Hurry, hurry, only one week left!

With only one week left till EuroMilitaire, and tickets lying in the drawer, I'm doing my best to finish two busts I got on my workbench. It's not as easy as you could imagine, me being constantly tired to death, my hands acting up sometimes, going  numb without any reason, and my free time seriously limited. But I'm doing the best I can in these circumstances.

I managed to do some more work on the Landsknecht. The biggest change so far is the colour of the tiny bag hanging on his chest. I really liked the goldish colour I used previously, but it was drawing too much attetnion from the face, so it's dark brown now. I still need to add stronger highlight to the left side of the bag (right on the photo), but other than that I'm quite happy.
The other big change is the red feather. I couldn't get it right, so decided to change colour. I tried few options and finally decided to go for goldish like the other. I must confess, they're pretty hard to paint. And I have 5 more on two other busts. It's not making me happy to be honest.

Other than those two changes I finished the shirt and belt, and did a bit more work on the bere and beard. And as I'm really happy with the way the belt turned out, I'm not so happy about the beard. As you can see at the bottom photo, it looked  (at least for me it did) way more structurized, organized when only undercoated.

Right now it looks more chaotic, I can't really see the nice waves, as I could earlier. I'm not sure if I'll be able to fix it and make it look like I imagined. I guess we'll see.

 cheers

'eM

Ein Stein - yet another WIP photos

Well, two days left, and my Ein Stein is not yet ready. And it's not making me happy. But I messed up with the back of his ears. The veins I was trying to paint there din't turned out as I planned so I had to repaint this part. Sadly achieving the smooth transition was next to impossible this time, so I had to settle for some dot pattern...  I hope it will suit this bust and rest of the paint job.

I still need to glaze it a bit to make the dots more organic, and then I need to fix the name tag on his back (which is a massive pain in the neck due to the colours I used) and then just few touch ups and it should be ready to go. At least I hope it's just few touch ups.... after such a long time with a mini, it's hard to see it objectively.

cheers

'eM

One step closer

And again long break from posting. For some reason I struggle to write anything lately. I hope it's just a phase and will pass soon, but for now I'd like to show you what I've done lately with my two beautiful bust.

So here they are, my two boys: medieval Knight and ein Stein:D

Like you can see there is still lots to do, but I guess I'm going into the right direction. Orc bust is more or less ready, just few touch ups left to be done (teeth for example). Knight is a bit less advanced, more needs to be done, but I'm almost happy with the face, so rest should be easy. I might repaint his tunic though, as I'm still not totally convinced with the colour here.

cheers

'eM

Medieval bust - what I've done so far.

Of course I coulnd't keep my hands of this beautiful medieval knight...
And here you can see the results so far, in few stages.

First you can see how I handled the hauberk.

I must say I'm quite happy with how it turned out. I might tweak it a bit later on when the rest of the bust is painted, maybe some rust here and there, but for now it's ready.
When the metal parts were ready, I moved to leathers, leaving the toughest for me part, skin, at the end. But then I remembered that I decided I want some scars on his face.
So he has scars now.To create them I used liquid Green Stuff from GW.  And while working on them I tried to fix the hole next to his left eye.
To show you how the scars are looking without the distraction of gren colour, there is one photo in b/w at the end.

To be honest with you I wasn't really sure if I like the scars at this stage. The green was way to distracting. But after painting first layers of skin colour, it all came together very nicelly.
Of course the skin is not even close being ready, but you can see how nicelly the scars are blending in. And thanks to the one going through his eye, I can paint it with a cataract, to make him look even more like an old battered warrior.
Eyes look weird at the moment I know, but I need to repaint them.

Einstein's apron - leathers SBS

This time I'd like to show you the process of painting the leather like on my Einstein. The bust at this moment is still in progress, so you can check my earlier posts to see how it's progressing so far.

As you can see leather apron Einstein is wearing is very distressed, dirty and full of all sorts of discolourations and stains. It wasn't really planned this way from the beginning, but was more like heat of the moment improvisation.
Because I don't have  any photos picturing particular stages of the process I'll try to recreate the same effect on different piece (most probably the cartboard or something like that). To be fair I must admit that I'm curious myself if I can do that.

