Wednesday, April 04, 2012

RtC: A Study in Black&White

Challenge is good for the soul. Well, that's what I'm telling myself for now. I've embarked upon my second entry for the painting competition, or at least a good experimentation piece.

These pictures are of an old Rackham model for Pilzenbhir, Defender of the Plains (2nd Incarnation). He's one of the Tir-Na-Bor Dwarves from their Confrontation line of models, back when they were metal models. These are beautiful models that overall I found to be really delightful. The game however was somewhat lacking, so I never really got that many of them. There's a whole gallery of them here for those that are curious.

This project is relatively straightforward: A black and white study with a single added hue. Sort of in the style of Kim Anderson's early photography work, or the movie Sin City, or any number of other such examples. I can't really say I'm a particular fan of any of those in particular, but it should give you an idea of the end results. The goal however is much more specific. By taking out hue as something to work with, it will force me to really study how light value works and interacts with different material types. This will obviously not be an easy project.

At this point you can see I've just done a couple washes over the entire thing of grey and then black. I bought a bunch of empty droppers and have been prepping a set of pre-mixed pure grey-scale shades using just the P3 white and black paints. I'm just going to focus on the black and white work first, and then add the single hue at the end. I honestly haven't picked a particular hue to use yet and instead plan to follow my muse once she strikes.

My main goal at this point is to get enough of his chest area painted so that I can get the head attached and start working from there. I also need to ponder a basing scheme for him, since getting to a base relatively quickly would be a very wise idea. For the moment though, I'm just basking in the lunacy of this idea and wondering how long it will take me to want to throw the model into the garbage disposal. Wish me luck!

1 comment:

Heiki said...

Miniature Mentor has a really fascinating tutorial on how Jen Haley painted a monochrome miniature. She mentions she stripped it three times so good luck :)