Hey y’all! I’m just putting along on my comic style adventures! This is still a WIP of him, but I definitely think it’s going the right way. I am going to kind of work through the process… so strap in and get ready for a lot of pictures and oopses. 🙂

First off, I just want to give another shoutout to my friend Libby and her husband Justin for running an awesome etsy shop and selling these amazing minis. I just placed a second order, and I have about 15 more on my wishlist. 🙂 The quality of these prints is absolutely breathtaking, and the sculpts are super clean. I can’t wait to paint more.

Before I get into the actual orc painting, I had some cool reference pictures to share. The Great Bearded One and I had a run of sword purchases a few years ago (Angel Steel got us, y’all. lol), and I have been having a lot of issues with metallics and NMM. So he suggested we go outside and just take a bunch of pictures to have to see how the metal reacts in different light. Here they are. 🙂 Just for giggles, the jambaya (curved dagger) and scimitar are mine, the other 2 are GBO’s. Their names are the Jambaya, the Dragon’s Bargain, Zloba, and the Arusken. They’re pretty much amazing and make me feel like a total badass when I get to wear them.

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Anyways, orc… I started off trying out Marike Reimer’s technique of printing a picture and kind of coloring it in… with paint. It worked out pretty well, actually! I am definitely not a 2d painter, and have very VERY limited ability in actual drawing. But I think this turned out super cool! I will definitely be doing this again.

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It’s definitely a rough draft, but it was nice to get an idea of the direction I was going. I’m not usually one to plan what I’m painting. I usually just start painting and work it out as I go. However, I’m trying to work on getting a little better at what I’m doing, and planning seems to be helping that. So!

I talked last time about the new reference material I have laying around, and the Epic Duck videos I’ve been watching, and those are still the things I’m using. I’m still really liking the Higgin’s black magic, and I’m using all Reaper paints. For this guy, I went with viper green, squog green, and alchemical green for the skin. I used turkey brown and rattlesnake leather with walnut brown to darken things up.

Then I began!

I started with the base, because I wanted to get something done and to make sure I wasn’t crazy and could do something this big. 🙂 Once I had that part pretty much lined out, I moved on.

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One of the big things that comic style challenges me with is the initial shading. You don’t really do any, since the black lines really darken things a lot. Also, as you can tell, I decided against the big, unblended highlights. It’s super outside of my comfort zone, and I decided not to push every single boundary on this guy. I did decide to throw in a couple more unblended later, but not yet. So, big green guy, brown leather. Pretty straightforward.

I just kept pushing it up, knowing that I was going to blackline it soon. It gets up to some pretty bright green. 🙂

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Then I started in on the black lining. It’s super satisfying, but also really time-consuming. I’m loving him. I just keep on working back and forth on the black lines and the highlights.

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Then I always try and check my contrast by changing the pictures to black and white. This helps cut down some of the distracting colors and gives me a good idea of where I am. I see a few areas here that need some more work, and I keep on rolling.

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And here he is, all finished up! I absolutely love him. I will definitely keep working on this style, but I am super happy with him. I definitely need to work on some NMM, so if you have a suggestion, send it my way!

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Let me know what y’all think!

-marinealRose