It has been a while since posting the last step-by-step guide. Here is a new one for the Raider Cavern Crawler for the Dark Mariners, a sculpt by the great Bob Olley. I like his figures because they are fun to paint, are well suited to glaze painting with all of the texture and overhanging details, and always have plenty of character. This was originally supposed to be for ShadowSea but also works for DeepWars. The figure has a spear in its left hand which is painted separately to simplify things.
The first step is to do a zenith prime, with black first, then white from a steep angle above. The figure gets sprayed with white from above, then laid down on the cardboard (or whatever backing board is used), then sprayed from the side, from the head, so it is easier to see how the white strikes the figure and catch the spots missed when the figure was standing.
The concept art was used as reference for colors. The metal is a golden alloy, more like brass than gold in appearance though.
The next step was to give a thin layer of translucent paint on the carapace armor and the golden metal bits. We are looking to use non-metallic metal techniques for this one. The carapace is glazes with a layer of Golden Fluid Acrylic Indian Yellow, mixed with Liquitex Burnt Sienna ink and Matte Medium. This is meant to be a fairly bright yellow-orange hue. The armor was painted with thinned Yellow Oxide (Yellow Ochre), mixed with Raw Umber ink, a nice warm brown and medium. Pure ink was painted around the sides of the gold and glazed down from the top of the helmet. Th strokes were applied from the bottom up, with some water brushed on the top of the helmet to keep the paint from below from staining the top. If any paint gets up on top of the helmet, the brush can be used to quickly scrub it off. This is a tricky technique as it is a bit like watercolor painting.
Next, a bit of thinned black was applied in between big overhangs. Other areas, like the helmet, get some Burnt Umber ink applied in cracks and shadows.
A couple of steps are combined after the blacklining. The first is glazing with multiple colors. The carapace armor is glazed with Sap Green ink with Matte Medium, then a mix of green ink and black paint with medium. The golden armor was glazed with more Raw Umber and Matte Medium, especially on the golden scale armor. Then it was painted with thin layers of Yellow Ochre mixed with black paint to help smooth out the shadows and midtones. Once the glazes and layers were dry, highlights were applied. Gold was highlighted with Yellow Ochre mixed with white. Carapace armor was highlighted with Reaper MSP Golden Highlight. Edge highlights are the key here, just painting on edges, ridges and barnacles. Gold on the helmet was tinted with some light yellow and highlighted with pure white on some edges. This part took a bit of time to blend with thin layers of paint. A touch of Burnt Sienna ink was painted in places on the gold in between the shadows and highlights. Barnacles and other encrusting growth was given a light glaze of Sap Green ink, then spot highlights with white.
The toga-like clothing was painted with glazes of yello-orange, the glazed with Burnt Sienna ink, and then ink mixed with black. The highlighs were Burnt Sienna mixed with Golden Yellow, with some fine hatching lines for texture.
Now that the clothing and armor is done, the guy needs some tentacles and skin. Skin was first painted with a Cerulean Blue ink, mixed with a bit of Reaper Golden Yellow to give it a slightly duller hue but lighter greening tone. This was painted in a thin layer. On top of the shoulder was given a less of the blue, but more Golden Yellow glaze, as were the spines.
The tentacles were glazed with Pthalo Blue ink mixed with black paint and Matte Medium, while the shoulder was given more of a Burnt Sienna and Raw Umber glaze.
The tentacles and skin were highlighted with thinned Golden Highlight, mixed with a bit of Dark Turquoise ink for the hint of green. Final highlights were layers of thinned Golden Highlight, then pure white. Some additional glazes of Magenta ink helped give some more color to the flesh in places. The spines were given a thin coat of Vallejo GC Hot Orange mixed with some Turquoise Ink and a bit of Golden Highlight to make a dull reddish hue. Face tentacles were given a glaze of dark blue ink around the tentacles and to make shadows, then highlighted with blue+white paint. The tips were glazed with Magenta ink mixed with blue before final highlights with white and blue. Small stripey lines were painted for texture.
The last step for the body was to apply edge highlights to the spines, with white mixed into the orange mix, and glazes here and there to tie things together. Again, edge highlights are critical here. Blending is mostly done automatically with the glazes using Matte Medium, except for the helmet and bottles on the back, which required more subtle brushwork.
Finally, the spear was painted, using the same basic colors for gold. The blue glow was toned down with Yellow Ochre + white to try to match the artwork. Fine white electric arcs were painted for texture detail. The base is difficult to see here but was given washes of brown, blue, and magenta inks, then given highlights using the brush point to make many small dots, like bits of shell or sand. The edge of the base is a bit thick, so it was painted with some irregular glazes, then the patterns left by the glaze were highlighted with thinned white. That is pretty much it.
31 January 2012, 11:57:31 PM
