The time came to fulfill the Saint Francis vibe on Cormac, providing him with his little woodland friends.
While these delightful little animals offer the possibility for strong secondary focal points, I chose to paint them as humble, somewhat drab creatures rather than colorful personalities.
It’s been sheer joy painting Lucas Pina’s Cormac bust (Black Crow). Every pose and gesture is super expressive, and the face shines with humanity. It’s my first time painting one of Lucas’s sculpts, but it will definitely not be my last.
I’m daydreaming of painting Cormac when I’m at work, eager to explore his character and effects. I have a clear plan of how I’ll handle the various textures, but the spirit of discovery will guide my brush.
A week or so ago I finished this wonderful little mini bust from Maxime Penaud, AKA the Secret Workshop.
This model was a blast to paint, with interesting expression, volume, and materials, served up in a bite sized package that kept me focused on the achievement of my painting goals.
I’ve been slow to post the latest entry into my space marine project, but here he is in all his transhuman glory. Working my way around the color wheel from green took me into Ultramarine territory.
I feel like I learned a good deal on this fellow and improved in some respects over the green meanie.
I finished up the rogue robot from Trovarion Miniatures, and I’m very happy with how he turned out.
I made significant changes to the mini, all intended to place maximum focus on the face(plate). The most notable was the switch of the color of the bags.
I was getting a little tired of painting space marines (my tolerance isn’t that high!), so I reached into my box of models and pulled out the Rogue Robot by Trovarion Miniatures. I was attracted to the variety of materials and textures and the interesting mix of familiar and fantastical elements.
This is a WIP shot, with substantial development still to come.
I finally finished off the kobold from Blacksmith Miniatures. I only needed to iron out a few details on the basing and give him a pipe to smoke, but it took a few weeks to actually finish the job. Here are some shots of the finished project.
My friend and mini painting mentor David Colwell suggested that I work my way around the color wheel as a means of deepening my understanding of color. He suggested using space marines for the project, as their abundance of simple shapes (spheres, cylinders, cones, etc) would give plenty of practice with light placement, and their open spaces lots of opportunity to improve my blending.
This seemed like a great plan, and here is the first of the chromatic space marines.
From the outset I’ve had in mind a exaggerated tall narrow wall behind the kobold to reinforce his diminutive stature and shabby urban surroundings. It took a while to get the finish right, but I’m finally happy with this:
For some reason the phrase ‘exotic meats’ sprang to mind to provide a little ominous backdrop to this sinister character. He clearly doesn’t do much cutting himself anymore, but he keeps that old knife sharp.
I still need to try to kill the shine from the many ink washes and I’m planning some streaky slime on the wall and a few plants sneaking between the cobblestones. It may actually take a while before the project is finished, but it’s mostly there.