Since I blew the deadline for the diorama I mocked up a test base, the woodland scenic ‘realistic water’ in the melted spots doesn’t show very well. Entered in the Theme Entry category instead.
Hope you enjoy him, took me over five weeks! By far the most time I’ve ever sunk into a mini, I lost track of the hours a while ago.
A couple more highlights put in, some more attempts at mid-tone smoothing. Still a LOT of mid-tone corrections need to go in. I made a major mistake when I did my initial rough-in and left far too much deep shadow. I should have put in overall shadow gradients, so parts in stronger light had lighter shadows. Instead, everything goes to dark shadow.
Really feeling the fatigue with this one tonight. I was hoping to make the final push to finish armor tonight, but I’m starting to make mistakes because it’s difficult to focus on finishing when I should really step back and re-do the armor from the beginning.
Round two with the armor, roughing in the first highlight shade and generally playing around the mid spectrum a bit. So many little spots to paint, I thought this would be the easy part! There is no easy part.
Starting to rough in the nmm. Got to a slow start for a couple reasons… The base coat I used (I didn’t make an update here for that) was based on the Foerster recipe and was too red for where I was heading…and it took me until I started roughing in highlights to notice (as it looked nice on its own and I probably could’ve gotten a great look with Anne’s recipe). So I tried a dark thick wash but ended up needing to run over the whole thing again (and it’s still spotty, so many crevices). Also had a false start with the rough-in highlight.
Speaking of crevices, that was the other challenge. Started putting in some mids to define things and ye gods there are so many surfaces. If I thought Anval Thricedamned was fiddly, this guy beats him out handily with the ringed bands and scales plus the faces, etc. Wow. So about another two hours getting it to here. The fiancee asked how many hours and I’ve completely lost track, but it’s pretty insane and I don’t think I’ve gotten my time’s worth out of him 
But I also don’t want to start rushing to the end now, so I’m committed to the time it will take to get the armor looking good.
Trying to keep it more greenish ochre without pushing it into some weird unreal place. The reds really can make it look super green, which is why I had to back out my initial rough-in highlights.
And the saga continues. It’s funny because the Vikings had sagas. Ahem. More work on the blade, deepening some of the reds to give some value and hue contrast (there’s not actually much red on the model). Sitting at arm’s length I want more contrast still, but this is getting silly and so I made another go at the edges. Note to self – watching South Park while painting is detrimental to brush control, I had to pause several times because I was chuckling so much. I also made another pass on the horns, though I want them bright I see they should probably be darker to show better against the flames.
The never-ending WIP…At the urging of a few folks on the Reaper forums, I’m going to try and make this blade work.
Gave it another 90 minutes or so. I roughed in the edges to see if it could sell it as a blade better, I want to keep them darker to pop the face of the blade, I liked how bright the old gradient version was.
It’s good freehand practice, anyway. But that deadline is so shot, I was hoping to have the whole mini almost done tonight for any hope.
I went back to the drawing board on the blade as I wasn’t happy with it. While I think this was starting to look cool, it didn’t feel right so I think it’s on to concept #3 for the blade…
After a stiff glass of Laphroaig, I’ll share concept #2, for posterity.
Just the face of the blade with a few layers of the design sketched in. Even if I were going to stick with it, there are maybe four more hours just to get enough depth and blending into it.
