Friday evening we went to see a Danish comedian/folk singer, who did an excellent job of it; he's from the rural parts of Denmark and very down-to-earth in his' observations. And he is seventy years old and still trucking! He has a way of writing very funny lyrics, but singing them in a quite melancholy way, that can quite fool anyone not paying attention to the words. It was a blast!
That's enough of rambling; on to the painting!
I chose to go further with the Rackham wraith and I think this guy will take some time, since I'm trying out some different new techniques on him. First of all, I have to say:
Whoever invented black primer is an idiot!
Well, not really; many painters use this to great effect, especially for getting a quick tabletop standard and it does make it more forgivable if you find some hard-to-get-to places on the mini. But for me, the black primer is a serious inconvenience; the paint have to come on in a much thicker layer, which means that I have to paint eight or nine layers, instead of the usual two to four. But I only have two other minis in my collection that are black primed, so I think I'll live through.
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| Rackham Kelt Drune Wraith |
I have done some work on him already: Most places have gotten the basecoat and initial shading and the metal works have been highlighted.
The new thing I'm trying is to start with a rather light basecolour and then taking it from there. Everything, except for the metal, is based with Vallejo Model Colour and shaded with The Army Painter Quickshade Inks. The cloak is based in Grey Green, the skirt and boots in Khaki, the ropes are Buff and the skin is Medium Grey. If you look at these, you will see that they are very light colours, and quite desaturated, all of them. That was my point in choosing them; I wanted to see how I could drag them in different directions, using mostly shading.
The Khaki areas and the ropes started of with a liberal coat of TAP Soft Tone and the skirt got a few extra coats in the deeper recesses. The cloak got three coats of a mix: 2 parts Soft Tone and three parts Green Tone. The first coat was only put in the sharp recesses, the second coat was in both the sharp recesses and the wide, but deep recesses and the third coat was watered down a bit and then washed all over the cloak. So far, so good...
The skin is what I find the most interesting: This is clearly an undead! Hence I wanted him to look at the same time long dead, but still "living", meaning that eventhough he is dead, he is still ambulatory and I want it to be clear that he has been alive before, i.e. not a golem or some such thing. So I started with Medium Grey, which is a light grey with a small hint of brown in it. This gave him a dissicated look, sort of how I picture a mummy, and that was not what I was going for. So here come the vibrant washes!
I started by giving his' sores a coat of TAP Red Tone. Then the very deepest parts of his' skin got some Purple Tone. After that I mixed the to two inks in equal parts and watered that down with again an equal amount of water(1 part red, 1 part purple, 2 parts water). This was used all over the skin, but not splashed on: I was carefull not to cover the outermost parts, like fingers, the chin, knee caps; basically; I paint the shadows in, rather than letting gravity and surface tensions do the work. I will try putting in some brown inks next, to tone down the colours a bit, before putting on some highlights...
Well, that's gonna be it for this week; I hope to have something more next week!
