now this character itself...It's a little odd. shes like some sort of fairy looking thing. and the overall shape and design of the model is something most painters will think "i'll paint that one last!"
and i was going to leave it till last...until that is. my 3 year old daughter proclaimed her "that's my favourite character please daddy can you paint it next"
repeat that over a thousand times over a couple of days. and you now understand why i tackled this one much earlier on.
onto the design. i searched the internet to see how others had painted this. and as i expected. there hasn't been many paint strokes thrown in seer Kels direction.
the overall shape of the model is a challenge to paint. and even though i base my models onto a loose paint pot with some blue-tac. i found myself constantly having to go and retouch up the edge parts of the model. This mini wasn't easy to paint. and i really have very little idea what i was going to do other that attempt to follow the hero card.
so he were go
the challenge here was the obvious focal point of the model is at the back of the model. the skirt thing is huge and what gives her the levitating look. the base artwork had this shown with dark blues. not sure if this was a shadow effect or not. but that's what i went with. and due to the design of the model. what i decided to paint first and get out of the way.
she has some facial/tribal type markings on her face.
and then there are those intricate designs on her leggings..
freehand is something i really want to improve on. so i thought "screw it, lets give it a bash!"
the freehand didn't turn out too bad. its hard enough painting at this size and then managing to get it completely symmetrical. i tried. and well i think it came out well.
still got many more to paint. but going strong i think :)
The skin on your Nanok figure is amazing! Would you be willing to give some detail how you did it? Thanks!
ReplyDeletethanks, glad you like it.
Deletehonestly i have done nothing too special with him other than a little TLC due to the amount of flesh on show (that really sounds wrong in my head)
anyways.
Cadian fleshtone base
reikland flesh shade 50-50 mix with medium/Lahmian Medium
bring raised areas back up with cadian flesh
and highlights with Kislev flesh
what i always try to achieve with flesh is a smooth transition, i try to avoid the huge cinematic type contrasts to show off muscle. lets face it, skin is much smoother than we are taught how to paint in many tutorials.
i always use medium in all of my painting to allow slow and smoother paint strokes. its always better to build up in small amounts than thick lumpy bulks of paint.
i used the same method on Seer Kel too. expect due to the lack of flesh. she didnt get the same amount of treatment on her skin as the barbarian. but the same 'recipe' is used regardless.
so yup thin paints, almost glazes to shade and bring up your colours and you should be able to achieve the same results :)
hope this helps
thanks
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ReplyDeleteThanks! This is helpful, I'll give a medium mix a tray with the wash. I've been putting the flesh color closest to the art on, then using a flesh wash, then highlighting with that some flesh color and I'm not happy with the results.
ReplyDeleteYour whole style on your Descent mini's is really fantastic. I've been painting mine a bit lazy. I put all the colors on, wash with nuln oil, then some highlight touches back up with the base colors and calling it a day. Little bit of extra highlighting on metal areas usually. Looks fine on the table, but yours are so much cleaner and more vivid looking. Do you use washes elsewhere on the model?
If you are bored and want to have a look I have them all linked on the FFG page. Any advice would be welcome :)
https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/238779-painted-descent-is-best-descent/
bit lazy? but have managed to paint about 50x more than i have!
Deletemaybe thats the trick.
ill be honest i apply a pretty lazy approach to all of the monsters.
base coat. then army painter brush on dark tone. and bring up the colours. i always use a dark brown for washes. never black
for me i always spend longer and give the heroes a little bit more TLC when i paint them. but i cant really critique what you have done but i think youve done a great job. but if you want them to pop a little more. especially the heroes. spend a little more time on their faces. give them eyes and add a little more character to them.
if you just want tips to be better. glazes and colour variations are the way to go when painting in masses. and would suggest have a look at Dana Howls videos on youtube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI7EmMVCD8A0sZBha1EFg2Q/videos
underpainting and painting with glazes is a great way to speed up the process and still get great results.
hope this helps
I'll check out those videos, thanks, that helps for sure. If I can get skin to the point I'm happy with it then I'll go back and redo the hero faces and skin areas for sure.
ReplyDeleteNanok's art has his skin tone overall as Kislev flesh, which is really light. For a dude that runs around shirtless, he doesn't seem to get out in the sun much. For heroes that have slightly darker skin tones, do you still base with cadian and wash with reikland and then highlight with whatever the finished skin color is? Or do you have different base/highlight pairings for different finished skin shades?
I've never messed with glazes, and color variations have been a struggle for me. It's really difficult to mix paint because I'm colorblind. If I mix something and then don't have enough and need to recreate then all I can do is start mixing over from scratch and hope I get the drop of this, drop of that ratio's the same the next time around. I haven't had great luck doing that so I just stick to whats available commercially. Makes getting color transitions to highlighting a pain in the ass, that's the main reason I haven't been highlighting Descent.
On your standard dark tone wash, do you mix it 50/50 with medium? Or is that just for skin?
for dark tone, it depends on the model. i will mix it with medium if the colours are predominantly lighter so not to muddy the tones. but if you want a more earthy deeper shade then just slap it on as it is and remove the pooling.
ReplyDeleteas for colour variations i would suggest following the same method and giving a very thinned down glaze of a different colour once you have done the skin. i do this with lots of different things and not just skin..the gold on nanok for one. its a silver which was highlighted and then glazed with yellow. so that it retains its highlights and metallics but very clearly is yellowy gold.
you can achieve the same with skin tones. but bare in mid it will only get darker with more glazes.
so if you want a much lighter tone of skin i would suggest
kislev flesh base
reikland fleshshade
rakarth flesh for upper highlights
line up all of your flesh tones from darkest to lightest and toy around with them and experiment.
and then of course there is a multitude of other colours you can give a final very thin glaze to add a very small variation to your skin combinations
layers are the most important thing to getting good blends, hence why i always use medium. 1 stroke of paint can be 30% tranparency. and after letting it dry, a second stroke gives it 60% transparency, this way you always retain the colour below.
slap one thick coat on, and that level of control gets lost. so first things first. stick to a solid method and learn about your glazed layers, once you have it locked down you will be flying. *THUMBS UP*
The theory makes total sense, thank you very much! I have Seer Kel now with all the colors on, next step is shade wash. Think i'll pause and go practice with some glazing on something else first. That was so much work to get all that color in and draw the pants designs in, I really don't want to screw that model up :D
ReplyDeletegood luck with it :)
Delete