If you're  interested here's my other tutorial about painting leather

1. Basecoat
First step is pretty basic. Just apply more or less even layer of a base colour. In my case some sort of mixture  of: Graveyard Earth (GW), Desert Yellow (GW) and 'Jack Bone (P3).
The exact colours are really not that important, you can use your own pants and mixtures, but I'm gonna list them just in case anyone will find it helpful.
Because I'm  trying to speed up  my painting as much as I can, for such  big pieces, at this stage I'm mostly using airbrush to block colours and do initial shading. But you can easily do that with the brush, especially because you don't need an extra smooth  surface.

2. Basic shades and lights
For this step I also used an airbrush and simply sprayed some Graveyard Earth facing nozzle from the bottom of the bust, and then added few extra glazes with brush at the very bottom and in the recesses. After that few layers of 'Jack Bone on his shoulders.
I don't think I was worried too much about the shadows on the edges at this point, as I was planning to take care of them closer to the end.

3. Introducing texture, some colour variations and more contrast
After blocking first shadows and lights, I used thin glazes of various shades of brown, green, black to create some slight colour variations and more contrast. More 'Jack Bone and Dessert Yellow was used to brighten top parts of the apron.
At this stage I wasn't really going for smooth transitions. In fact some roughness, especially in 'light' areas was deliberate, and used to create leathery texture (vachetta leather - without a shine and rather dull when compared to the grain leather)

4. Splashes
When step 3 is finished the fun begines. Using thick and rather stiff brush, a toothpick and fairly dilluted paints and washes I created colourful splashes on the apron, trying to concentrate them on the middle part of the apron, where they're most likely  to happen in real life.
This metod is quite random and seems messy, but with all the 'non leathery' parts of the mini covered with Tamyia tape, and a bit of practice (to establish how dilluted part you should use) you can really go to town with it and create cool effects. And if something goes horribly wrong, you can always cover that area with base/shade colour and start over again. It not only won't  ruin the piece, but can even add a bit to the texture.
It's entirely up to you what colours you use for that step, but here's the list of those I used:
- 'Jack Bone (P3)
- Badab Black (GW Wash)
- Agrax Earthshade (GW Wash)
- Ogryn Flesh (GW Wash)
- Seraphim Sepia (GW Wash)

If you're not entirely happy with your splashes and dots you can add some with the brush. At this point I used slightly dilluted  washes to create 'coffee print' effect  with a paint pooling to the stain's edges, but it's really up to you what dillution you're gonna use.

5. Glazes of different colours to blend splashes and the whole surface together a bit
I used some Graveyard Earth, brown  and black washes to blend, and green, red and maybe even blue to add some colour niuances to the leather. After all, years of extensive use in different circumstances, had to left some marks and discolourations.

I know that the effect is not exactly the same with Einstein's apron, but I guess you got the idea how it was made so far. Changes I was doing from now on are rather hard to reproduce on the cartboard, so I'm gonna move back to the mini.

6. More contrast and weathering

After blending the whole surface a little, I reintroduced contrst with dark glazes (on the bottom of the miniature ans in the recesses, and light colours  in the brighter areas. Slightly 'chalky' finish in the highlights added some  texture and worn finish.

 

7. Edges
With the middle of apron more or less ready I took care of the edges. Bright colour applied with the side of the brush to the shapr edges of the apron and some glazes in the little holes and indentations  under them made the trick.
The same goes for all little holes in the surface. I applied some dark/black wash inside and then highlighted the bottom edge with Menoth White Base (P3)

8. Final touches
For now the apron is finished, but with whole bust painted I may add some more contrast or maybe few more stains. At some point I was thinking about making him more like a car mechanic, so there would be added some oil stains on the apron, but I'm not sure yet.

Well I guess that's all here.
I hope you'll find this tutorial helpful. If you have any questions, please ask. I'll try to help as much as I can.

cheers

'eM

Urmuth - WIP

As a part of the plan of reducing number of projects I'm working on simulatneously (and stop HoS from growing) I started another mini: Urmuth Scars of War from Andrea Miniatures:)

Still an early stage. I was working mostly on fur, leather skirt and shoes. The brighter parts of the fur are not even close to the final contast and brightness, but the colour of the skirt is close enough to what I was going for.
The skin and other elements are just basecoated.

