Head, shoulder, knee and toes (knee and toes). It may be a royal pain trying to colour-match freehand mistakes on a stippled shoulder gradient, but here we are. It’s all just a mix of the same two paints. How bad could it get 😬
And he’ll need those mittens, it’s cold in space.
Fancy Trousers time.
I appear to be locked into an Accidental Grimdark with this one.
Random midweek experiments: I wondered if I’d be able to get a smooth blend from quite dark to quite bright going brown-to-ivories, without resorting to an airbrush. I think the answer is definitely ’no’, at least with this approach. It gives its own effect though, the scratchiness of it could probably be read as weathering? I’ll have to give stippling a try.
What do we reckon here, HobbyPals? Is the freehanding actually accomplishing anything, or just distracting from the initial pleasant simplicity?
/taps temple: can’t be a bog standard ork checkerboard if it’s tilted into diamonds, that’s clearly elf territory…
Another incredibly quick ‘two-tone’ test.
It’s not the tidiest highlighting job in the world, but I’m slightly irritated that this very quick two-tone ‘tester’ model is already looking nicer than the stuff I spend weeks on…
Blend, blend, blend—checks to confirm that almost nothing has changed—blend, blend, blend. What even is white?
This stretch could be a long one: the Actual White bits.
Adding blue-gray over the vibrant white primer and a lesser white to the brightest white to try to make blue-gray and lesser white look like a more vibrant white (at scale). As you do.
Deep in the ugly, patchy phase of it at the moment.
Starting on gloves and bangles. Critical aspects of any wargaming mini.
Filling in the remaining white space on the torso. It’s only when you take the photo that you realise there’s a fair bit more imprecision than you saw with your Human Eyeball. Fair play to the YouTubers out there getting crispy lines while filming what they’re up to.
Expanding the red, waiting for the storm.
Slowly now pushing the painted contrast to better match the boosted version, trying to make the chest ornamentation seem like a distinct material from the fabric.
I can’t remember who originally shared the tip, but if you struggle (like me) to get your non-metallics to actually look ‘shiny’, you can take a photo of your initial light placement on the mini and just boost the contrast to max and brightness to min. Try to match what you see with paint.
Of course, gentle reader, he would start into some non-metallic nonsense before he even has the base colours down. The boy’s a fool.
The order in which I choose to apply paint is both baffling and entirely self-inflicted.
Never painted an elf before, space or otherwise, despite falling in love with Jes Goodwin’s art back in the day. But this little sculpt is gorgeous.
I’m determined that 2025 is the year I actually finish painting a thing. Anything. Just one will do. I’m nominating this lil guy. Still a long way to go, but I’ve stopped myself giving up in disgust and re-priming him three separate times now, so that’s progress!