Painting a Paladin: Part 2

As you know by now, I'm fond of painting for Lost Hemisphere's monthly Paint the Target posts. It's fun to see my stuff up elsewhere and it's a great motivator to get my painting a bit faster.

As a reminder, I was repainting Menoth's Paladin of the Order of the Wall. Also, I recognize that today is not a Friday and this is not a sewing post, but LH posted the Target today, so I am as well. The world won't end because of it; I am certain.

My husband's Pally as he was before

You can see where I ended on the last post here.  At this point I realized that I was just going to get more and more frustrated as I worked on him as my fingers, the table, etc rubbed off corners of paint.  He needed to be on a base.

Now my basing in the past has been rather lackluster. So I've been making notes when I see other bases that I like and I picked up some tips from the pros at GenCon. Time to give it a try!

First some rocks with a slot for the model to fit into.

And a bunch of greenstuff later (little by little with a lot of waiting in-between) and I had him securely attached to something I could get a nice firm grip on.  I'm actually really happy with how this turned out as a base. I was able to blend the greenstuff (a 2-part epoxy) into the rocks in such a way that after painting it is hard to tell that it is not just one big slab. I'd be happier with a less orange-y color scheme for the rock in the future but I thought it would contrast with the model's colors better than a gray-based color scheme.

At this point I had a lot of the color blocked in and quite a bit of the actual painting done, But he needed some repairwork on the places where I had accidentally rubbed the paint off while working on him before.   Also, I seem to continually find things I want to change or fix just as I think I'm finished.

Case in point: here I thought I was done. Then I took pictures and realized that the gold all looks orange and boring. Incidentally this was the last of the pics before his shield was attached. 

I think I might have gone a little too subtle on some of the freehanding (e.g., on the shield) but it looks good in person even if it doesn't show up for the camera. I do wish I had gone a little more dramatic on the shading/highlighting though.

I didn't undershade my metals like I usually do and I think it has made a difference. I really like the depth I was getting before with the undershading and then just floating a light layer of the metals over top, so I think I'll go back to doing that.  

That said, I hope I don't have much more gold to do in the future. Gold doesn't tarnish (oxidize), which is great for all kinds of applications like electronics and shiny, regal headgear but maybe not so much for armor on a mini. Because it doesn't get a dark oxidation, my chemistry-brain won't let me shade it like I would brass. And while that is fine, it loses something in the visual. Oh well.

The gold looked a lot better after I added a bunch of highlighting. My metals need some work but at least my face is better than the usual.  I took a "faces and eyes" class at GenCon with Lyn Stahl and I think it has helped a lot, even if it is hard to see under the helmet and behind the shield!

The lovely grouping of painted models for this month's Paint the Target is up here if you want to take a look.  G'daybloke also submitted a Paladin this month and it looks pretty spiffy.

Unfortunately that is almost assuredly the last Target painting I will be doing for 2012. With all of the sewing I have scheduled for myself for holiday gifts, birthday gifts, and much-needed wardrobe additions and the need to throw some paint on an entire unit of models for my husband for this month I'll just have to look forward to whatever Paint the Target brings for 2013. And since I have some fun models that I'm looking forward to painting, next year has a pretty fun lineup of minis.

Hope your week starts out nicely!