Weasel Words

A weasel by any other name would smell as foul.

I came across these Otherworld giant weasels while doing some tidying-up around the paint cave (a rare occurrence, but that's a story for another day). They were painted some years ago and, if I recall, only ever appeared on OW's currently deactivated forum.

Concurrently, I find myself learning to use a new computer (replacing one with an operating system from the last century... also a story for another day). Before shipping my old machine off to the Museum of Antiquities, I unearthed the references used when painting these three. As actual weasels are rather boring (visually that is... they're the life of the party in most other respects) African civets filled in admirably.

Nothing beats good reference photos.

As the time seemed right, I grabbed my camera and took some pictures.

LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU!!!

Medusa Make-Up Tips.

Otherworld Miniatures' medusa is complete. I started with a straightforward human skintone as opposed to something more reptilian (i.e. green). At the same time, I tried to avoid making the face in any way attractive. To that end, I broke a general rule of painting female faces and shaded with a cool color (purple). The result is suitably harsh and hollow-cheeked

For comparison's sake, this dwarf wizard shows a more conventional approach. The area below the cheekbones has been glazed with a warm color (orange) to achieve a fuller, healthier appearance.

Returning to the medusa, I used Reaper Bloodless Skin to highlight the flesh, hit the lower lip with a nearly white highlight to make it look glossy, and painted the eyes with a blue OSL effect.

The basecoat on the dress is the same purple used to shade the flesh (GW Naggathroth Night) , while the red belt and sandals are highlighted with the color used to basecoat the flesh (Vallejo Beige Red).

 

 

 

Opposites Attract

Otherworld's hook horror, the latest addition to the FF project, is complete. The mini served as a testbed for some experiments with the color purple and its opposite, the notoriously tricky beast known as yellow.

A couple factors influenced the color scheme seen here. Laszlo Jakusovszky's Hot Lead: Painting Difficult Colors, where the use of purple to shade yellow is aptly demonstrated, was an eye opener. I needed to try it out.

Secondly, James Wappel's excellent purplish-grey gnolls caught my eye. 

Also, I have had good results adding green to red and vice-verse (opposite colors again) and wanted to see if purple and yellow behaved similarly.

 

The skin was basecoated with Reaper's Rainy Grey (which has a decidedly purplish cast) and the carapace with Reaper's Olive Skin Shadow. The photos above show the other colors used to shade and highlight each area.

 

 

The feathers (or is that fur?) around the neck an wrists were basecoated with a mix of purple and yellow (specifically the two colors pictured at the top of the post), given a diluted wash of Secret Weapon's Sewer Water, and highlighted with more purple/yellow (less purple this time) (first photo). The highlights were dialed up with P3 Heartfire, Sulfuric Yellow, and Sulfuric Yellow mixed with Reaper's Linen White. This was washed with GW Casadora Yellow Shade (second photo). The result was good but a bit intense for my tastes. In the end I applied a dilute wash of the purple/yellow mix to calm things down (third photo).

The spots on the head and shoulders were first applied using purple mixed with a little yellow. Some of the original skin color (rainy grey) was then added to the mix and this was used to highlight the spots.

 

 

 

Mean Green Painting Machine

I closed last time with the thought that my next project might be either a hill giant or fire giant. It was idle musing more than a concrete plan but, after some encouragement from Chris at Duke of The Blood Keep and in view of the fact that I really enjoyed working on the stone giant, project hill giant was born.

Not really a project to start. My intent was simple enough; build, paint, and present the Otherworld hill giant as my July painting challenge/pledge entry. I liked the mini "as-is" thereby avoiding my need to "improve" on the efforts of professional sculptors by attacking their work with all manner of tools and green-stuff.

Quick and easy. I would finish my entry early for once.

That was the plan anyway.

Here the first draft of this post went on to detail how my "simple'' task morphed into something unmanageable. Not exactly compelling reading as it turns out. Suffice it to say that my July entry wound up as a dwarf/jackalope/slime combo while August's will hopefully consist of two hill giants (one a heavily converted Reaper mini) and a piece of terrain.

Some pics of the aforementioned July combo for your viewing pleasure:

The jackalope is quite small and sits on a 20mm base. I sculpted the base to match the dwarf's using tools built in accordance with this tutorial. Very handy.

The hill giants are in the works. More on that next time.