full of experiments
The majority of my week has been locked into painting this Sisters of Battle Morvenn Vahl character. When I was about to paint and set up the camera on auto-pilot, I opted to be more free and experiment with some new approaches to painting and see how I learned through the painting. I felt in the moment that this model needed a new approach and one that I’m not so familiar with. There has been a TON of corrections to do, modifying the colour tones and working more in line with a couple of references open on the computer while in the works. Working to give more refinement in a cleaner presentation along with one of my weaknesses and that’s the paint surface finish. I’ve been thinking about that a lot, especially with the last few projects having areas of paint where the build-up was starting to get a bit chunky for my liking. Also to help combat dust being picked up on the brush, switching out for new paper towels was actually a significant improvement on keeping those little dust hairs off my miniatures! I bought a single roll of shop paper towels from my local hardware store. They are blue, and much much much more absorbent and tear-resistant. My theory is that the fibres would hold together better while repeatedly drying my brush and therefore wouldn’t loosen the fibres overuse. Each roll was around $3.50 each, so that’s a much pricier option. But it gave me some confidence in them so it’s a win for me.
Back to the miniature though, the main idea is again working with lighter values in my similar pursuit in painting White Scars. I worked more with the airbrush to sketch, and paint in reverse going from highlights to shadow to have my highlights be cleaner and less build-up. That’s the theory anyway, but I still had to do a lot of back and forth with bridge blending, feathering and glazes. Even changing the highlight temperature from a cool turquoise, and now switched into a warm Sunny Skin Tone. I think I found myself a new favourite paint that has sat on my desk neglected for ages simply cause I didn’t know what to do with the darn thing. I will of course continue to update your readers on her progress, and I think in the end she would make for a new and exciting video tutorial that is much more theory-based and sharing my strategies in the painting. Hopefully, after this is complete, I can do a future miniature with these techniques in hand and share it with you in my classic painting tutorial format where I know a bit more on whats going on and can relay that info to you guys better.
Till next time - Happy Painting
