4 - Skin and Face of the Giant Gor

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Joe Wiedeman of Mini-Dragon writes:

In the last installment, I described painting the Giant Gor's (GG hereafter) fur. In this update I'll talk about how I painted the remainder of the figure: the skin and the face.

I'll start with the skin. First I gave all the skin parts a wash of black ink (mix was 1 drop black ink to 20 drops of water...my black ink is really potent!). This darkened everything up and provided some separation from the fur. As I painted the skin parts, I was careful to always leave at least a thin line of the very dark color between the skin and fur.

After the wash, I mixed a medium gray and painted this onto the high points of the face - the lips, eyebrows, forehead wrinkles, wrinkles near the eyes, knuckles, etc.

Now I mixed a slightly lighter gray and went back over the bits I had just painted. I made sure I left some of the darker color showing.

To finish the skin parts, I watered down some Partha Paints League White (very thin, about 1 part paint to 3 parts water) and painted this very carefully onto the highest points.

Next, I painted the eyes. You can check out an article that I wrote about my method for painting faces on my website. I followed the steps for eyes exactly.

The mouth came next. I really didn't like the bubble gum pink that had been used on the 100 Kingdoms GG. I decided to use darker, more natural coloring. I also decided to make his teeth look more natural, with some yellowing at their bases.

For the tongue I started with Partha Paints Robe Red. I did a very thin highlight coat of Partha Paints Burgundy on the edges of the tongue. Next I added a touch of white to the Burgundy and painted tiny dots (very lightly!) all over the tongue. I finished the tongue by mixing a thin wash of Robe Red (1 part paint to 3 parts water) and applying this to the whole thing.

This method left me with a nicely textured tongue. The wash helps tie all of the colors together and helps ensure that the transitions between colors aren't too stark.

To finish off the mouth, I very carefully painted thinned IWM Black into the recesses between the teeth, and painted lines where the teeth meet the tongue.

Next Time - the Base!