Completed Pegaso 90mm Islamic Cavalry
- Thread starter phil_h
- Start date
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Hi Phil
Just brilliant , your very good at explaining things , the legs protector looks super
I keep reading from the beginning and it’s really a great write up
Going to try the tape trick
Looking forward to seeing more
Happy benchtime
Nap
Just brilliant , your very good at explaining things , the legs protector looks super
I keep reading from the beginning and it’s really a great write up
Going to try the tape trick
Looking forward to seeing more
Happy benchtime
Nap
phil_h
A Fixture
- Joined
- Apr 22, 2016
- Messages
- 2,681
Hello Everybody,
Thanks for the comments!
It's been a little while since my last post, mainly due to waiting for things to dry - however, lots of progress has been made on other parts of the model.
Today, we'll finish off the freehand pattern and the rest of his leg protectors. We last left off with a scaffolding made up of a diamond pattern on our pants. We'll continue on using the same brush and paints from the last post.
Freehand Pt. 2
To start with, we're going to paint a box that intersects the corners of four of our diamonds using pure Cadmium orange. It looks like this:
Next we're going to continue painting similar boxes across each row of diamonds - here are a few more:
and on the right side (which due to having much more folds is a little harder going):
Let's finish up putting our boxes in:
Now as nice as those boxes look, I realized I screwed them up
. Because of the rest of the pattern I had in mind, I needed the boxes in each adjacent row staggered from each other, NOT aligned together, which is what happened. How I didn't notice this until it was too late was beyond me... sigh.
Anyway, I now had to rethink how I was going to change the pattern to accommodate that fact that I must have been completely in space. Continuing on...
The next element of our (now improvised) pattern will be to paint a star inside each box, like so:
There is one star painted in a box on the lower left section, here are a few more:
And here they are finished on both legs:
The next element we're going to paint into our pattern is an outline of the outside of each box, and the lines connecting them using pure Cadmium Yellow (Williamsburg). This is a little tricky, but with patience we can make it happen
.
Here is the first few outlines in place:
Doesn't look like much at first, but it only takes a few more to see what's going on; here we are about halfway done for both legs:
Here are the yellow outlines finished:
By the time our yellow outlines are finished, the stars we painted prior should be dry enough for the next part. We're going to paint a dot of pure Cadmium Yellow in the center of each star. Here is what it looks like:
So... this finishes the pattern and the freehand itself. However, we're still not finished. While the turquoise, orange and yellow all work nicely together, they're all too bright. But, they're too bright for a reason. That reason being we knew we would be glazing over them after they're all dry. By deliberately painting them too bright initially, we'll make sure that they'll all still come through after we glaze darker colors over them. (We want to bring the overall tonality way, way down)
For our glazing, we're going to use the following paints:
These are:
Aside from seeing where I'm going to apply the second darker glaze, you can also see just how much the first glaze of the Transparent Brown knocked things back. Let's smooth out our second glaze covering the shadow areas:
That finishes the glazes. I think these couple of glazes really add depth to the colors, and as a result, it's difficult to tell what colors were used originally.
And now, the last part of our leg protectors. After the glazing, they have more of a satin finish than I would like, so it's time to let them dry, and then apply the matte varnish. Here they are after varnishing:
There you have it! All done... it took a lot of effort, but I think it was worth it. I really wanted it to look like he had some Persian carpets for leg protectors, and I think that comes through.
Our next post will cover the inside of his cloak and the other elaborate freehand that will be painted.
Thanks for reading!
Regards,
Phil
Thanks for the comments!
It's been a little while since my last post, mainly due to waiting for things to dry - however, lots of progress has been made on other parts of the model.
Today, we'll finish off the freehand pattern and the rest of his leg protectors. We last left off with a scaffolding made up of a diamond pattern on our pants. We'll continue on using the same brush and paints from the last post.
