Ricardo523's WIP thread

[Graishak]

Nice start with the sorceress. Reaper does some really nice detailed minis. Sometimes I'm struggling a bit with the consistency of the metal (esp. for weapons).
But the level of detail of those minis is quite impressive.

The goblin might get an upgrade for shading (cloak + skin) - Colors chosen are quite nice. I guess worth to revisit, as you already mentioned.

 

[alim192]

looking good that blue on her dress is very nice try using deep purple to shade and use a pale yellow to highlight as it will give the warm highlight with a cold shade if that makes sense.

 

[ricardo523]

OK, long time no post. I've only had 30 minutes here and there to paint, so taking photos has been low priority! So here is the lady so far. I'd actually started the shading/highlighting before @alim192's suggestion. However, my intention is to do the "magic ray" at the top as fire to counterbalance the coolness of the blue, and if I get the bottle, I might try to do some OSL from it... If.

View attachment 67145

Next up is the fire, which I have only tried once and it was a bit of a disaster. (My next mini in line is a fire elemental though....)

 

[ricardo523]

Hmm, I've done the fire but made a bit of a pig's ear of it. I'm sure it's rescuable, but not sure how at the moment. The texture of the fire is super fine, which isn't helping as I'm not yet that accurate with a brush


View attachment 67245

 

[Coyotebreaks]

if you pick out some of the most raised edges with the side of brush with an extreme highlight, that should help it to pop a little more. doesn't look terrible now though.

 

[ricardo523]

CB- on the fire? As far as I can tell with fire it goes the opposite way - e.g. hottest/lightest in the recesses, and then increasingly darker yellow>orang->red at the raised edges (or even to black). What colour dow you suggest? I was thinking of adding a darker crimson to the fire on the raised areas to give more depth.

 

[Maenas]

Check this reference... it might help. Not the best out there, but still much better than the one I am able to produce now...
http://www.coolminiornot.com/387592

This other one is from the introducer of OSL to the mini world Victoria Lamb:
http://www.coolminiornot.com/37085

 

[KruleBear]

One think that is always brought up in the forums is to add "more contrast". In your case the colors look right, but for the flame they are the same darkness from a black to white perspective. One trick is to convert the photo to black and white. That suggests to me that the outer edge of the flame near her right hand needs to be darker. Hit those edges with a dark red or add some black to the red you used. Likewise, the source of the flame could be brighter perhaps adding white to your yellow and painting the football shaped flame base on the staff with it.

View attachment 67309

My efforts have sucked at this, but the blue flame on my demon my demonstrate where I struggled to get close to this concept. http://www.coolminiornot.com/390239?browseid=5889487.

 

[Chaotic Creations]

Very nice work mate... well as far as the flames go I believe they can be painted either way, both styles are different in the way they look but both work well.
You have done a great job so far on this mini, the blends look nice a smooth... looking at the pic provided by krule, I think you could really push the glow of the flames a lot further as at the moment it seems a similar light value to that of the zenthial highlights. In saying this, it still looks great as is though, so not necessarily needed, just something you could do to take it to the next level.

 

[ricardo523]

OK so I accidentally came to the same conclusion as Krule. Accidentally because I just worked on it some more and it looked better. Couldn't figure out what was wrong and why it was now better...
Then Krule posted and nailed it!

So here is the latest version:-

View attachment 67343

I basically blended more orange then darkened up the edges with a darker red. On the extreme edges I used a brown wash to get the slightly smokey effect. I didn't want to push it too far though, I wanted the magical fire to be "clean". I need to touch up the blends on the staff as I've noticed the pure white is a bit heavy handed. Can't really see it on the mini but it's obvious on the photo.

I'll probably also add some white to the *really* hot parts as suggested, and maybe darken the flame by the hand.

I've also started a couple more mini's. First up the "sexy" fire elemental. Why a fire elemental should be sexy I don't know, but it's a cool figure and the proceeds for buying it went to charity so *shrug*.

View attachment 67344

It's a really great mini from Zealot apart from one thing; it looks like the mould wasn't aligned properly. You probably won't notice from the pictures but there are parts in the flame that are abrupt and basically impossible (at least, for me) to patch over.

 

[Coyotebreaks]

thats looking sweet now. apologies for my flawed advice earlier, I was essentially trying to say more contrast, but forgot that fire was backwards.

 

[KruleBear]

Lookin good.