The set of Dungeonquest figures I'm painting is complete except for one missing figure, Siegfried Goldenhair, the Barbarian. Does anyone have a spare, by any chance?
In the meantime I painted a substitute, possibly my favorite of the Perry barbarians. Let's call him Gunnvor Greataxe and say he's Siegfried's brother.
Love this sculpt. He's perfect all around. That awesome face! You can put this figure next to any figure from any era.
The skin was darker in the first pass I did as I was going for the deep tan that barbarians like Arnold Schwarzenegger has in the Conan movies. But I lightened it in the end to more abstracted, classic miniatures "bronzed flesh" tones. I used the tried and true Citadel method of dark base, then mixes with the original tones, Bronzed Flesh, Elf Flesh, lighter tones, and then glazes of Chestnut ink. I used the Siegfried Goldenhair illustration as reference for all the characters.
I also made an image of my figure to make a unique character sheet as well.
Just three left to show now. Stay tuned for Helena the Swift, Sir Roland the Knight, and Ironhand the Mighty!
Hell yes!
ReplyDeleteNice indeed!
ReplyDeleteThanks!
DeleteVery nicely painted. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks!
DeleteLove it! Your skin tone is great. I've gotten away from ink glaze/ wash on my skin. Perhaps I need to rethink that. I just assumed everybody's layer blending was just better than mine. That may also be true but I felt that ink tied the layers together better.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I do think the Chestnut or later Flesh Wash ink is an important ingredient if I'm aiming for a that sunny, old school flesh I remember from White Dwarf. And inks in general if you want the saturated colors. Contrast with someone like Stone Cold Lead, who is an awesome painter and goes for the opposite look. He goes for a uniformly desaturated look and I doubt he uses inks and glazes, or if any just dark and desaturated ones. Going for rich colors carries risk because it can easily be overdone and amateur paintjobs are much more often too gaudy than too pale. Paints these days are so rich out of the jar. And desaturated colors all tend to look good next to one another because they don't clash or compete with one another. But with my Oldhammer figures I want to feel the warmth of the sun beating down on them, and I want the colors to glow. If you have usable inks still I recommend giving them another try, and yes, I think they can nicely help tie layers together.
DeleteSix layers of skin tone is insane. He looks amazing though.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I use a wet palette and there aren't really separations between layers if layers mean distinct colors. I put a lighter color next to the mix so far, and usually have a number of colors from the mix around so I can top off the mix keeping it dead center the path I want it to take. There aren't just six layers if layer means any shift brighter or darker. I don't count and just go back and forth from pallet to layer to palette to layer over and over until it's done. Dozens of layers counting this way. It takes about 35-45 minutes to cover this as much skin as the barbarian here is showing start to finish, but bear in mind that's 80% of this figure here. For a figure showing face and arms it takes just a few minutes for the same amount of layers. Flesh takes more layers than say fabric as it takes more work to be convincing, and it's more of a focus and just plain important.
DeleteHey Ryder -You are by far becoming my favorite oldhammer painter, and this is another great example. Now, by accident I posed the following question(s) in an older post a while back and I've been eagerly waiting for you to post anew so I could repost and bother you some more (I've taking the liberty to view your lack of reply to my previous post as an oversight rather than ill will!):
ReplyDeleteI Just started painting again after a long hiatus and your old skool, saturated paintjobs are a great inspiration. As it happens, I'm painting up some old Citadel Orcs and found your recipe from a while back, which is EXACTLY what I'm looking for. Would you be willing to revisit and elaborate a bit?! It went like:
GW Orkhide Shade, P3 Necrotite green, GW Snakebite leather and/or Bestial Brown, GW Tausept Ochre, GW Golden Yellow, For the gums, mix in a little GW Dwarf Flesh, Add a tiny bit of Vallejo Pale Sand if needed for final highlights.
My question is: do you just pour some of the next color up into the preceding mix or is a particular highlight color only a mix of two adjacent colors (in relation to the recipe)? Does that make sense?!
Oh and two follow up questions: Is my old Bilious Green a good substitute for Necrotite and does Bestial Brown really lighten the mix?
Keep up the eye-candy and happy painting☺
Hey, thanks very much for the kind words! Thanks for calling attention to the question, sure. The answer I think is partly in my reply just above yours, that I just added. I use a wet palette and hopefully that goes a way to explaining. It's like you say, I keep adding to the mix, but the secret is the mix is kept wet by the palette (Mastersen brand is great and like 8 bucks). The bestial brown is lighter than orkhide shade but darker than necrotite green. Necrotite is a bit fluorescent it so strong, so probably a lot stronger than snot green. But that's partly why I dull it down with brown. By itself, nothing natural is Necrotite green, even an orc. I'm not convinced by many attempts at green orcs because the mix is unnatural, too clean green with not enough yellow and brown.
DeleteBy the way I'm trying new orc flesh mixes lately but the method I used on those ones shown here I think are my favorite, though most time consuming to go straight from very dark to very bright. I've been trying starting with a lighter green and shading down with an ink wash and then highlights from there, and it works pretty well. More of this old school method I did for the dungeonquest figures. When I did the orcs I was still much in my straight dark to light mode, but maybe with some glazes at the end. Still working on getting the perfect balance, especially as I'm working on some huge numbers of figures at a time right now in hopes of getting a good potion of my oldhammer collection painted before I die. Moving from warbands to armies. After the orc warband shown here I wound up making a custom paint color for the main orc highlight based on that experience, which I slap on pretty strong. It's a very yellow green, in fact I started with a huge portion of yellow and mixed in the green, not the other way around. I have not seen any paints right out of the pot. Honestly when I painted that warband it was quite some work to keep my mix of all the greens, browns and yellows on the right course the whole time. I just scored some great empty paint pots on ebay recently and I think I will be making more custom colors as I tackle the armies.
Thx a bunch for the reply Ryder and I really hope you don't die (completing your oldhammer collection or otherwise!). Your explanation makes sense and I use a wet palette myself (stole one of the kids lunchboxes...) and I've got pretty good results from your recipe. But the exact balance eludes me as of yet, so I'll just keep trying cuz, gosh golly, yours is the holy grail of old school greenskin color and no mistake☺
ReplyDeleteIf you could be persuaded to produce some pics of the skin in different stages that would be awesome, but I can understand how that would interrupt your flow of back and forth as you described in the answer above mine...