Freehand Pt. 2
To start with, we're going to paint a box that intersects the corners of four of our diamonds using pure Cadmium orange. It looks like this:
Next we're going to continue painting similar boxes across each row of diamonds - here are a few more:
and on the right side (which due to having much more folds is a little harder going):
Let's finish up putting our boxes in:
Now as nice as those boxes look, I realized I screwed them up
. Because of the rest of the pattern I had in mind, I needed the boxes in each adjacent row staggered from each other, NOT aligned together, which is what happened. How I didn't notice this until it was too late was beyond me... sigh.Anyway, I now had to rethink how I was going to change the pattern to accommodate that fact that I must have been completely in space. Continuing on...
The next element of our (now improvised) pattern will be to paint a star inside each box, like so:
There is one star painted in a box on the lower left section, here are a few more:
And here they are finished on both legs:
The next element we're going to paint into our pattern is an outline of the outside of each box, and the lines connecting them using pure Cadmium Yellow (Williamsburg). This is a little tricky, but with patience we can make it happen
.Here is the first few outlines in place:
Doesn't look like much at first, but it only takes a few more to see what's going on; here we are about halfway done for both legs:
Here are the yellow outlines finished:
By the time our yellow outlines are finished, the stars we painted prior should be dry enough for the next part. We're going to paint a dot of pure Cadmium Yellow in the center of each star. Here is what it looks like:
So... this finishes the pattern and the freehand itself. However, we're still not finished. While the turquoise, orange and yellow all work nicely together, they're all too bright. But, they're too bright for a reason. That reason being we knew we would be glazing over them after they're all dry. By deliberately painting them too bright initially, we'll make sure that they'll all still come through after we glaze darker colors over them. (We want to bring the overall tonality way, way down)
For our glazing, we're going to use the following paints:
These are:
- Asphaltum Black Transparent
- Transparent Violet
- Transparent Brown Oxide
Aside from seeing where I'm going to apply the second darker glaze, you can also see just how much the first glaze of the Transparent Brown knocked things back. Let's smooth out our second glaze covering the shadow areas:
That finishes the glazes. I think these couple of glazes really add depth to the colors, and as a result, it's difficult to tell what colors were used originally.
And now, the last part of our leg protectors. After the glazing, they have more of a satin finish than I would like, so it's time to let them dry, and then apply the matte varnish. Here they are after varnishing:
There you have it! All done... it took a lot of effort, but I think it was worth it. I really wanted it to look like he had some Persian carpets for leg protectors, and I think that comes through
.Our next post will cover the inside of his cloak and the other elaborate freehand that will be painted.
Thanks for reading!
Regards,
Phil
Steve Ski
PlanetFigure Supporter
Excellent progression pics on a mind-numbing process making it much easier to understand that process. You are a brave Lad, Phil, cause some of these patterns are brutally difficult, and you're making it look easy.
Briggsy
PlanetFigure Supporter
Wow, that looks awesome, it's one thing to know a pattern is simply made of smaller repeating components and an entirely different thing looking at the end result. I haven't come across Williamsburg oils before bit as a Cadmium colour it must be pretty opaque with a high croma.
Cheers Simon
Cheers Simon
Ferris
A Fixture
Very impressed with the regularity of the pattern that you manage to achieve!
Cool.
Adrian
Cool.
Adrian
Agree there ......the pattern looks very complicated and effective now completed
As always Phil explains the steps so well with the accompanying pictures ...so we can look as the pattern progressed
Great update
Looking forward to seeing more
Happy benchtime
Nap
phil_h
A Fixture
- Joined
- Apr 22, 2016
- Messages
- 2,681
Hello Everybody,
As always, I'd like to first start off with thanking everybody who has left comments... so thanks guys!! Much appreciated.
Today's post is going to cover the other freehand we're going to be doing - this time on the inside of the figure's cloak. Let's get started!
