Pirate Queen Skarre

Finally done! After sitting on my desk for probably 3 months, Skarre is finished. A very big reason that she got done this week and not 6 more weeks from now is pretty much my desire to wrap her up before I leave on a bunch of work travel. More about that in my weekend roundup post later today.

This model is delicious. Seriously, I really enjoyed painting this model. I could have spent a lot more time on her. It's got a nice pose and overall I feel like it's fairly accessible. My only gripe is the left side of her face which is (probably) meant to be mostly hidden and shadowed, but it has just enough space to make questionable. There's enough gap such that some light could legitimately get in, meaning it should be visible. On the other hand, it is heavily obscured, making it easy to justify it being mostly shadowed. Again, tough call. Otherwise it's a majestic model. Kudos to the sculptor.

What worked well:
* Dark and brooding - I wanted a color scheme that created some stronger contrast in terms of brightness, but overall had a darker look. I feel like that worked out pretty well here.
* Lighting focus - I wanted to be very intentional about how I handled the highlights and shadows, and particularly how the eye was drawn. I feel like this also worked out pretty well. There's lots of deep shadows, with highlights predominantly on the upward-facing areas. The notable exception is her face where I purposefully highlighted brighter than the light would hit, specifically to draw in the eye better.
* Glowing parts - The glowing green pieces worked out pretty well, standing out as glowing against much darker surroundings, but not so overpowering as to draw the eyes completely away from her face.
* Ink glazes - I used a couple layers of ink glazes on the blue and purple surfaces to smooth out the blending better. This worked extremely well. I've read about this before plenty of times, but this was the first time I really felt like my own execution of it worked rather than ruined.

What could have been better:
* Multiple slops - During the course of painting I had a number of unfortunate slops. Particularly on her, uh, boobs. So many layers of paint there.
* Spending more time - I could have easily spent more time on this model and smoothed everything out better. The camera is a harsh mistress and really reveals the flaws. After staring at it for so long though, it was just time to be done.
* Some freehand - Adding some freehand, particularly on the cloak, would have really kicked it up a notch. Plus I need to start doing more freehand work to get better and more confident about it.
* Metals - Yeah, just... yeah... I spent a fair amount of time on them, but this model is rife with tiny details and had a lot of trouble getting the metals right. I think that my entire approach for the basecoating was probably flawed there. Definitely a lesson learned for the next time.