Saturday, December 17, 2011

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.

5 comments:

  1. Liking this a lot - and its all done with an airbrush?

    How do you keep the spray from ruining the shaded portions behind each scale - is this just directional spray wizardry?

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  2. All airbrush - and if you look at the larger version of the third photo (it should be Dragon05.jpg) you can see that most of the individual scale shading is lost. I'll come back with washes to pick out the individual scales.

    The airbrush is great at getting smooth transitions - like the blending on the face and the tan to black on the neck - but while I *COULD* keep the individual scales defined with an airbrush it will be *MUCH* easier to do with a traditional brush.

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  3. Thanks for the response Mr J. Looking forward to the next part.

    When you say washes, are we talking the Secret Weapon style wash, or something involving oil paints etc like you see used on vehicle kits and such when weathering?

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  4. For this guy a combination of oil washes and acrylic washes -- depending on which effect I'm trying to get. There's a fair chance I'll do some pigment washes too as I've always felt that dragons should look dirty.

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