The paints we will be using are these:
These are:
The first thing we are going to do is basecoat the inside of the cloak using pure Mars Yellow. I really like Mars Yellow - it's basically a very opaque, stronger version of Yellow Ochre. When applying initial basecoats, I like to use colors that are as opaque as possible, because it will provide nice, even coverage, and really help when blending shadows and highlights. This is especially true with yellow, which can be notoriously hard to paint. This is the inside of the figure's left side of the cloak base coated:
While that is still wet, we're going to block in our first shadow. Our shadow mix will be a combination of Mars Yellow, with just a little bit of the violet mixed into it. The Egyptian (Dioxizene) Violet is a very strong paint, and can contaminate other colors very, very quickly, so if you plan on using it, be careful. As soon as you add just teeny-tiny bit, you'll see how much darker the yellow is going to get. The nice thing is that since purple is yellow's complement, and our purple is very dark, we can get a very nice shadow tone that will look very natural. Let's go ahead and block in our first shadow:
You can see we're not adding a lot of shadows here, just a few in some targeted areas. Let's blend them in:
Now as I mentioned, because of the colors we choose for the shadows, they're very natural and soft. However, they don't provide a whole lot of contrast. For a color like yellow, that's usually fine, but there is one area where I definitely want more contrast. So we'll add more violet to our shadow mix and block in this second shadow:
I really wanted that area in that larger fold to be darker. So let's blend it in:
Even though it's now quite a bit darker it still looks very natural. Let's move onto the highlights.
For our highlights we're going to use pure Cadmium Yellow. The yellow we chose for our base coat, Mars Yellow, is pretty desaturated. So to highlight, we could just add white, but that would desaturate it even more, and create more of a washed-out look in our highlights. There is nothing wrong with this, it just wasn't the look I wanted. I wanted to portray a richer yellow fabric as opposed to more washed out, so I went with a yellow that has a really high chroma, and Cadmium Yellow is about as strong valued a Yellow can get. Also, compared to the Mars Yellow, it's highly saturated. It is also just plain brighter - but not by much - the contrast is really going to come from the difference in chroma and saturation.
Let's block in the highlights:
Hopefully the picture makes what I mentioned above make some sense. Here they are blended in:
Now that the inside of the cloak is painted, we can paint our freehand that is going to cover all this anyway.
Freehand Pattern
Since it wasn't in the photo above, the color that will be used to paint this pattern will be Cadmium Purple from Williamsburg. It's closer to red, but it does have a purplish hue to it as well. I actually like this color quite a bit and I'm always looking for excuses to use it. Since it has some purple to it, it'll work really nice with the yellow.
The first thing we're going to do is section off the inside of the cloak with a couple of panels. This will allow us to section off the cloak and paint two different types of patterns. Here is the first panel:
And here is the second panel:
On the other side:
Here are all the panels:
Next we're going to paint the freehand that will be on the outside of the panel. The freehand we are going to paint is going to be an organic and asymmetrical pattern based on vines and spirals. When doing a freehand that will cover a fairly large area, I find it's a good thing to just take your time, and be in no rush. If you mess up, just correct the mistake and move on - because you will mess up. I decided to start at the top left of the cloak and work my way down. Here I am just getting started on the top left corner of the inside of the cloak:
After taking a short break, we're going to get about halfway down this side:
After taking another short break, I finished off this side of the cloak:
Here is the right hand side of the cloak (which was done with many breaks as well):
Now, if this wasn't bad enough, to add insult to injury, there are many areas where the inside of the cloak is flipped over, and showing many other areas as well, so let's do those:
With the part that is outside the panels finished, we can now paint the patterns on the inside of the panels. To start with, we're going to paint line of Cadmium Purple inside the white borders of the panels:
With the borders finished, we can get started on our patterns. Now, to contrast with the pattern on the outside of the panels, which is a fairly organic pattern, we're going to go with something more geometrical and inorganic. The pattern will be based on combining "L" shaped elements in various ways. Let's get started:
In the photo above, we can see inside the top panel the start of our pattern - it looks a little bit like stairs. Let's do some more:
At this point we have the pattern finished in the top panel, and need to do the bottom. After some more work, here are all the panels filled in with the patterns:
It turns out that the yellow sash he is wearing is painted in the exact same way, with the exact same pattern we used to paint the areas outside of the panels. Here is that finished up:
With the sash finished off, that completes our post for today. Also, we're getting very close to finished off the entire figure - in the photo above, you can also see that the stirrups, boots, and scabbard are all finished, and that I've started on the outside of the cloak (which will be purple-ish to complement the yellow inside the cloak of course). This means that there are only a couple of elements left to paint!
Thanks for reading!
