The Stupid "Middle Phase"

Made some more progress on the Warpwolf yesterday, but got lazy about posting. 2 update pics. Basically it's slowly coming together, but the skin is giving me some real grief. I'm having alot of trouble getting a blend that I like. I think part of my issue is I'm trying to create more shading than there is legitimate surface to shade. In other words, it's overly dramatic shading for the surfaces. Here's a pic of the progress before I decided to start working on the leathers to help bring the model together more.I'm really frustrated with this skin. I've give some details of what I'm doing, but 1) the blending is kinda sucking right now, and 2) I've been doing so much experimentation that I've forgotten what I mixed. Mostly its mixing Ironhull Grey and Frostbite together at different ratios. I'm half tempted to go back to a pure Frostbite base coat, and the highlight up to Morrow White, and do some very slight washing with Frostbite and a touch of Bloodstone. I'm not convinced this will look any better though, so it's a question of whether to cut my losses here, or keep laying more paint. I'll see what Sean thinks so far.

Models often seem to get depressing for me at this stage. It's before all the base coats are done, and there's still primer showing. The model always looks terrible at this stage. It will get better... I hope.

The leathers are going much better. The pic below shows the first 3 steps. Start with Bootstrap Leather as a base coat. Next, do a wash of Battlefield Brown. Next, highlight with Rucksack Tan.

My next steps are to do a very thin wash of Black paint, and then a thin glaze of GW Rust Brown ink. The GW ink is one of the non-P3 pigments I use. I just love this stuff on leathers. It gives the leathers a slightly wet look to them, which I prefer.