Crimson Court, Prince Duvalle - Part II

 

"Damn, my hand is all dirty now."

Some more progress on this vampire prince, adding more to the armour, starting on the sword, and of course the skin. There's also the cape, which dark as it is gets very little visual attention but still helps to border the rest of the model.

The cape itself I thought about for a long while before ultimately going back to the Sequitors for inspiration. It's painted in very dark purple tones using oil paints. The actual paint used doesn't give rise to any particular textured effect, but my own use of oil paints gives very different tones and gradients compared to the acrylics, and it's this which results in a subtly different highlight and shading finish - this difference coupled with the sculpted geometry helps to say "not metal armour". The result is still darker than I wanted, at least under normal lighting, but I'm not likely to touch it more. The cape is a secondary component to the model - it's not actually a focal point itself but instead supposed to help guide the eye to focal points, and as such it might actually be more effective in that role with a simpler paint scheme.

The skin did not turn out quite how I wanted either, and I ended up doing a fair bit of lightening and adjustments just about everywhere to get to where it is. Originally I had intended a cold, pale appearance, but it just looked like a frozen statue instead. Pale does not mean cold, it just means desaturated, and it's a mistake to learn from. I suppose the end result is, at least, unique.

• Night Lords Blue over all the skin areas.
• Mix a small amount of Ulthuan Grey into the previous step, and highlight where necessary. Then add more Ulthuan Grey and keep highlighting. This was done in several layers, and by the end there were very deep recesses of Night Lords Blue that created far too sharp of a contrast in tone, and so they were glazed over to harmonise everything a little more.
• Side Note: mixing Night Lords Blue and Ulthuan gives a really nice colour, and probably would be excellent with various Horus Heresy era colours for Space Wolves.
• Mix a small amount of Rakarth Flesh with Night Lords Blue, and glaze this over mostly upper areas. This was an attempt to bring a little more warmth into the skin tone but didn't quite work as I'd hoped.
• Volupus Pink (Contrast) mixed with a lot of Contrast Medium to give a very light pink glaze, which was then used across most of the skin. This is a very subtle effect, but just enough to tip it over from code stone to a cold, undead flesh. Not wanting to risk ruining what was managed, I left it there.
• The eyes are a simple Ulthuan Grey with Aethermatic Blue. I wasn't going to try for anything else when access to the left eye was difficult with a brush.

Armour trim was another area that I needed some time to decide on. Gold would have been too bright, taken too much attention away from the face. Black is a bit of a cheat, but it is rather neutral and I was getting bogged down. So black metal it was.

• Corvus Black over all the trim.
• Dawnstone glazed as a first stage highlight. I used an overhead lamp to figure out the appropriate areas for this.
• Administratum Grey glazed as a second stage highlight, and edge highlights.
• Ulthuan Grey mixed into the previous step to really brighten it up to almost white, then used for the more extreme highlight points.
• Abbadon Black glazed into recesses and darker areas just to push the contrast a little more.

It still didn't grab my attention enough until I was looking around and spotted a model with a dark turquoise trim. This would have been much nicer than shades of grey, so I used Stegadon Scale Green and glazed that over the trim. It's barely noticeable, but does shift the colour ever so slightly away from grey and makes it that much more interesting. I probably would start from there, or perhaps Incubi Darkness, were I try this colour scheme again. It's all part of learning more about miniature painting, and I'm always pleased when I add to my pool of knowledge and experience.

The sword I went with the same approach used for Nekima. I won't repeat it all here, instead just search for that post. I'm going to borrow more from that model too for filling in the bones/tusks on the armour.

Still a couple of weeks left on this model most likely, but I've started many others in the meantime and I might post about them next. Skin tone exploration deserves a post very shortly.

-- silly painter.