Regards,
Phil
As always, I'd like to first start off with thanking everybody who has left comments... so thanks guys!! Much appreciated
.Today's post is going to cover the other freehand we're going to be doing - this time on the inside of the figure's cloak. Let's get started!
The paints we will be using are these:
These are:
- Egyptian Violet from Williamsburg
- Mars Yellow from Vasari
- Cadmium Yellow Medium from Williamsburg
The first thing we are going to do is basecoat the inside of the cloak using pure Mars Yellow. I really like Mars Yellow - it's basically a very opaque, stronger version of Yellow Ochre. When applying initial basecoats, I like to use colors that are as opaque as possible, because it will provide nice, even coverage, and really help when blending shadows and highlights. This is especially true with yellow, which can be notoriously hard to paint. This is the inside of the figure's left side of the cloak base coated:
While that is still wet, we're going to block in our first shadow. Our shadow mix will be a combination of Mars Yellow, with just a little bit of the violet mixed into it. The Egyptian (Dioxizene) Violet is a very strong paint, and can contaminate other colors very, very quickly, so if you plan on using it, be careful
. As soon as you add just teeny-tiny bit, you'll see how much darker the yellow is going to get. The nice thing is that since purple is yellow's complement, and our purple is very dark, we can get a very nice shadow tone that will look very natural. Let's go ahead and block in our first shadow:
You can see we're not adding a lot of shadows here, just a few in some targeted areas. Let's blend them in:
Now as I mentioned, because of the colors we choose for the shadows, they're very natural and soft. However, they don't provide a whole lot of contrast. For a color like yellow, that's usually fine, but there is one area where I definitely want more contrast. So we'll add more violet to our shadow mix and block in this second shadow:
I really wanted that area in that larger fold to be darker. So let's blend it in:
Even though it's now quite a bit darker it still looks very natural. Let's move onto the highlights.
For our highlights we're going to use pure Cadmium Yellow. The yellow we chose for our base coat, Mars Yellow, is pretty desaturated. So to highlight, we could just add white, but that would desaturate it even more, and create more of a washed-out look in our highlights. There is nothing wrong with this, it just wasn't the look I wanted. I wanted to portray a richer yellow fabric as opposed to more washed out, so I went with a yellow that has a really high chroma, and Cadmium Yellow is about as strong valued a Yellow can get. Also, compared to the Mars Yellow, it's highly saturated. It is also just plain brighter - but not by much - the contrast is really going to come from the difference in chroma and saturation.
Let's block in the highlights:
Hopefully the picture makes what I mentioned above make some sense. Here they are blended in:
Now that the inside of the cloak is painted, we can paint our freehand that is going to cover all this anyway
.Freehand Pattern
Since it wasn't in the photo above, the color that will be used to paint this pattern will be Cadmium Purple from Williamsburg. It's closer to red, but it does have a purplish hue to it as well. I actually like this color quite a bit and I'm always looking for excuses to use it
. Since it has some purple to it, it'll work really nice with the yellow.The first thing we're going to do is section off the inside of the cloak with a couple of panels. This will allow us to section off the cloak and paint two different types of patterns. Here is the first panel:
And here is the second panel:
On the other side:
Here are all the panels:
Next we're going to paint the freehand that will be on the outside of the panel. The freehand we are going to paint is going to be an organic and asymmetrical pattern based on vines and spirals. When doing a freehand that will cover a fairly large area, I find it's a good thing to just take your time, and be in no rush. If you mess up, just correct the mistake and move on - because you will mess up
. I decided to start at the top left of the cloak and work my way down. Here I am just getting started on the top left corner of the inside of the cloak:
After taking a short break, we're going to get about halfway down this side:
After taking another short break, I finished off this side of the cloak:
Here is the right hand side of the cloak (which was done with many breaks as well):
Now, if this wasn't bad enough, to add insult to injury, there are many areas where the inside of the cloak is flipped over, and showing many other areas as well, so let's do those:
With the part that is outside the panels finished, we can now paint the patterns on the inside of the panels. To start with, we're going to paint line of Cadmium Purple inside the white borders of the panels:
With the borders finished, we can get started on our patterns. Now, to contrast with the pattern on the outside of the panels, which is a fairly organic pattern, we're going to go with something more geometrical and inorganic. The pattern will be based on combining "L" shaped elements in various ways. Let's get started:
In the photo above, we can see inside the top panel the start of our pattern - it looks a little bit like stairs. Let's do some more:
At this point we have the pattern finished in the top panel, and need to do the bottom. After some more work, here are all the panels filled in with the patterns:
It turns out that the yellow sash he is wearing is painted in the exact same way, with the exact same pattern we used to paint the areas outside of the panels. Here is that finished up:
With the sash finished off, that completes our post for today. Also, we're getting very close to finished off the entire figure - in the photo above, you can also see that the stirrups, boots, and scabbard are all finished, and that I've started on the outside of the cloak (which will be purple-ish to complement the yellow inside the cloak of course
). This means that there are only a couple of elements left to paint!Thanks for reading!
