Hellacious storm last night knocked out my cable/Internet. So I had some time to paint (and play guitar, trying to learn a couple new pieces at up most of the evening). Then of course I couldn’t upload the pics! Anyway, here we go. Apologies for the first, slightly out-of-focus pic.

Tweaked the hair a bit but still needs a bit more work. That side swoop never quite looks right and one of my glazes got out of hand on the front, needs some shadows put back in.

Then I tried my hand at some fancy-schmancy freehand. It’s no Jessica Rich, but we all start somewhere! I drew it out on paper and practiced a few times, then drew it on the mini in pencil because I read somewhere to try that…and the pencil is showing through in a couple spots. Bleh. Hopefully the varnish kills the shine of the graphite.

Some more work on the golds, I always forget how long it takes to do armor nmm!

The next step in my nmm process is to rough in the shades and highs and start playing around with where they sit. At this point there is probably one more level of shadow and several more highlights to rough in. This rough-in step is 5 colors (plus base coat which is pretty much gone now). Back and forth, push and pull. When it starts to look good, I’ll pop in the last shade and most of the highlights. Then I’ll take each color and mix a glaze from it and start to smooth the transitions. Finally, I’ll hit the final highlights.

Anyway, here’s a mid-process nmm gold rough-in. Dark to light. About an hour and a half, I paint slow!

Next I’ll bring back the mids some and work the darks again. Rinse, repeat as necessary.

Pretty simple session, just getting the golds base coated. Then I did my quick sketch to get a rough idea how I want the light to flow over the metals. Always subject to tweaking but it gets me considering each piece. I’ll move on to first shadows from here and further sculpt out how the shadows flow. I figured this would be a good stopping point so you guys could see how I sketch them in, though.