Captain Anatomically Correct, Part 1

As an attempt to explore the things I learnt from the class with Raffa, I put together the majority of the busts I have sitting on my desk at the moment.

I picked the barbarian dude because he is closest to the model that I painted with Raffa, so I could easily translate the techniques.

I started by undercoating black, zenithal priming and then using my airbrush to lay down some basecoats.  At this point I basically forgot everything Raffa said and didn't use a fully opaque basecoat, which I have mad ragrets of.  But further reinforced what I needed to do in the future, so that is good.

I grabbed my brush and started immediately adding some shades and highlights to the already slightly shaded surface, and with very little effort it started to look quite good.  I think more than anything it was the colours I chose which worked well.

I then went in and began more aggressively highlighting, and I was being very direct with the strokes and colours, making sure I really put some opacity into the colours.  Mixing in white, and a hint of yellow with my basecoat tone.

I think at that point I may have done an airbrush glaze to try and soften and bring it all back together, as I was getting some areas of the skin that were not working perfectly.


The next two photos are basically just more work on the skin, adding little textures, painting in some of the veins, more highlighting, adding some more colours in, red, purple, blue and trying to make it look more alive.  The anatomical incorrectness of this model was hysterically funny at this point, but because it had such nicely defined volumes I enjoyed painting it.

That is where I am up to with this model, and at this point I put him aside to spend some time on a secret project for Crystal Dragon at Cancon.  I've put a lot of hours into it already, and still have a long way to go and it is hopefully going to be the best model I've done to date!  I have begun preparing the article for this blog, which is a step by step on the construction and painting of the model.  I am really looking forward to sharing it with everyone. :)


Cheers
Trent

Mannaz, Finished

After finally getting home and spending some time relaxing, I found a little time to try finishing off my Mannaz. I spent a fair bit of time thinking about what I wanted to do with it, and the verdict I came to was the same as every paintjob I've done: learn from the experience, and don't try and correct everything.

I definitely wanted to improve the fur, it was the wrong colour, the actual technical painting was poor, and it detracted from the model.  I decided that I would leave it as a reminder and a lesson so that when I looked at Mannaz I would think about that technique and ways to improve it.

So I spent the time painting the little dangling rocks, adding a bit more colour into his hair, fixing up some of the straps, and so on, and just adding those final little touches.


Here is the finished model, with obligatory bad photos:

I think if not for the fur, this would probably be the best model I've painted to date.

Skulk, Finished

My inability to take a decent photo is getting quite frustrating.

Really happy with this guy.  I tried to change up what I had done with the original colour scheme, dropping the green colour and putting in a orange tone.  I definitely improved the metallic colours here, and am happy with the basing as well.  The skin colour is probably ever so slightly greener than I was aiming for, I wasn't looking for zombie skin, rather a very pallid and sallow looking colour.  It needs a little more pinkishness but I couldn't quite get it to a place where I was happy with it.



Painting this guy has been such a blessing and privilege, I am happy that I feel like I have done him justice.



More (bad) photos can be found here:

http://www.puttyandpaint.com/projects/11332



Cheers
Trent

Home From Europe!

Well, what an amazing two weeks I've had.


The first few days was spent in Augsburg, in Germany, doing my private tuition with Raffa from Massive Voodoo, as I've already posted.  Those two days were a really motivating and exciting experience for me to go through, I've had a lot of different concepts to try and work through and figure out what works best for me and for my own progress as a painter.

I then travelled to Leeds and spent a few days mucking around rolling dice playing Guild Ball, painting some more and generally being a massive pest, including getting on the microphone and hosting an informal mixer/ q&a.   I had a rocking good time, did not win the World Championships, but did win every painting award I entered in.  Having said that, the competition was a little light on, its fair to say that painting is not really a major focus of the playing community of Guild Ball, but hopefully moving forward that will change as Steamcon gets bigger and better in future years.

My Fishermen team that won a prize.

My loot from the weekend.

One experience which I will not soon forget was the seminars that I participated in.  Firstly, the "Design a Guild" seminar was amazing, a collective group of players brainstormed together and in groups to create the Ratcatchers Guild, and toss up heaps of ideas for ways they could be operated on the table.  Part of that seminar was choosing a concept for a character for Russ Charles, the Steamforged inhouse sculptor to create literally in front of everyones eyes.  He spent approximately six hours over the course of the Friday creating the character of Skulk, based off the concept we had given him.

What was more amazing was seeing that model arrive from Steamforged HQ, having been 3D printed on their very advanced and expensive 3D printing machine.  Probably due to my real passion for painting, and dedication to entering my models, I was somehow able to convince the SF crew to let me paint one of the two printed models, literally that day.  I sat down on Saturday evening and four hours later this was the result:

Whilst I have to say that I am pretty happy with the result given the timeframes, the model was missing in a few areas that I really wanted to try and improve upon.  Incredibly, I was able to take the second, unpainted Skulk home, giving Russ the one I painted.  I got to have a second crack at painting Skulk....

