Hey y’all! I finished my next semester of school,so I have a break to paint! Yay! I’m hoping to get a lot of stuff done in the next few weeks off!

I started on a second bust. She’s based on my first ‘important’ D&D character, Lady Hero, Knight of the Wall, Paladin of Heironeous.  I love her, and she’s my (planned) entry for the miniature monthly contest. She’s also a real test of my new shaded metallic skills. Hopefully you can see the work and an improvement!

I tried to do something cool with the cloak by basecoating with 3 different primers and then using contrast paints on top of that to start my shading. I think it is working well.

This is just a test fit of the head. I needed to see what all was covered by what. Turns out, the entire back part of her cloak is covered by her hair. No need to go doing a whole lot of work on that if it’s completely covered. I started blocking in the colors here to make sure I liked everything.

Some close-ups on her arms. Again, working on shading and making the metal pop.

Here I had to turn it the other way because of the way her arms are when they’re attached. You can see my first layer of metal ‘highlights’.

Oh, I forgot to mention, these are Vallejo Acrylics Model Air metallics. I absolutely love them. They’re almost too smooth, and they just flow so well. I love my GW metallics, but they are a little gloopy sometimes, and these didn’t do that to me. They’re definitely worth the purchase.

Starting to use the green liner as my shadow to contrast with my red cloak.

Decided to go with a desaturated green for the chemise as well. I didn’t want to go full linen white, so I did Reaper’s Moldy Skin with Plaguebearer Green contrast paint on top. I like the way it turned out a lot!

Had to strip and repaint her face. Not sure why, but my skintones are fighting me. I guess I need to thin them even more. MOAR. ugh. I hate glazing. 🙂

Dead fish eyes. Whew. I am out of practice. lol. This is after I stripped her face once and eyes twice. Guess it’ll be 3 times. But you can see some shading on the metal, at least!

Here’s a place where I thought wrong. I thought that the texture that was sculpted on the cloak would make it easier to paint. False. Geez… Hope y’all are enjoying my lack of success. lol. But I’m making some headway on the cloak. It has shadows, now it just needs highlights. So, that’s where I am on this bust. Kind of a bust. hehehehe. Also, I may go back and make her a brunette again. I feel like the pale skin and blonde hair is too matchy-matchy. We shall see.

On a different note, I’m almost done re-reading the Black Company by Glen Cook. I definitely recommend it if you like ‘dude’ stories. They’re a ragged bunch of misfits that become brothers. I like that stuff. It makes me happy. Their back-and-forth is fantastic.

Hopefully I’ll have some more (better) progress to show here soon. It’s been a while, but I am still trying. I guess the thing to remember is that even if you don’t feel like you’re arting well, you’re still arting. lol. And I’m hoping that this will be a stark contrast for my finished piece. 😀

Y’all be good. Let me know what you think..

-marinealRose