Round Five Report from Garness-at-Home

Dread Pirate Garness writes:

Howdy, all. Let me start off by saying a few things. First, a tremendous Thank You! to Bill, our esteemed editor; i-Kore/Urban Mammoth for sponsoring this contest and - despite it all - promising to provide a trophy to the winnner, whomever that may be; and to the members of TMP, for really forcing me to try new techniques and styles that I might not have done otherwise. I feel that I have done more improvement in my painting skills in the last 6 months than in the last 6 or more years, and for that I am grateful beyond expression.

Secondly, some of my photos were corrupted, so I don't have near the photo record I would have liked, but I will do my utmost to explain what I did and how I did it.

This round features what has to be my favorite figure in the contest so far. It is a Fomorian Blood Reaver. The Formorians are some kind of cross between subterranean Orcs and deep-sea aquatic demons. I decided early on that I really wanted to break away from the traditional Orc color scheme of green, and that I would like this figure to have an aquatic feel, but not what you would see in the pet store. I wanted something that would have come out of a H.P Lovecraft story - deep and sinister, but not necessarily dark.

The Mount

I began with the mount. At first glance, it looked like some kind of amphibious shark from hell. I began by cleaning some the flash and mold lines off, being very careful with the cleaning because all over the mount, the skin has very subtle bumps or scales and I wanted to preserve that. I drilled holes in the arms and pinned them to the body, then filled in the gaps with some green stuff. And then shaped them to fit, and sanded it when the green stuff cured. I then primed the entire figure in grey.

Once the the figure had cured for 24 hours, I began by using Vallejo Prussian Blue - and thinned it quite a bit, about 1-to-1 paint-to-water. I then very slowly began applying the paint to the upper body. The neat thing here is the paint is rather thin, so the coverage is not very good, but I wanted to gradually build up the color from the underbelly to the top - and by adding successive coats of the blue, I got a very nice transition.

After 7 or 8 coats of paint, I used Vallejo Dark Prussian Blue, thinned it as well, and began to build up some darker lines and stripes all over the figure. I eventually added black to the mix, thinned it more and painted a very thin squiggley line across the back of the figure. I painted more well-defined strips along the length of the tail and pincer on the end of the tail.

I next mixed up a thin white and began building up the color on the underbelly. I again used very thin paint so I could keep as much of the skin texture as possible, and to help with a smooth transition from the belly to the back.