Thursday 1 December 2016

Ironjaws Megaboss part 7

Once I’d finished his black armour the main part of the Megaboss was looking more complete. There are quite a few details to attend to but the outstanding major elements are the axe and the dracoth skull on his shoulder.


I decided to turn my attention to the skull. As the single most striking element of the mini, it’s the thing that first drew my attention to it. And, as much as I’ve enjoyed painting the armour, the skull has always looked like it was going to be the fun part of the job!

I haven’t been disappointed. Painting the skull was a thoroughly enjoyable experience and I’m very pleased with the result. A major part of the painting process went into resolving the textures. I wanted the skull to have a slightly rough, gnarly looking texture. In addition to the bone texture, I wanted to add chips and scratches. A lot of fun was had resolving these textures and figuring out the balance between then.






My colour palette for the skull is one I often use for bone.

Base colour:

Games Workshop - Rakarth Flesh

Shade:

The Army Painter Quickshade - Strong Tone & Soft Tone
Games Workshop – Rhinox Hide

Mid-tones:

The Army Painter Quickshade - Soft Tone

Highlights:

Games Workshop - Rakarth Flesh
Scalecolour Fantasy & Games – Purity White

The shading is built up with a series of glazes using the The Army Painter Quickshades. Rhinox Hide adds a bit more depth and opacity to the colour of the horns. This combination gives me a good range of yellow/brown and red/brown shades to play with.

I built the highlights on top of the mid-tones by gradually adding white to the Rakarth Flesh. The final highlights are pure white. Once the highlights were dry, I glazed a little dilute soft tone quickshade here and there to soften the effect and tie everything together.

15 comments:

  1. This level of detail is insane!

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  2. Simply gorgeous. I bow to the master. Are the large cuts part of the model, sculpted in yourself, or just painted?

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    1. The cuts & scratches are all just painted.

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    2. That's what I thought. You're a magician, you are!

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  3. This is incredible, 6you make me want to burn my brushes! Out of interest, how long do you spend painting a model like this?

    'Do you do coaching?

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    1. Hi Ross,
      I don't dare count the hours I spend painting and the Megaboss is a tricky one to estimate because I've had to put him aside a few times so I could work on other projects.

      The Eldar Farseer took me five weeks and I'd estimate that I spent about 100 hours on him!

      Now I'm painting on a daily basis I'll be better able to tally up the No of hours I spend on a mini. However, my rule has always been that the job will take as long as it needs to do it do it properly.

      I don't offer one to one coaching but I do teach at the occasional painting workshop. Hopefully there will be a couple of new workshops announced very soon, once all the details are sorted.

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    2. Thanks, I look forward to seeing the dates. Then I'll just need to convince the wife to let me drive to Southampton for a day.

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    3. As plans stand at the moment the venues being considered are in Liverpool, Hull and Stockport.

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  4. This has really done so much for this model! Absolutely stunning work.

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  5. Looks lovely. Really nice attraction/focus spot on the mini opposing the armour. The whole model will look beautiful.

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  6. That skull is sublime! When I saw it, I thought that there would be many different paints/glazes, but to see such an effect with a limited palette is inspiring.

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  7. Most impresisve and thanks for the How-to.

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  8. The level of detail ist stunning, Amazing paintjob!

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