So far it's a nice mniature to paint. Good cast and fine details (for more informations check Inbox I did few weeks ago) makes it a real pleasure, and almost every element gives the painter a chance to show the skills.
I do enjoy painting it to such an extent, that I might even finish it;p

cheers

'eM

Textures - leather

Before I'll start talking about painting the leather elements I should spend few minutes to show you various types of leather you can encounter, and maybe try to reproduce on a miniature.
To be honest, if I'd like to do that properly, I should do the whole article about types of leather, how do they age and  how do they look when old and worn out. But that's blog about painting miniatures, not leatherworking, and because I don't wanna bore you to death with this theoretical part, I'll simply reffer you to the the article about leather on wikipedia and show few pictures of new and used leather I found in internet.

Grain leather

Vachetta leather

Suede

That's not all leather types of course, just the most common these days. So, I'd say, you should do some proper research by yourselves, especially if you're trying to paint some less common types of leather, i.e. deer leather used by native americans, kangaroo leather or something more exotic and luxurious like snake or crocodile leather, or perhaps fish leather (it does exist, seriously, and looks pretty cool).




Painting
When I  paint leather, usually I start with fairly light colour (beige, light brown, ochre, yellowish shades of brown), and then slowly build  darker parts with washes (devlan mud, black, sepia, ogryn flesh, and even green and blue if I'm going for colder shades.
I don't paint too neatly, rather use irregular spots and uneven layers mixing various colours.
To add more worn look I go over the glazes with the base colour or some darker shades of brown. When I'm more or less happy with the lights and shadows I add some highlights (washing them lightly in the process to make them blend better).

Texturing
Lots of washes and paint layers applied unevenly to the surface, helps me to build three dimensional texture of the leather. But if you want even more texture, to mimic really rough leather, you can use almost dry brush with a bit of colour and dab it in the surface where you want that particular colour and roughness. This technique is very impressive especially on bigger scale models, where it looks very natural.

Adding damage to the leather elements
Normally leather while used gets darker (due to contact with oil, water and other stuff) so if we disturb that top layer, we can often see the lighter colour showing beneath. To recreate that effect we can make sure that the whole surface is showing some signs of being used.

1. Surface
This type of damage is achieved mostly by uneven application of paint in the process of adding shadows. But if that is not enough you can add some more using almost dry brush with small amount of bright beige and dab the leather to create random spots. Just concentrate on the places which are most likely exposed to that kind of damage.

2. Edges
To create damaged and worn out edges, I use bright beige (off white if the overall colour is rather light) and simply paint thin lines in the places where I think leather is most likely going to be damaged. And then glaze them a bit with one of the washes to get more unified look. I use that method mostly on belts and straps or on the edges of bigger surfaces if that looks believable. Thin lines of damage can be added in the middle of leather elements, but we should be rather reasonable, and do that only if that type of damage could be explained by the usage of the item (i.e. leather armour). Just remember that the whitish lines are not holes (crackles) in the leather but represent damaged top layer of the surface.

As you can see the technique is really simple and requires only some practise and, what's  very important, proper research of the type of leather you want to recreate.


I don't really have any step by step pictures of how I paint leather, but I gathered some, to show you more or less what I'm doing.

Menhom Dark Shadow (finished piece)

 Pegaso boys (WIP)

Mr Grinder (WIP)

 

Colours
Contemporary leather can be dyed in any colour you can imagine. So when you paint modern or s-f miniatures, feel free to choose whatever suits your colour sheme.
With historical pieces I'd rather go with natural shades of brown, gray and black, as I have no idea which colours were avaliable back in the past. If you are really curious about that, feel free to do some deep research on the subject:) I'll just go with natural browns. It's safer this way, and I won't have to explain to people that according to some old and dusty books, this shade of colour was avaliable on leather in that particular times;]

And I guess that's all I got to say about painting leather elements. I hope you'll find some tips and inspiration in this tutorial.

cheers

'eM