So here is Skulk MK2, where I have the opportunity to paint him at my desk, in my own environment with all my cool shit.  I am ready to try and make him look sensational!


I'll post again soon, where I show off the progress on Skulk, but before I sign off here is a quick picture of my first day back home:

I love Australia.

Cheers
Deno

Massive Voodoo Painting Class, Day 2

Day two dawned and unsurprisingly, I was feeling significantly more refreshed and relaxed than the previous day.  I had a full 7 hours sleep and my jetlag is pretty much taken care of now.  Experienced traveller tip: If you can just get that first day right, not sleeping until the the night, and then holding on for the next day just to get your body clock shifted, the jetlag will disappear. Having a little snooze just for a bit will fuck you completely.

I had another lovely walk to the studio today, the beautiful fresh air of Augsburg gets the blood pumping and invigorated for a big day of painting.  Arriving at the studio this morning I quickly took a few more snaps of the corridor into it.  I also brought a few gifts and found a few of them just hanging around...

Today we had a good canvas to work on, having done a lot of the preparatory work yesterday.  Today was all about focusing on the little details, the pieces that elevate a model, and again pushing those highlights and contrasts up and up!

Before we started though, Raffa had brought into the studio a few models for me to look at:

I said it on Twitter, and I will say it here again. Next level shit man.  Raffa drilled out the eyeballs on the Tiefling bust, painted in the rich colours then used an epoxy resin to create the dome. You can look at them from the side and they just look so real.  The Red Lion is incredible in real life, the detail is simply beautiful and he has so much interesting colours in his skin that isn't immediately apparent.  And the monkey is great!

Alright, onto painting.  The next step was easy. We created some nice smooth shading on the skin yesterday, with some good contrast, but as always more contrast is needed.  Here on this guy we focused primarily on the face, and the upper chest, adding in some more intense lights, and one great trick here was mixing in just a little touch of yellow to the white when mixing the highlights. It helped combat the chalkiness and lifeless look that you can get with white.  Again, occasionally airbrushing a filter over the top to soften the blends and just keep everything the same tone:

We did a few more touches of highlights, but we began working on some other areas.  One thing I wanted to try on this sculpt was some tattoos, and Raffa and I had been discussing other types of contrast over the whole weekend. One interesting one was the contrast between round and hard edged shapes.  Contrast is all about creating visual interest. I decided to get a bit fucking loose and go balls deep on some rectangular tattoos, and this was the result:

Raffa enjoyed it... but he wanted MOAR.  "Get some on his face mate, we aren't here to fuck spiders!" was his exact wording as he pushed me to go even more elaborate.  I got stuck in, and also did some of the hair work.  We didn't go too heavily into hair, but discussed more technique on different types of hair like the stippled close shaved head of Tink or the side shavings here on Mannaz.

The next step was the fur. I will admit that this was probably the most challenging part that I did, and I am definitely not happy with the first result. However we really discussed a lot of the minutae and technical aspects of the technique, and on second attempt I got a much better result.  Broadly speaking it is using a wet in wet blend to create contrast of the fur volume, and the highlighting the strands further. I am excited to try the technique again and see what I can achieve with more practice.

Another area for me I've struggled with is metallic areas. I think for me this is mostly a technique thing, but also an understanding of how metal works in a lot of ways, and this was a good area for discussion.  Raffa did a lot of demonstrating here, and I was also able to see the techniques he used on the gold sections he painted on Tink.  Oh yeah, and we did some leather too.

We then began the wind down of the coaching, discussing what sort of things Raffa felt I needed to work on more at home, areas to consider and just general banter.  We had a really great time over the two days, lots of joking around, singing terribly (mostly me singing terribly), eating delicious German food and sharing our mutual passion over miniatures and painting.  I also got to meet Bene from the MV Studio, or as we like to call him, Sir Castsalot.

I was a little nervous about taking this sort of class on, I feel like my own painting journey is very much at its beginning and when you see some of the incredible pieces that Raffa is not just painting but also sculpting, I was concerned that I would not really be able to get full value out of the teaching. But as is often the case, his teaching was tailored to my own level of expertise, and was able to help me reach the next step as opposed to really advanced techniques that I wasn't able to grasp.  I cannot recommend enough taking a class with these guys, the studio itself is so inspiring, the dynamic of the space and the projects and even just the city itself, it really is a wonderful place to paint.  I said to Raffa I wished I could just come and hang out and paint sometime, purely for inspiration!!  Details of their classes can be found here:  Private Coaching.

I'll leave this blog post with a picture of the two models we painted side by side...   Big Deno, OUT!