For this week’s Workshop Wednesday, we look at Dahlia and Skarath. I did some experimental procedures with these models (specifically undercoating a specific colour to tie the models together), so for this week we’ll just go through what I did, and I’ll talk about what I feel about the methods.
We start off with a primer of Gesso mixed with pigment. This was an experiment done about a year ago, and because of the poor results I never got around to painting them. I finally bit the bullet though and actually finished the models about a week or so back.
I used the Astrid miniature from Reaper minis, cos I’m not that much a fan of Dahlia’s model, and well… punk rocker >> flute player?
For Skarath what I wanted to try out was a long gradient change from one colour to another. So I ended up blocking off the colours (with a pink ‘skin’ tone for the area under the scales).
Before blending one section into another with successful layers and highlights.
Dahlia herself was painted with normal methods, but I made sure that both her and Skarath kept the pink/purple/red colour scheme throughout. And so you get…
Final thoughts: DON’T mix paint with primer or gesso to try to make colour primer. It just ends in tears. Splotchy, rough textured tears. It does the work of bringing the colours together a bit more, but a glaze would have done the same amount of work for much easier, and be a lot smoother besides. Just go with a grey primer next time. =p
That long gradient blending on Skarath was very interesting, and a measured success. I think it adds definite interest to the model, but the gradient changes could have been a lot smoother than that. As it is, the colour changes from one portion to another is still quite detectable. Maybe in the future I need to do something like what Mike Mcvey did for his raven priest. But that’s for another day.
