I finally got around to painting my Pyre Troll from Privateer Press. It was an ambitious paint-job, in that not only did I set out to paint flames and flame-illuminated effects for the first time, I also planned to do all the serious painting in one sitting.
I like the way it came out. There are flaws — serious ones, even — but it’s by far one of the best looking paint jobs I’ve pulled off yet. I love the way the freehanded blood vessel shadows came out on the glowing belly. That particular effect came to me as I was making the belly glow. Sadly, some of the best bits of it got drybrushed over with yellow as I was putting illumination effects from the flaming fists on the sides of the belly.
That drybrushing is flawed, too. That grew out of “I want to be done soon” rather than “I’m willing to take another day to make this look just right.” Doing thin applications of watered-down yellow, and slowly building up the lighting would have been much better.
I’m particularly impressed with his right hand. That just looks like fire, not like paint at all.
That hand was closer to the light source, and the side you’re looking at was not shaded. Thus the camera’s white-balance (and, admittedly, the fine-tuning of said balance in Photoshop) gave a much more flame-like appearance to that hand than to the left.
With better lighting and a couple more spots of white paint, the left and right hands would look equally good. It’s no coincidence either that I painted the left hand first, and after practicing the effect moved on to paint the right hand.
That looks so awesome Howard! My little dudes won’t want to take the field against yours! Yours are too neet.
Your little doggies will burn nicely, I’m sure. 🙂
Just what we need! The lingering scent of singed, wet dog hair!
Wow! I’m *very* impressed by that. Shiny!
Flaws? Serious flaws? I am never going to attempt to paint a miniature again if this is what qualifies for “flawed”.
I mean, I know you’re a professional artist, but for as few minis as you seem to have painted, this is darn good. Most people are really scared of trying OSL.
coincidence
There is a 1 in 8 chance that my roommate cast that figure.
Hey Howard — this is Corey Marie from Young American Comics/Scene Language. It was cool chatting with you at ECCC, and I was hoping I could drop you a line and get the names of those printers that we were talking about. I tried to email you off of your site, but am getting a %2E in the middle of your email address that I don’t think is supposed to be there.
Drop me a line if you get a second, coreymarie@gmail.com
Hope all is well!
-Corey Marie