24NOV19 Continuing and Finishing the Fire Giant

So, continuing reight along here I have my lower body painting process documented with pictures.  My chain mail rendering leaves much to be desired at this point, and so far...  My dry brushing got away from me and got into the depressions and didn't stay on the surface as desired...  So, going to bac to learn that method in the future, at least with chain mail!

I was quite happy with my mix of orange and yellow for the bronze and the use of three layers of turqoise for the gems.  Sure, being a Fire Giant maybe I should have gone for reds and other warmer colors...  But I like the contrast better this way.  Blame too many hours of Skyrim?

Here is the euipment belt with the knife in detail.  Three shades of just about everything but the leather.  I lighted all the paint with Ivory instead of white, and so far have never been upset at the results.  Always tends to leave me the option to highlight (either the color I mixed with Ivory mixed with white instead, or in the case of the knife handle that was painted Ivory, just white on the Ivory) with white paint later for the really shiny materials later!

Pre-final assembly, Giant and his loot for the discerning delving party to (try) to aquire from him.

Assembled and looking pretty sharp there!  Pardon my poor photography here.  That is in the works...  Base is pretty basic, just a simple 50mm round I found on Thingiverse and 3D printed for now.  I'll try to find, or make, a suitable dungeon style base in the future!

Detail of his face.  Hair was a base of Raw Sienna with orange (fire) highlights to drive home the Fire Giant heritage along with the red eyes and soot black skin.

Fire Giant stands heand and shoulders over the others!  Looks better than the earliest miniature I painted (up front, a GW LotR, second row back would be Reaper, with a WizKids Deep Cuts Fire Elemental [posted earlier] on the left and a Reaper Bones Minotaur on the Right).

11NOV2019 Fire Giant

I took work off today and spent some time doing Veteran stuff (like going to the local Strategic Air Command Museum in Ashland NE) and listening to a fellow Iraq veteran share their experience (in this case, Nick Rucker creates country music informed by such experiences).

Earlier in the day however, as my kids got me up early, I got a chance to work on my Reaper Bones Fire Giant:

I purchased him at The Game Shoppe in Omaha a couple of weeks ago during my local game group's Necromunda campaign.  His purpose is to stand in for Narthak the antagonist of the very first delve in my copy of Descent 1st Edition by Fantasy Flight Games (which sadly is out of print, but has been superseded by a very solid 2nd Edition.  Why might I replace the FFG miniature with this one?  Well, my kids are playing, and a painted unique Giant certainly looks better than the red unpainted boss monster (yeah, I haven't painted my Descent miniatures, yet...). 

He was just sitting on my desk with some 3D printed bases and other sundry unfinished (or I should say, under-finished...) models.  I decided to paint him first.  As a base coat, since this is Bones, I just went strait to the acrylics (Delta Ceramcoat) with plain black.  For the areas I intended to have lighter colors, I painted Ivory (an offwhite light earthtone/bone color).  He stayed like that the first game.  Fast forward a few days, to today.  I finished developing my color palette for my non-metalic gold and steel.  I have been particularly inspired by the Glass armor (upper tier light armor) from Elder Scrolls: Skyrim (the computer game, one of the best CRPGs in the last decade that is still played avidly by the fan base to this very day almost 10 years later from release).  Yes, glass armor, look up tank armor where they laminated two sheets of steel over glass and got better armor than similar thickness steel...  It works (well, prior to doing the same with depleted uranium and other exotic hyper-dense materials).  

I set up my handy wet palette (a food container with airtight lid, paper towel dabbed in water, and parchment paper on top) with the above colors.  Typically, I start dark, and blend a highlight, and then move into the lighter color.

Today I spent about an hour painting the arms with the sword and almost got it done today.

I am not certain I like the look of the sword blade yet, however the palette looks outstanding on the arm bands and the sword hilt.  Well, until next time.

Orks, bugs, and my painting evolution

Years ago I never blended colors together, or if I did, it was rather limited.  I painted with whatever was in the pot, and attempted to use another similar color in the pot if I did attempt to mix paint.  I never forced perspective, and did not give two hoots about what I read in Shep Paine's great tome of wisdom about building dioramas.  Arrogance of youth you might say.

Fast forward to when I took a 2D Design course as my Humanities Elective at my local community college (after all, if I need the credit, might as well have some fun...).  We took the primary colors in acrylic, and mixed them to get our color range.  We did limited palletes where we merely painted in a single color or de-saturated palletes, and all the wonderful other color concepts (to include black and white).  It only took a few years before I started exploiting this knowledge for my game miniatures.  You've seen the results before (in previous posts).  

Well, here are some pictures needing shared here on Sudsy's Tactics of the results of these experiments.  My memory is a bit foggy as to the exact pallete, but it involves the Delta Ceramcoat paint I've raved about before.  Well, my photography got better as well...  For the most part.

This is my Ork Nob for either Warhammer 40,000 or Gorkamorka.  This was a more recent use of both a wet pallete and more advanced forms of blending and forced perspective (thanks Shep Paine, I finally figured out what you meant, even if I don't have the full stop sign yet...).  However, this was not the first project...

My hive tyrant was my first us of what I learned in that 2D design course.  In fact, I used the same paint from that course thinned down considerably (after all, it was Liquitex Basics tubes...).  I loved the result, and I know it is NOT a completed model (yet).  I hesitate to complete it lest I ruin it...

This Carnifex is how I started out.  I cringe to think about how I left 1:1 scale lighting to do the work on a 28mm figure.  Sure, it works alright for a large bug like this...  But only 'alright' to 'sorta'.  Guess I can say that 2D design course was worth more than the Humanities Credit I took it for in the first place!