Completed Nubian Guard - 75mm

[phil_h]

Hello Everybody,

Thanks again for the kind words. I've had house guests over (the burden of living in a tropical paradise - everybody wants to visit) for the last couple of weeks, so painting-wise, it's been pretty quiet. However...

I did manage to paint his various weapons (swords, pistol), and the small piece of armor holding them - fairly minor elements:

Next up to paint is the big yellow cloak. Unfortunately, there are some issues; there are a ton of gaps that need to be filled, and once that's sorted out, the entire thing needs to be acrylic base coated again. Once that bit of work is finished it'll be onto the actual painting, which I'll write up.

Thanks for reading,
Phil

 

[Rob]

The cloak will be a challenge, yellow is a tough colour to work with. Looking at some of the finished versions of this (lovely) figure around the web the preference seems to be for a citrus yellow rather than an ochre. Which way are you thinking of going?

 

[MalcC]

Nice work.

Malc

 

[Redcap]

Fabulous work.
Gary

 

[phil_h]

The cloak will be a challenge, yellow is a tough colour to work with. Looking at some of the finished versions of this (lovely) figure around the web the preference seems to be for a citrus yellow rather than an ochre. Which way are you thinking of going?

To me, looking at the art print and other reference copies, I think the citrus yellow is far too saturated for my taste. I'm going to stick to more earth tones - most likely a combination of some sort of yellow ochre and naples yellow. The nice thing is that if it turns out to be too desaturated, I can always glaze some more color back in.

Nice work.

Malc

Fabulous work.
Gary

Thanks a lot guys!

 

[Nap]

Hi Phil

Nice work on the weapons , looking forward to the cloak and the way you approach it

Have fun with the colour on the cloak

Happy benchtime

Nap

 

[phil_h]

Hello Everybody,

Finally had some time this week to finish off the big yellow cloak this guy's wearing. It actually turned out to be quite a bit more simple than I originally thought it would be. So without further ado...

The paints used were:

From left to right we have:

• Transparent Brown Oxide from Schmincke for shadows.
• Burnt Umber from Michael Harding for deeper shadows (I wound up not using this).
• Mars Yellow Light and Naples Yellow from Williamsburg.
• Titanium White from Old Holland.

(It turned out that these colors worked our so well, I didn't have to mix any tones and used them all just straight out of the tubes. This made things considerably easier.)

First, the entire cloak was base coated with a layer of pure Mars Yellow Light. Once the paint was on, I used a clean brush to wipe off all the excess. In addition to providing a nice layer for blending all the additional colors, this step also helps remove any visible brush strokes. Here is the base coat:

Next are the shadows. For those, I wanted to do something on the softer and more natural side, so I used Transparent Brown Oxide (as shown above). Since it's a transparent color, it's going to shade very softly and subtly to anything you mix it into. I felt that my usual Burnt Umber would've been too dark or strong. Here are the shadows blocked in:

Interesting enough, when Transparent Brown Oxide is applied prior to blending, it looks pretty stark and none too subtle. BUT... check it out once it's blended in:

It almost completely disappears except for a nice warm, subtle, shadow tone. After doing some more clean up and further blending, I moved onto the first of the highlights. For the first highlight, pure Naples Yellow was used straight from the tube. Here is the highlight blocked in:

And here they are blended in:

After taking a look, I wanted some stronger highlights, so I went back and applied a second highlight using pure Titanium White in select areas. Here is the blocking in:

And... here they are blended:

I think they really help give a bit more contrast to the form of the cloak. This also completes it.

Thanks for reading!
Regards,
Phil

 

[Briggsy]

Phil, just caught up on this and I have to say I've really enjoyed it, your painting is brilliant and it's so nice to read about painting in oils, makes me realise how much I miss them. The Orientalist movements provides so many lovely subjects and this one is among my favourites.

Cheers Simon

 

[Rob]

Lovely yellow tone, going with the more natural colour was a great choice.

 

[NigelR]

Lovely work. Stop tempting me to go back to using oils.......

 

[phil_h]

Phil, just caught up on this and I have to say I've really enjoyed it, your painting is brilliant and it's so nice to read about painting in oils, makes me realise how much I miss them. The Orientalist movements provides so many lovely subjects and this one is among my favourites.

Cheers Simon

Thanks so much for the kind words, and I totally agree about those periods! Never too late to start up with the oils again!

Lovely yellow tone, going with the more natural colour was a great choice.

Thanks Rob, glad you liked the choice in yellows

Lovely work. Stop tempting me to go back to using oils.......

Thanks - I can't see how anybody would want to paint in anything except oils! (Acrylics are just way too fiddly for me - I love the slow and relaxed pace of oils)


Another quick update as well - After spending a good deal of time looking at the actual painting, I decided on a couple of things...

1. The pinstripes were just too far apart, so I decided to put another stripe in between them, therefore doubling the total amount of pinstripes. I think this makes a huge improvement, and brings it much more aligned to the original artwork.
2. There was a little too much contrast with the yellow cloak, and looking at the painting, the most important highlight in that area is the bottom of his headscarf - which purposefully leads the eye right to his face. So with that in mind, I knocked back all of the highlights at the top of the yellow cloak, which distract and take away from that nice flow. It's fairly subtle, but I think it makes quite a difference.
3. Compared to the painting, the blue tone for his skirt is just a tad too saturated. So after all the new pinstripes are completely dry, I'll probably glaze some sort of brown tone over everything to help desaturate it.

Here is a photo with the new pinstripes and toned down yellow cloak in place:

Of course, I'm still working on the shield, just some final glazing and highlights - but I have to wait until everything is dry on the skirt before I glue it on.

Thanks everybody!

 

[Briggsy]

Agree about the extra pin stripes, looks more in scale if that makes sense and the highlights on the cloak will depend on how much sunlight is intended to hit it. Looking really good though.

Cheers Simon

 

[Nap]

Hi Phil

Apologies catching up on this , great explanation of the benchtime , particularly useful regarding the cloak ...( going to use that with Acrylics ...sorry for mentioning the " A" word ...lol )

The pinstripes looked good before but now really spot on .....how you did the additional ones I don't know ..nice one

Following with interest

Have FUN @ the OILY bench

Nap

 

[phil_h]

Hello everybody,

After a break of doing some travelling, vacationing, and having a lot of guest over the last couple of months, I finally finished this guy:

More pics can be found here

Thanks so much for following the SBS!! Hope you all enjoyed it

Regards,
Phil

 

[Nap]

Great SBS Phil

Look forward to seeing more from you

Have fun at the bench

Nap

 

[clubcat]

What a wonderful article. I hadn't considered using brown to shade blues but the outcome speaks for itself.
Thank you and congratulations
Melanie