WIP Critique The Captive - 1758

[Aveleira]

Wow Zeno! I think you're going to have a great piece here!
Such a beautifull base and composition. The painting of both figures is very good also!
Following

Regards
Pedro

 

[tiberius57]

Thanks Anthony and Pedro! Much appreciated!
Working now at the groundwork. I don't want to go to crazy, just enough to emphasize the story.
Cheers,
Zeno

 

[bwildfong]

Great subject, great composition (as always) and I really admire your ability with highlighting - gutsy with the contrast, yet natural-looking all the same.

Can't wait to see the groundwork treatment!

Cheers,
Brian

 

[tiberius57]

Thanks Brian! Much appreciated!
Hope to finish before Christmas! Still lots to do, but it's taking shape. The tree is the big challenge! The first one! Oh, boy...
Cheers,
Zeno

 

[tiberius57]

I did some more work and the base is ready for painting.
Here is how the groundwork looks today.
Thanks for watching and let me know your thoughts.
Cheers,
Zeno

Here are few close ups.

 

[tiberius57]

I'm very close to finish this piece. Soon I'll post the final pictures. Till then here is my warrior before it goes on the base.
Cheers,
Zeno

 

[billyturnip]

Looking good Zeno, I like your skin tones.

 

[Colin_Fraser]

I like your red jacket....not too orange as its often depicted. You are scooting along through this one.

Colini

 

[bwildfong]

I did some more work and the base is ready for painting.
Here is how the groundwork looks today.
Thanks for watching and let me know your thoughts.
Cheers,
Zeno

Loving the basing of this one - the "spill" of the groundwork into the above- and the below-grade is really neat - the cantilevered tree is especially cool! Looking forward to seeing this one finished, Zeno.

Seasons Greetings all,

Brian

 

[bwildfong]

Oops - clicked "Quote" instead of "Edit" - duh-oh!

 

[tiberius57]

Thanks guys! Much appreciated!

I finished this vignette. The final pictures can be found here:
http://www.planetfigure.com/threads/the-captive-1758.68723/#navigation
Thanks for watching and hope you'll like the final display.
Cheers,
Zeno

 

[DaddyO]

Hi Zeno

Just looking back on this one I'm intrigued by the choice of undercoats . . . funnily enough I was going to start a thread on the subject anyway, but this seems a good place to start -
Black undercoat for the Indian and white for the captive? Any special reasons for this?
I normally use white for undercoat, but often see black being used and sometimes grey. Is there any reason other than personal preference?
Cheers
Paul

 

[tiberius57]

Hi Paul,

In this particularly case I tried to create a contrast between the two characters. One, due to the nature of the characters (female - civil and male - warrior) and second due to the type of interaction between them. In order to achieve this, I undercoated the warrior in black primer and the female character in grey primer. I noticed during painting other figures that the basic colour tint is influenced by the undercoat. It is darker applied on black primer and lighter on grey primer. This, using the same colour and applying the same number of layers (usually 3 layers). Acrylics are translucent and need a fair amount of layers to be opaque. So, playing with this two properties I tried to create the mood described above.
In general, my approach is to use black primer on the surfaces painted in dark colours and grey primer for light colours. As an example, recently I did a Spanish Light Infantry private which has his original equipment finished in dark colours as well as light colours. In this case what I did is I undercoated the figure in grey primer. After that I used black acrylic paint for the areas which received dark colours, as undercoat. This helped also with the underlining were the pieces of equipment are crossing each other or overlapping other pieces of equipment. When this was done I started to paint the individual colours.
Of cause, what I said above can be done in many ways. This is just the way I got used to. I found that in this way is easier for me to get a translucent effect or an opaque surface and some times to manipulate the basic colour tint.
Hope that it helps and, please, let me know your thoughts and opinion.

Cheers,
Zeno

 

[peedee]

Zeno.. terrific so far.

Great scource inspiration,
great sculpt,
great planning,
great painting.

Looking forward to the mouth watering finished scene!

Paul.

 

[tiberius57]

Hi Paul,

Thanks a lot for your very kind words and I'm glad that you like it.
I finished this piece about a year ago. Here is the link to the finished vignette.
http://www.planetfigure.com/threads/the-captive-1758.68723/

Cheers and thanks again!
Zeno