Regards,
Phil
Briggsy
PlanetFigure Supporter
Wow again, very neat and tidy patterns, the one inside the panels looks reminiscent of curtains my parents had in to 70's. Also very informative over the painting of yellow, so easy to.make it look dirty rather than shaded, well it does when I try anyway!
Cheers Simon
Cheers Simon
phil_h
A Fixture
- Joined
- Apr 22, 2016
- Messages
- 2,681
Hello Everybody,
Thanks for the comments guys!
Alrighty, I think we've done enough freehand to last quite some time, so to spare you all further torture, this post will be relatively short and sweet. Today we're going to paint the outside of our guy's cloak. we're going to paint this a dark purple color. Let's go!
Here are the paints used:
They are from left to right:
If you've been following along, all these paints (except the last) should be pretty familiar by now. The only new paint here is the Titanium-Zinc White. By mixing in Zinc with a traditional Titanium White, you can drastically reduce it's opacity and tinting strength. This can be advantageous for a couple of reasons - but mainly it's easier to control your values when used in mixes. Pure Titanium White is a really strong color, and when used too much can create a washed out or "chalky" (as they say) look to highlights, etc. By using a white that can be a little less harsh, I can add quite a bit to my tones for highlights, and still retain quite a bit of the original "color". It can also be used in its pure form to create much more "softer" highlights than just pure Titanium White. (I hope this makes sense).
To basecoat our cloak, we're going to start with Cadmium Purple which will give us a nice opaque base, but I want something more "purple". So, we'll mix in some of the Egyptian Violet until we get the tone we want. Here is the cloak base coated:
This is exactly the nice rich purple tone we're looking for. Also, it's pretty dark. So instead of using this as a mid-tone, and then painting in shadows and highlights, we'll use this as our darkest tone, and then create a couple of successive highlights to create our volumes and contrast.
Our first highlight will be our base tone with Naples Yellow mixed into it. This keeps us consistent with our purple/yellow complimentary color scheme that we've now been using in several places, and really helps to keep and enhance the overall color harmony. This is important, because well... there is a lot going on with this guy. Here is our first highlight blocked in:
It looks a little pink-ish at the moment, but that will go away once we blend it in and then we'll be back in purple territory:
So far so good, but as in several cases, there is not enough contrast, so we'll go ahead and create a second highlight. This highlight will be a mix of the first highlight color and the Titanium-Zinc white. Just keep adding until you get to a tone you're happy with. Here is the 2nd highlight blocked in:
Of course, the area that the 2nd highlight is placed in a smaller and a little more pointed area than our 1st highlight. Here it is blended in with everything:
Notice that by using the Titanium-Zinc white, we've been able to get a really nice, naturally, contrasting highlight, while still being "purple" and not having things get washed out.
Ok, now we'll let this dry and take stock... ... (Imagine it's now the following morning)
Here is our cloak nice and finished:
There you have it! The next thing we'll tackle is our figure's face; which after all these fabrics should be a nice change of pace.
Thanks for reading!
Regards,
-Phil
Thanks for the comments guys!
