Round Three Report from Rob Jedi - Part 2

Rob Jedi continues:

Now for the painting. As I've said in previous articles, visualisation is very important in painting a mini. It takes away a lot of the hassles - you know what paints you need, you know what bits need research, and you know what parts will get a certain treatment that will likely splash onto the rest of the mini so should be done first. On this mini, the big obvious area that should definitely be done first is the wolf pelt. It absolutely dominates this mini and would have to be drybrushed to bring out the fur texture, and would be bound to go everywhere when done.

So before starting, I did a Google picture search for wolves. I found some very nice shots of timber wolves, with a lovely creamy underside and dark brown patterning. I put this up on screen on my laptop, put it on the end of my desk and started picking colours.

I started off by painting the entire pelt with a mid-buff colour.

I gave it a bit to dry, then drybrushed the whole pelt with white.

Once this was done, I got out the Palmer coffee colour and a new bottle of Artist Spectrum sepia ink that I hadn't tried out yet. I started with the ink and - thinning it slightly - started painting in the patterns on the face of the wolf. Basically a stripe down the middle, then around the eyes and the back of the ears. I softened up the edges of the sepia (it was a little dark) with the coffee, and did a little back-painting with the buff and some white around the muzzle.

I kept at this all down the back and along the legs. I built up the very dark brown areas in the middle by just going over it again and again with the ink. At the end of this, I drybrushed a little grey over the dark areas, then gave that a little more sepia ink over the top. I finished off by painting the nose black, and picking out all the individual teeth in white.

Next were the claws at the end of the pelt. I painted these black, then highlighted up through 2 shades of grey, then gave them a final highlight with white ink.