In a forest darkly - denizens of an enchanted realm: The Cave Troll

[Peithetairos]

I took all the pictures against a flat screen.

The idea is that you angle the light thus, that it is not reflected on the screen, so the mini needs to be about 2m away from the screen with the light coming from the left or right corner. Then you focus on the mini and set the exposure so that the mini looks natural, but the background just reads as black. Works with a cell phone, too, as long as you can manually adjust exposure. A tripod is useful, but not required. I took all the pictures hand-held. My light is a ring light.

[Peithetairos]

I wrote a short blog post about the painting process of the Chaos Toad. I used exclusively Kimera colours for this one, just to take them for a spin.

My overall goal was to really push the contrast. This can be done with lighter and darker areas, but also with warm and cold colours (as in the two skin tones) and via saturation.



The skintone is Pthalo green with some Cold Yellow mixed in and Red Oxide for the shadows (green and red can be used to make a chromatic black). The lighter skin sections are a Warm Yellow with Red Oxide for the darker areas.

Two other areas that I wanted to add some interest to, were the loin-cloth and the chaos projectile. The loin-cloth was painted using a Phtalo Blue Green Shade to work with the main skin tone, while contrasting with the warmer yellow skin. This time I darkened the blue mixing some Phtalo Green in it as well as some Carbon Black. Highlights were done with a bit of white mixed in. A subtle texture provided even more contrast to the surrounding sections.

The chaos projectile is going from a Carbon Black with a bit of Violet mixed in to Magenta and up to pure Titanium White.

More pictures and info on my blog:

https://wp.me/p49oPQ-Wu

[AKULA]

Wow...love the palette...really vivid 

[Bloggard]

great stuff.

[Little Odo]

  The magical fire is most excellent

[Peithetairos]

Wow...love the palette...really vivid 

Thank you! I am glad it turned out so vibrant, as I struggled for a while with muddy colours. Kimera colours really help with this!

great stuff.

Much obliged!

The magical fire is most excellent

Thank you! The secret was all in going from a really dark violet up to pure titanium white.

[Peithetairos]

As it fits the overall theme:

I did some mixed media background art for scenic shots and such. I first established a gradient with watercolours, then used soft pastels to paint the landscape. The idea was a sunset seen from a forest clearing.

I will also make some more daytime landscapes and maybe a nighttime one.

[Little Odo]

Wow! Those pictures look amazing!

[BZ]

Awesome! Now I can be envy not only on your sculpting, but also on photography and painting skills...

[fred]

Excellent work on the conversions, the painting and the photo backdrop.

I missed these the first time round - so glad you have posted updates

[Peithetairos]

Thank you for the positive comments. Makes the project even more fun and keeps the motivation up.

I painted another backdrop, this time watercolors with a bit of graphite. It does not work as well as the pastels in my opinion, but I think I have to get more used to the medium and use prepainting with water more. The testshots worked out ok, however.

[OSHIROmodels]

Great stuff 

[Elk101]

Very impressive. How do you get your tree foliage to look so natural, mine always looks like I've just thrown stuff at it covered in glue (which I have)?

[Peithetairos]

I use MiniNatur foliage nets with most decidious trees. They are a bit expensive, but look really good.

You should be able to make something similar with a net stocking and laser cut individual leaves.

[Little Odo]

Great work again - I also really like the lizard/basilisk miniature. Where does it come from?