Looking for help with Reaper Bones Spider Queen.

[mjs101]

I am painting this spider queen, spider lower torso and legs, female upper torso, arms, head. This figure is pretty good, for Reaper Bones, but I really feel like I am painting a totally drab model, not the finale of an epic DnD campaign I'd envisioned when I picked up the figure.

View attachment 42635

The skin tone is something I'd picked up from Angel Giraldez's "Infinity: Painting Miniatures from A to Z" for a alien lady bust. It is purple, flesh tones, and Vallajo's green blue. I've layered on more of the same with increasing flesh tones to add highlights, especially around the forehead, nose, etc. and used a less flesh more purple for shadows. Unfortunately, the "shadow" under the left breast looks more like scar than a shadow.

First, although I overall like the alien flesh in concept , it is really leaving me let down in practice. Giraldez's recipe for a bust, airbrushed on with much more color depth and reddish cheeks, freckles, etc. is not scaling down to what I can accomplish with a paint brush and more modest skills.

Second, I know the fundamentals of color theory, so I feel something should be orange or yellow or brown to counter-balance the blue skin. I am leaning towards brown legs, but not certain if that will provide enough contrasting color.


I am not adverse to dripping the figure in simple green and starting over. I really want this figure to pop, and right now, it doesn't. All advice welcome.

 

[MAXXxxx]

Second, I know the fundamentals of color theory, so I feel something should be orange or yellow or brown to counter-balance the blue skin. I am leaning towards brown legs, but not certain if that will provide enough contrasting color.

for contrasting colors: make jewels gold. also dark brown legs + lighter yellow-brown abdomen with some spidery patterns based on real life spiders could do the trick.

also you could correct the dark shadow on the breast by repainting with a less dark one. similarly for the nipples.. I would repaint them from this dark blue to amix of lightest skincolor + red

 

[mjs101]

for contrasting colors: make jewels gold. also dark brown legs + lighter yellow-brown abdomen with some spidery patterns based on real life spiders could do the trick.

also you could correct the dark shadow on the breast by repainting with a less dark one. similarly for the nipples.. I would repaint them from this dark blue to amix of lightest skincolor + red

Thaks. I am thinking I'll model the body on this bad boy:

View attachment 42720

But probably add something like this is very dark blue. (I'll get half-way, anyway, I can always free hand in something like this later.)

View attachment 42721

I appreciate the help. I want this model to really be striking, but so far, I am not getting what I wanted from it.

 

[mjs101]

Ok, so I reverted the air-brush steps, making the negative image of what I'd originally planned. The abdomen is mostly purple giving way to brown with yellow/brown strips on top. The effect is pretty looks better in person than photograghed, but it is still purple with yellow patterns. I painted it yellow and then spattered brown. I masked the area I wanted to keep, and then two-tone sprayed on purple.

The legs got a coat brown with some coarsely blended highlights on the legs. I could have air brushed something smoother, but wanted to try a manual technique.

The jewelry got a yellow-brown. I didn't want to use metallic gold, so a really vague NMM gold. There is not much surface to work with.

I could still redo the abdomen. View attachment 42977

 

[Splurch]

It definitely has a lot more pop to it now and looks better. The spider portion looks much more lively and I think the purple abdomen matches the human portion skin color well.

 

[Trevor]

Looks great.
One thing that might give it that final 'pop' would be to highlight and blend the ends of the legs into the yellow of the abdomen.

 

[Pygmalion]

I like that model and what you did with it!