Completed Critique Young Miniatures Gordon Highlander (completed)

[Eludia]

Hey folks,

This is my latest finished piece. A couple of firsts with this one; my first bust from Young Miniatures and my first time using a limited palette.

Apart from the metals, the bust was painted using the following palette (all W&N Artisan water mixable oils):

Cad Red Medium
Yellow Ochre
Paynes Grey
Ivory Black
Titanium White

It proved surprisingly versatile and quite liberating and has made this project my most satisfying and stress-free to date, and by a fair margin. Only having 5 paints to think about frees up your mind to concentrate on other aspects of painting and I'd highly recommend giving it a go for at least one piece.

Comments and critique are most welcome, as always

 

[bistray]

Very neat and crisp work there Billy

 

[Viking Bob]

Excellent brush work, nice one for the cabinet.
Bob

 

[Rich Sculpts]

A lot to said for a limited palette, the other option to your colour selection is to use the 4 colour set (cyan, magenta, yellow, black (and white of course)). I've tried this with washes of acrylic inks in the past with pleasing results

CMYK color model

-Rich

 

[Wings5797]

Well done Mate.
This is a great show of your brush sills, superb.
This was My favorite challenge too, It works well I am sure that you agree. I have never gone back to a full pallet of oils and indeed I have just bought the same in Acrylic as well.......shock horror.
I am interested that you substituted a blue for Paynes grey for blue. Like you I used to go with Paynes in place of black but now I can get that colour from the colour wheel. Did you get the forest green dicing from the Paynes grey and yellow ocher?
Excellent work Billy and I feel you are another convert.
Best wishes and great painting,
Keith

 

[Wings5797]

A lot to said for a limited palette, the other option to your colour selection is to use the 4 colour set (cyan, magenta, yellow, black (and white of course)). I've tried this with washes of acrylic inks in the past with pleasing results

CMYK color model

-Rich

Sorry Rich mate I make that 5.
All the best,
Keith

 

[Stephan]

I like it, thanks for showing.

 

[swralph]

Nice and neat paintwork.

 

[Eludia]

Well done Mate.
This is a great show of your brush sills, superb.
This was My favorite challenge too, It works well I am sure that you agree. I have never gone back to a full pallet of oils and indeed I have just bought the same in Acrylic as well.......shock horror.
I am interested that you substituted a blue for Paynes grey for blue. Like you I used to go with Paynes in place of black but now I can get that colour from the colour wheel. Did you get the forest green dicing from the Paynes grey and yellow ocher?
Excellent work Billy and I feel you are another convert.
Best wishes and great painting,
Keith

Cheers Keith, it was you who convinced me that giving the limited palette a go was worth a shot (a few months ago now) so this is me just getting round to it now. I've been reading a lot about various palettes since then and settled for a Zorn palette because it gave a nice selection of muted colours and it's awesome for skin tones. But I still wasn't convinced about using black as a "blue" so I decided to add Paynes Grey as a sneaky way of getting a bit of Ultramarine in there

The green is mixed from PG and YO as you said, with a bit more YO added for highlights.

I'm going to give the Holbein Duo Aqua a go with the next project and I'm also going to see if I can drop the black and just work with the 4 colours. I'll also be using a Pyrolle red instead of Cad Red (I didn't fancy paying £20+ for a tube of Holbein CR)

 

[Rich Sculpts]

Sorry Rich mate I make that 5.
All the best,
Keith

Keith your quite correct - but if you underpaint a Grisaille over a white primer then use washes of inks to bring out the colour - you use 4

-Rich

 

[Eludia]

Keith your quite correct - but if you underpaint a Grisaille over a white primer then use washes of inks to bring out the colour - you use 4

-Rich

If you want to be really pedantic you could say that there are 5 paints but only 3 colours (+ black and white)

 

[Rich Sculpts]

If you want to be really pedantic you could say that there are 5 paints but only 3 colours (+ black and white)

Correct

 

[Wings5797]

Keith your quite correct - but if you underpaint a Grisaille over a white primer then use washes of inks to bring out the colour - you use 4

-Rich

Love it

 

[Wings5797]

Cheers Keith, it was you who convinced me that giving the limited palette a go was worth a shot (a few months ago now) so this is me just getting round to it now. I've been reading a lot about various palettes since then and settled for a Zorn palette because it gave a nice selection of muted colours and it's awesome for skin tones. But I still wasn't convinced about using black as a "blue" so I decided to add Paynes Grey as a sneaky way of getting a bit of Ultramarine in there

The green is mixed from PG and YO as you said, with a bit more YO added for highlights.

I'm going to give the Holbein Duo Aqua a go with the next project and I'm also going to see if I can drop the black and just work with the 4 colours. I'll also be using a Pyrolle red instead of Cad Red (I didn't fancy paying £20+ for a tube of Holbein CR)

Cheers for that Billy.
I really liked the green that you achieved with the Paynes grey. I think, cheekilly , I am going to wait and see how you get on with hitting the navy blue and kick the black, At the moment I am using a royal blue, black and a splash of red. it works well enough but I do like to play around with different colour combinations. For me I like to try to do at least one thing that I have not tried before on every piece.
I don't blame you for steering away from Holbien colours. I am sure that they are great to use but their price is crazy.
I am really pleased that you achieved the same sort of emotions and success that I had with this challenge.
Best wishes for your next venture Mate,
Keith

 

[Eludia]

I had a play around with the Holbein last night on another piece. I can't argue that they are not creamier and with less oil than the Artisan paint and they are undoubtedly an "artist quality" paint but I struggled with the consistency. I found they thinned ok with water but just didn't feel "right" so I'm going back to good ole "council" paints for the rest of the piece. I think I've just got used to how the Artisan handles, especially when thinned using their own thinner; almost like using (really) slow drying acrylics.