Alrighty, I think we've done enough freehand to last quite some time, so to spare you all further torture, this post will be relatively short and sweet
. Today we're going to paint the outside of our guy's cloak. we're going to paint this a dark purple color. Let's go!Here are the paints used:
They are from left to right:
- Egyptian Violet from Williamsburg
- Cadmium Purple from Williamsburg
- Naples Yellow (also) from Williamsburg
- Titanium-Zinc White from Vasari
If you've been following along, all these paints (except the last) should be pretty familiar by now. The only new paint here is the Titanium-Zinc White. By mixing in Zinc with a traditional Titanium White, you can drastically reduce it's opacity and tinting strength. This can be advantageous for a couple of reasons - but mainly it's easier to control your values when used in mixes. Pure Titanium White is a really strong color, and when used too much can create a washed out or "chalky" (as they say) look to highlights, etc. By using a white that can be a little less harsh, I can add quite a bit to my tones for highlights, and still retain quite a bit of the original "color". It can also be used in its pure form to create much more "softer" highlights than just pure Titanium White. (I hope this makes sense
).To basecoat our cloak, we're going to start with Cadmium Purple which will give us a nice opaque base, but I want something more "purple". So, we'll mix in some of the Egyptian Violet until we get the tone we want. Here is the cloak base coated:
This is exactly the nice rich purple tone we're looking for. Also, it's pretty dark. So instead of using this as a mid-tone, and then painting in shadows and highlights, we'll use this as our darkest tone, and then create a couple of successive highlights to create our volumes and contrast.
Our first highlight will be our base tone with Naples Yellow mixed into it. This keeps us consistent with our purple/yellow complimentary color scheme that we've now been using in several places, and really helps to keep and enhance the overall color harmony. This is important, because well... there is a lot going on with this guy
. Here is our first highlight blocked in:
It looks a little pink-ish at the moment, but that will go away once we blend it in and then we'll be back in purple territory:
So far so good, but as in several cases, there is not enough contrast, so we'll go ahead and create a second highlight. This highlight will be a mix of the first highlight color and the Titanium-Zinc white. Just keep adding until you get to a tone you're happy with. Here is the 2nd highlight blocked in:
Of course, the area that the 2nd highlight is placed in a smaller and a little more pointed area than our 1st highlight. Here it is blended in with everything:
Notice that by using the Titanium-Zinc white, we've been able to get a really nice, naturally, contrasting highlight, while still being "purple" and not having things get washed out.
Ok, now we'll let this dry and take stock... ... (Imagine it's now the following morning
)Here is our cloak nice and finished:
There you have it! The next thing we'll tackle is our figure's face; which after all these fabrics should be a nice change of pace
.Thanks for reading!
Regards,
-Phil
Briggsy
PlanetFigure Supporter
Very nice colour and interesting using other than Titanium as a lightening agent. I wish I'd known that when I painted flats with oils, I did everything possible to avoid using white and black to change colours.
Cheers Simon
Cheers Simon
JH Figures
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jul 12, 2022
- Messages
- 160
Ah man, I am in the process of learning oils over acrylics, this SBS is pure treasure for me - thanks a lot!
phil_h
A Fixture
- Joined
- Apr 22, 2016
- Messages
- 2,681
Hello Everybody,
Simon and JH, thanks for the comments!
Simon - it turns out there are quite a bit of whites out there aside from Titanium - there's Zinc White, Flake White, Cremnitz White, Lead White, etc... I mainly use Titanium White and Titanium-Zinc White. However, pure Zinc White can be really useful too. It's very transparent, and if you're working with other transparent colors, it can subtly brighten them up without making them more opaque. This can be really useful for glazes and really, really soft highlights or color shifts.
JH - Glad your finding this useful. I find painting with oils to be very relaxing - there is never any need to rush and it's nice to just take your time and move at your own pace.
So for today we're going to paint...
The Face
For me the thing that really stands out with this guy's face is that he's pretty angry, and appears to be yelling something or other. In other words... he's pretty pissed off and he's letting you know. So, with the painting, I'd like to try to convey that as much as possible (and let me emphasize the try part of that sentence).
