Headshots: Roland WIP 1

I decided to start with Roland first. He's a larger model than the tinier female bodies without being over-sided like Brick.

This gives me a little more ability to play with the style and see what I can achieve.

First up, was working on Roland's face, which I've photographed here using a cheap digital microscope.

Sometimes it's easier to paint the eyes first.. there's less chance of painting "outside the lines". This means do what you need to to get the eyes done, then paint the face around them.

I'll admit it... I'm not practiced with darker skin tones, but to be fair I'm usually painting Eldar, or more recently, Hordeblood Orcs. I used some elvish skin tones mixed with brown to highlight the brown face tones. This allowed me to lighten the skin without getting pasty or pale from adding white. As a final step, I've added some black outlines, since I'm going for the cell-shaded look.

So, I know Roland doesn't actually have a cloak, but his cloth areas are black, so that's what I'm going to go with for the cloak on this miniature. I start by washing a light grey over the area, and a little darker grey to bring out shadows and imperfections.

Then I want to make the undercoat a little messy. First, this is done by using some black paint and stippling with sponges. Then, I add some pin-striping with a thin tipped marker.

Around here, my plans changed. I was just going to add some lighter grey and white striping around the pin stripes, but as it turns out, the marker (while dry to the touch) will still bleed when wetted with paint. That let me create a nice blended look, and tinted things a little blue-grey. I only pin-striped his cloak, so the rest of his cloth (straps, belt, wraps, etc) are still grey... gives a nice little bit of diversity.

To finish up the shading of the cloak, I add a black wash, emphasizing in the shadows. By doing this, it gave a final blend to the pin-striping. Yes, it pulled away some of the obviousness of the lines, but it cleans up the blending quite a bit.

The above photo's still a little dark however, so the cloak needs one more step of highlighting. This is where my pigments come in handy, so I use some white powder and brush it along edges and lightly around raised areas. Pigments are a great way to softly highlight and get nice smoothly blended transitions.

So where do we stand? Well take a look for yourself:

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With many thanks to MiniWarGaming and their crew for donating the miniatures that are being painted for this project.

Final figures will be auctioned off, all proceeds going to the Childs Play charity during the Headshots from the Heart marathon.