Lumineth Vanari Auralan Warden - Part II

 

Likes to sing the Blues.

Continuing with the theme of using free models for experimentation, the folds in the clothing worn by this model seemed an ideal place to try make clothing look like clothing rather than plastic. In other words, attempts at painting texture onto the surface. I took this a little further as well, and have used the same basic colours to try make a difference in texture for material, metal, and feathers.

White is planned, but this post will focus on the blue areas.

Firstly, the battle garment / cloak / dress. One of the difficulties in painting these is how to highlight and show folds without making it too smooth. There are a couple of observations that may help here:

Clothing generally doesn't give sharp, bright reflection points. Polished leather might, but even that will have less shine than gleaming metal.

The surface of clothing isn't uniformly smooth. Miniature painting generally needs to exaggerate stitching, fur, holes, etc, to make it visible at that scale, but the point remains that contrast exists even in lighter areas.

Stippling and drybrushing are the immediately choices that come to mind to paint clothing. The former was done here just for the experience. I've tried drybrushing before and while it did work to a degree, I basically wanted to see what I could do with stippling.

• Kantor Blue was used as a first step, giving the battle dress and even coat to work from.
• Shyish Purple (Contrast) was then thinned a little and applied over the entire dress. This was intended to give a little more shape and depth, but a normal wash would have sufficed, or even better stippling in a dark purple. Something to remember for next time.
• Teclis Blue was then striped and stippled across raised areas. This was done in multiple thin layer passes, building up a stronger colour on more prominent patches. Takes some time, and was looking a little out of place, but I should have continued.
• Kantor Blue glazed back over areas to bring them together more. This worked, but also muted the contrast severely. A different midtone should have been used, or the prior step given a lot more brightness.
• Lamenter's Yellow glazed onto larger areas just to try bring the ambient level out a bit more. Yellow might seem an odd choice, and it does subtly shift the colour, but that also brings back some contrast and sells the effect a little more.

The last step is worth reiterating: subtle colour shifting and help make cloth look far more interesting, just through the use of colour contrast. I should have remembered that from long ago painting the Cold One cavalry.

The feathers are simple so far:

• Kantor Blue base coat.
• Teclis Blue towards the outer edges.
• Drakenhof Nightshade over the whole area.
• Nuln Oil in the shadowed areas, and towards the base.

In hindsight, maybe some Druchii Violet would have been a more interesting shade than Drakenhof, and I may yet add that.

Blue shiny armour I've tried a little bit of NMM technique with. I'm not very good at that yet, but that's why practice is good.

• Kantor Blue base coat.
• Teclis Blue in selected areas to start showing reflection.
• Celestra Grey (being what I had on the palette from painting the whiter areas) for more extreme reflection points.
• Black from the palette to darken other areas and boost the contrast a little more.
• Glazing back and forth with all off the above to get it showing how I wanted.

Different end results with the same basics of Kantor Blue and Teclis Blue. Limiting to these has really helped think about how I'm going to give texture to the surface, and it's worth looking into limiting the palette further one day to push that even further.

I will probably end up using metallics for some areas, but haven't really decided yet. Going all NMM means more practice with that, but it just depends how motivated I am.

-- silly painter.