For the skin tones lets look at the paints used:
Left to right they are:
Except for the black, this could be considered to be a fairly standard, classic skin tone palette, and we're going to mix our main skin tones from it. In addition to these paints, I also used these as well:
These are:
First, we'll mix our basic skin tone from which all our other tones will be derived from. This was done as follows:
Now, because I forgot to take a picture or two prior, the pic above actually shows two things:
Now the face has a little bit more color to it, and the shadows have a lot more contrast to them. Also in this photo are the shadows underneath the eyes. These were made by mixing the crimson and ultramarine blue to get a purplish tone, and then a touch of the base skin tone mix was added.
With our shadows in, let's add some highlights. The highlights were made by mixing a separate tone of Yellow Ochre and Warm White, and then adding a very small (just a touch) of our base skin tone mix to that. Here are the highlights blocked in:
And here they are blended:
I find that with the basic highlights and shadows done, now is a good time to make adjustments, tweak things, do some clean up work, etc. Here is the first round of refinements:
Aside from the clean up and refinements, I also painted the lips. A mix of Alizarin Crimson and French Ultramarine Blue was used. However, the shadows under the eyes used more blue, here we use a bit more red. Some of our base skin tone was mixed in as well. The teeth were also painted - a mix of Yellow Ochre and Warm White was used for those.
The next step for me was to do the hair and beard. This will help frame the face, and allow further refinement. The hair was painted using pure Ivory Black, and the odd grey hair was painted with Warm White mixed in. Here is the hair painted and further clean up/refinement:
Almost there! Next we want to paint the eyes. So at this point, we'll let everything dry. This is very important. Eyes are (at least for me) a giant pain in the butt, so I like everything to be dry; because if I mess up the placement, I can go in pretty bluntly with the white-spirit, erase them, and try again. By making sure everything is dry, I won't damage any of the paint work underneath with the white spirit.
As far as the eyes themselves go, it's pretty simple, I'm going to do two things:
This also concludes the work on the face (although once the eyes dry, I may go back and further refine).
At this point, the only things left are the shield, turban, and groundwork/base - already thinking about my next project... The new Mongolian Cavalry model from Pegaso is looking pretty good...
Thanks for reading!
Regards,
Phil
Simon and JH, thanks for the comments!
Simon - it turns out there are quite a bit of whites out there aside from Titanium - there's Zinc White, Flake White, Cremnitz White, Lead White, etc... I mainly use Titanium White and Titanium-Zinc White. However, pure Zinc White can be really useful too. It's very transparent, and if you're working with other transparent colors, it can subtly brighten them up without making them more opaque. This can be really useful for glazes and really, really soft highlights or color shifts.
JH - Glad your finding this useful. I find painting with oils to be very relaxing - there is never any need to rush and it's nice to just take your time and move at your own pace.
So for today we're going to paint...
The Face
For me the thing that really stands out with this guy's face is that he's pretty angry, and appears to be yelling something or other. In other words... he's pretty pissed off and he's letting you know. So, with the painting, I'd like to try to convey that as much as possible (and let me emphasize the try part of that sentence).
For the skin tones lets look at the paints used:
Left to right they are:
- Ivory Black from Williamsburg
- Burnt Sienna from Holbein
- Italian Yellow Ocher from Williamsburg
- Warm White from Michael Harding
Except for the black, this could be considered to be a fairly standard, classic skin tone palette, and we're going to mix our main skin tones from it. In addition to these paints, I also used these as well:
These are:
- Red Umber from Michael Harding
- Alizarin Crimson from Williamsburg
- French Ultramarine Blue Light Extra from Old Holland (I have no idea what they mean by "Extra" but I wanted a nice blue, and that happened to be laying about)
First, we'll mix our basic skin tone from which all our other tones will be derived from. This was done as follows:
- Mix some of the Burnt Sienna into the Yellow Ochre. You should mix just enough Burn Sienna into it so that the mix is only just slightly more red than yellow.
- Add a small amount of black - and let me say this again... a small amount into the mix from above. Adding the black will do two things... 1. make it darker (yes, talk about the obvious), and 2. desaturate the entire mix. You're going for something that I can really only kind of describe as dark-ish orange. This step is far more about getting our color desaturated than it is about making it darker... however... I wanted to go for an overall darker skin tone (he's definitely not a Viking), hence the black. Usually, you typically see something like Cobalt Blue, Green Oxide or other similar tones used for this, but by using black, I get a 2-for-1; I get to desaturate my mix and bring the overall color down.
