
Again, I fell into similar patterns on other colours and could not get a model that looked different to my other works.
I painted up the Father of Asgard, from Scale 75, and tried a completely different base of blues for the shading in the skin. I felt like I started it off well, but then things fell away again when I got to the later stages and I kept using the same colours and techniques. There was a big improvement on my NMM though, and that came from recognising where I went wrong on the Minotaur.
Bringing my to my latest piece, the Strength and Honour bust from Ares Mythologic.
I wanted to focus more on the saturation of the piece, and use pure chroma (or hue) to be my highlights on the areas that were not metallic. I failed, again, but I think I am heading in the right direction. I used grey mixed into the basecoat of my skin, then shaded with a bit more grey added, and used the pure colour to highlight. I then added white and colours into the mix and added that to the skin.
I did get a few things that I am happy with. Firstly, the gold NMM I think is really cool. The dappling effect on the armour looks mad, and that was actually a really easy process. I used a stiff bristled brush and stippled on colours over the red base tone, all the way up to an off white. I then glazed over a few different colours in the shadows and over the piece just to harmonise it all together.
Hair continues to be a problem that I just don't seem to get right. When it is hair that is smooth and well sculpted, I can usually get it looking ok, but rough hair is something I always seem to fail hard on. This is a fail also.
I know one area that I could easily change, and that I would get an immediate improvement: the time I spend on models. I know for a fact that I get bored, or get interested in painting something else, and when that happens it is very hard for me to keep at a model. I generally paint a piece in 10-15 hours. Seems like a long time, but in painting little toy soldiers to a display standard, it is lightning quick. And it is the biggest thing that is holding me back, I believe.
So where to? Obviously I am not letting this sense of frustration at my lack of reaching the level of work I want to prevent me from painting. Literally the only way you can improve at something is to keep making mistakes and learning from them. It is one of the things I think I have really learnt over the last ten years in my hobby life. You have to embrace getting flogged, or being shit, or making a bad decision, or fucking up. It is not easy. Nothing worth having ever is. So I will push on, keep painting, and keep trying to take that next step up into a model that I am happy with.
That becomes hard though, when I consider the time factor. I don't know if I can spend more time on a model that I already do. Maybe if it is something I am super motivated by, and everything is working beautifully. I think before I can start devoting more time to a single project, I need to be able to feel like my skills are worthy of spending that time. I am going to keep challenging myself to try new things, and learn more and experiment with how colours and things interact together and focus on those saturation elements that I feel are letting me down. Once I feel like I actually understand them, I can hopefully feel confident enough to know where I am going with a piece.
Thanks for reading!
Cheers
Trent
I have been struggling a bit lately with my perceptions of my work. I look at the work I have done recently and I am unhappy with the way it looks. I feel like I overuse white, and that I focus on brightness as my only source of value contrast. That results in a lack of saturation, where the overall colours can appear pastel, or lacking power.
Some examples of what I mean.
The difference in these works vs my own (obviously outside of the hours that get put into them), is how the colours have more power, because they use saturation to control the contrast. One of the best exponents of this is Marc Masclans, whose work very rarely goes up to a white highlight, even at the brightest points.
My other problem is that all my work seems to look the same. And that stems from the fact that I use the same colours, I have default colours that I like to use because they work well, or I like how I paint them. Skin colour is a key one, I tend to use the same colours and it always results in the same look.
I wanted to try and challenge myself out of my comfort zone, and it started with the Minotaur that I painted a few weeks ago. I wanted to push the colours and use different stuff, and one of the bigger challenges was NMM. I've never painted it, I've always lacked confidence in it. I decided to give it a crack and see if I could pull it off. I was happy with my first attempt.
Again, I fell into similar patterns on other colours and could not get a model that looked different to my other works.
I painted up the Father of Asgard, from Scale 75, and tried a completely different base of blues for the shading in the skin. I felt like I started it off well, but then things fell away again when I got to the later stages and I kept using the same colours and techniques. There was a big improvement on my NMM though, and that came from recognising where I went wrong on the Minotaur.
Bringing my to my latest piece, the Strength and Honour bust from Ares Mythologic.
I wanted to focus more on the saturation of the piece, and use pure chroma (or hue) to be my highlights on the areas that were not metallic. I failed, again, but I think I am heading in the right direction. I used grey mixed into the basecoat of my skin, then shaded with a bit more grey added, and used the pure colour to highlight. I then added white and colours into the mix and added that to the skin.
I did get a few things that I am happy with. Firstly, the gold NMM I think is really cool. The dappling effect on the armour looks mad, and that was actually a really easy process. I used a stiff bristled brush and stippled on colours over the red base tone, all the way up to an off white. I then glazed over a few different colours in the shadows and over the piece just to harmonise it all together.
Hair continues to be a problem that I just don't seem to get right. When it is hair that is smooth and well sculpted, I can usually get it looking ok, but rough hair is something I always seem to fail hard on. This is a fail also.
I know one area that I could easily change, and that I would get an immediate improvement: the time I spend on models. I know for a fact that I get bored, or get interested in painting something else, and when that happens it is very hard for me to keep at a model. I generally paint a piece in 10-15 hours. Seems like a long time, but in painting little toy soldiers to a display standard, it is lightning quick. And it is the biggest thing that is holding me back, I believe.
So where to? Obviously I am not letting this sense of frustration at my lack of reaching the level of work I want to prevent me from painting. Literally the only way you can improve at something is to keep making mistakes and learning from them. It is one of the things I think I have really learnt over the last ten years in my hobby life. You have to embrace getting flogged, or being shit, or making a bad decision, or fucking up. It is not easy. Nothing worth having ever is. So I will push on, keep painting, and keep trying to take that next step up into a model that I am happy with.
That becomes hard though, when I consider the time factor. I don't know if I can spend more time on a model that I already do. Maybe if it is something I am super motivated by, and everything is working beautifully. I think before I can start devoting more time to a single project, I need to be able to feel like my skills are worthy of spending that time. I am going to keep challenging myself to try new things, and learn more and experiment with how colours and things interact together and focus on those saturation elements that I feel are letting me down. Once I feel like I actually understand them, I can hopefully feel confident enough to know where I am going with a piece.
Thanks for reading!
Cheers
Trent
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