Paint Over Lunch - Learning Sketch Style

I's been far too long since I've posted any of my work anywhere. I hope this will change that. I miss being involved in the communities!

Ever since I saw the Painting Buddah video for Red Chaos Armor, I've wanted to try it.



This St. Mark mini has been sitting in my collection since my very first CMON Expo 3 years ago, and I figured it would be the perfect piece to try this out on. So, after eating quickly I setup my mobile painting station in the breakroom where I work and got to sketching.


I'm really happy with how it's gone so far, but I realized I need to bring my little pre-mixed bottle of flow improver for the white. I'm using an airbrush white- some random manufacturer Hobby Lobby carries. It's good, but dries a tad too quickly.


Once I get everything done, the robo-drake will get glazes of red for the armor.


https://i.imgur.com/rCYQ154.jpg

Welcome back, I've just returned too :smile:
Looking forward to seeing how it goes!

Remembered to pack up my flow improver before heading to work today, which helped. I think the real issue with this white paint is just that it's pre-mixed for airbrushing, so it's additives are different than the normal Vallejo/other manufacturers I use. I only picked this paint because I've got a ton of it. And it will work perfectly for this learning project.


I went back over a number of the panels to try and increase the contrast, as well as smooth it out a bit. I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of this.


https://i.imgur.com/OdDc1HW.jpg

Haven't been able to paint on my lunch break the past couple of days, but was happily able to get back to it today!


I switched off using the airbrush paint and am now using a white from Army Painter, which is much easier to work with. Only downside is that a tiny ball of paint likes to dry on the tip of my brush, so lots of extra cleanings are required.


Tonight I'm going to carefully drybrush the edges of the myriad tiny plates beneath the neck of this creature. This will allow me to define them so I can see them easier.


https://i.imgur.com/reUYacF.jpg

Looking good so far.

When you say "pre-mixed flow improver", what do you mean? Usually I'd just take flow improver straight from the bottle - what else are you adding in there?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by nerodine

Looking good so far.

When you say "pre-mixed flow improver", what do you mean? Usually I'd just take flow improver straight from the bottle - what else are you adding in there?

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The flow improver I bought requires some water to be added when you're mixing it with paint. It's a crazy 20:1 ratio of water to imrpover. So I made up a small bottle pre-mixed at that ratio.

The sketching is nearly complete!


Worked a lot over the weekend, because I'm really excited to start laying in the color. Drybrushing white on the tiny neck scales made it much easier to work on them. I'm going to hit the brightest spots with some titanium white tonight.



One side has much higher value than the other. The lower value side will get a cooler mix of colors, as the main light source is coming nearly horizontally to the high value side.


Now I'm trying to plan out the colors I want to use. From the beginning I've wanted the main scales of the robo-lizard to be red, so I'm thinking about a red, purple, and blue palette, but I'm not set on that, yet. I've got a plan for the cape, which will be white and blue, but there will be some special techniques involved to make it striking.


https://i.imgur.com/f2ysBk8.jpg


https://i.imgur.com/u3IjMdj.jpg

Last night I finished up the sketch, which means now I get to play with color!


I've known since the beginning of this project that I've wanted the armor of the robo-lizard to be mostly red, which I have done a little shading on in some areas. I'm just not certain what other colors I want to use, so I'm open to suggestions if anyone wants to share.


The only other thing that's certain is that the rider's cloak is going to use blue and white.


https://i.imgur.com/wF5cmPp.jpg

Been working on my final color choices for the robo-lizard. Feels like I've lost a lot of contrast. Part of that is because I think I used too much white overall and didn't enforce broad contrast on each element. So I'll have to work to fix that using more standard techniques.


https://i.imgur.com/7Xu3k5Q.png

bit late to this but I was going to suggest some gold or copper so great minds think alike! Its a pretty cool model, reminds me of Alien