- Finally now that we have the right level of desaturation and color, we're going to add just a little bit of the Warm White to brighten it up again. Now, an obvious question to ask would be, "Why add black if we're just going to add white to it in the very next step? Isn't that kind of dumb?" The answer is we want to use the black to desaturate the tone first, and only then use the white to brighten it up just a tiny bit.
Now, because I forgot to take a picture or two prior, the pic above actually shows two things:
- The basecoat
- Some preliminary shadows done with the Red Umber mixed into the base skin tone mix. The problem is that there is not enough contrast, and I also wanted the shadow tone in certain areas to have a little bit more of a red nuance to it.
Now the face has a little bit more color to it, and the shadows have a lot more contrast to them. Also in this photo are the shadows underneath the eyes. These were made by mixing the crimson and ultramarine blue to get a purplish tone, and then a touch of the base skin tone mix was added.
With our shadows in, let's add some highlights. The highlights were made by mixing a separate tone of Yellow Ochre and Warm White, and then adding a very small (just a touch) of our base skin tone mix to that. Here are the highlights blocked in:
And here they are blended:
I find that with the basic highlights and shadows done, now is a good time to make adjustments, tweak things, do some clean up work, etc. Here is the first round of refinements:
Aside from the clean up and refinements, I also painted the lips. A mix of Alizarin Crimson and French Ultramarine Blue was used. However, the shadows under the eyes used more blue, here we use a bit more red. Some of our base skin tone was mixed in as well. The teeth were also painted - a mix of Yellow Ochre and Warm White was used for those.
The next step for me was to do the hair and beard. This will help frame the face, and allow further refinement. The hair was painted using pure Ivory Black, and the odd grey hair was painted with Warm White mixed in. Here is the hair painted and further clean up/refinement:
Almost there! Next we want to paint the eyes. So at this point, we'll let everything dry. This is very important. Eyes are (at least for me) a giant pain in the butt, so I like everything to be dry; because if I mess up the placement, I can go in pretty bluntly with the white-spirit, erase them, and try again. By making sure everything is dry, I won't damage any of the paint work underneath with the white spirit.
As far as the eyes themselves go, it's pretty simple, I'm going to do two things:
- Paint a very thin black eyeshadow line at the bottom of the top eyelids.
- Paint a black dot for the eye. I'm also going to paint them just a very, very, small hair, larger than usual, to help emphasize just how pissed off he is.
- The eyes will also be oriented towards the left keeping in line with how his head is turned.
This also concludes the work on the face (although once the eyes dry, I may go back and further refine).
At this point, the only things left are the shield, turban, and groundwork/base - already thinking about my next project... The new Mongolian Cavalry model from Pegaso is looking pretty good...
Thanks for reading!
Regards,
Phil
BRAN
PlanetFigure Supporter
Very good step by step, thanks for sharing.
Briggsy
PlanetFigure Supporter
Great description of the skin tone process, though I have one complaint! After 20 years of acrylics you are really making me miss oils, I just don't think I have long enough left to relearn all I have forgotten! Really enjoying this, many thanks.
Cheers Simon
Cheers Simon
Hi Phil
Words fail me with this SBS......so so detailed and the results really do show the skill you’ve got , not only in patterns but with knowledge of colours ...just amazing
Love the main cloak colour
Face looks great as well
Thanks for all the time you dedicate to this VBench I am leaning so much ref Oils
Look forward to seeing more and to seeing the next project
Happy painting
Nap
Words fail me with this SBS......so so detailed and the results really do show the skill you’ve got , not only in patterns but with knowledge of colours ...just amazing
Love the main cloak colour
Face looks great as well
Thanks for all the time you dedicate to this VBench I am leaning so much ref Oils
Look forward to seeing more and to seeing the next project
Happy painting
Nap
Steve Ski
PlanetFigure Supporter
Awesome blending and brush work, Phil! That detail work is still got me goin, woof!
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