Hands-On Weathering Workshop 12-Feb

I will be teaching a half-day hands-on weathering workshop at

Great Escape Games
1250 Howe Avenue, suite 3A
Sacramento, CA 95825
(916) 927-0810

The class will cover rust, dust, mud, grime, and urban rubble. Pigments and a practice model will be provided. Attendees should bring their own paints, brushes and a lamp. Time will be allotted for 1:1 discussion of attendee models if one is brought.

The cost is $10.00

Happy Monk

More progress on Happy Monk - and lots of time spent on cleaning up his skin.

I'm going to get rid of the white spots on his beads as I don't feel they're necessary.

There's still plenty of shading and highlighting to be done on both the skin and the cloth -- but I feel like it's really starting to come together. I also tried the crosshatch technique for the first time on his stockings and like the texture it created.

And here's a look at him from all sides - as well as the complete composition.

Happy Monk - Base Coat

I took some time tonight to do the initial midtone and shading work with the airbrush. Unfortunately you can see that I was a bit over-judicious with the masking on his sleeve and back. I will touch this up with a brush but it's going to take a good deal of work to get the colours even now. Alas.

This second shot is just here to give you an idea of how it comes together with the composition. At this point I have to say that I am very, very happy.

Happy Monk

I'm still working on my Marauder and will have pics to post soon -- but something I did to the dragon has effected the ability of paint to stick to it. After two layers of matte sealer, and lots of lost detail as a result, paint is MOSTLY sticking now.

And so I decided to move on to composing the base for my next project.

This is the Happy Monk.

The wall is pinned in place but won't be glued until after the model itself is finished. That's why it looks like it's leaning to the right -- because at the moment it is.

I also still need to finish cleaning up the putty to make it look more like rough plaster on the wall.

The floor is a herringbone tile that will be cracked and weathered.

The monk has a branch that goes in his hand, with a butterfly on the end, and I'll add some leaves to it and the floor as a final bit of detailing.

The plinth is 2" square to give you a sense of scale on this one.

Dragon Bust - Maybe, Maybe Not....

At this point I've come in with the start of some blended blue shading to help tie the colours on the model together. I'm not entirely sold on it but as there's a LOT of highlighting and shading still to do I'm not going to panic.

Yet.

I've done a few layers in the mouth with a heavy wash just to help me identify the pits in the surface. The interior of his mouth is heavily textured and I didn't want to be hunting for the details.

Unfortunately you can see a big blob of flesh paint on his lip that I totally missed. But, again, I'm not going to panic.

Yet.

I just need to focus on the aspects of the work I still like and continue to build on that.

And I can always panic later.

Dragon Bust - Base Colours

I made some time today to airbrush the base colours. This photo doesn't capture it well but the blue goes from almost white to almost black to create a sharp visual contrast and give the impression of gloss.

I then taped up the blue neck scales to protect them.

Using my inspiration photos as a guide I went for a deep brown on the scales.

Strong contrast on the face will help draw the eye to the important part of the model and away from the display plinth.

You can see in this pic how the scales fade slowly to black at the base of the neck to help draw the eye forward to the face. I will add additional contrast by hand in the next steps.

Dragon Bust - Inspiration

A few weeks back I picked up a 24" vinyl AD&D dragon kit at a local swap meet. There was nothing I couldn't love about a giant dragon kit... until I tried to put it together. The quality of vinyl kits is more miss than hit and this one was no exception.

And so I cut off its head. Er, cut it shorter.

I also cut off roughly half of the neck and sanded it flat. The head also has a coat of DAP sandable primer on it and isn't mounted to the plinth yet. The plinth is one of my 2" resin cubes with 6 coats of black, 1 coat satin and 3 layers of gloss with a bit of sanding between applications. It's shiny. And black.

But a project is only as good as the inspiration - and I found the perfect images in the form of a spiny blue lizard!

And if there's a better inspiration photo for reptile eyes then I don't want to know about it!

Stay tuned....