Mermaid of Warsaw - Part II

 

Wow! Look at that rock!

There's not a whole lot of difference yet on the model, however I was recently playing around with oil paints again, specifically with the Zorn Palette (or close to it, as I don't have the official paints). I have a particular interest in that palette because of the skin tones that are seemingly trivial to make using it. Red, yellow, black, and white. Mixed in whatever ratios work.

One of the tricks behind skin tones is that skin is generally based on orange. Not like an orangutan, but the particular palette here can create nearly all the basics. There might be some shifts into green or blue depending on environmental factors (shading, lights, etc), but that should be simple enough with just adding those as necessary.

Working with oils is quite the joy on larger models where smooth blending is important. The long working time and ease of smoothing out colours just makes everything so much more pleasant. Notably some of the skin highlights here, and obviously yellow for the hair, but I also worked on the rock. Black was thinned slightly and dabbed around some areas, and then a grey was mixed up and kind of drybrushed (referring to the brush motion, not the paint consistency) across to build up some highlights. This workes surprisingly well. Oils have a natural translucency that also let some of the airbrushed colours show through, and I used that to act as secondary reflections from the body of the mermaid.

The hair is mostly playing with the yellow paint. No pattern or thought, I was just playing with the idea of drybrushing using oils. The desaturated yellow hair on the models's left doesn't fit with the lighting angle and I'll need to go back in and fix that next time, but I kind of like the drybrushing idea. The hair does need more depth though, and I probably should fade out some of the blues, otherwise it looks too much like coloured stone instead of hair flowing in the wind. I have some ideas on that.

I'll likely continue to play with the oils before I switch back to acrylics for finer detail work, but I definitely need to sort out some better brushes. Oils need smoothing out, and short, stiff bristles work better for that kind of thing. I have some older brushes that aren't any good (Army Painter ones that never worked as they were supposed to) so I might trim the ends down and see how that goes.

The skin tones need some blending out in places more (the abdomen for example), or building up entirely (the back). I'm also considering using some of the mineral spirits to make a wash for the hair and scales. The rock could use browns and perhaps some greens closer to the waterline as well. Still, the main colours are blocked in and I'm getting an idea at least of where the model will go. Just hope I'll be able to keep up some kind of painting routine to actually get it done.

-- silly painter