Painting Hair with Style

 As a follow up to my previous post on the progress of my Janessa conversion, I'm going to describe how I've painted her hair.

If you missed it, I've also covered painting fur in the past.

These are both topics that can be pretty tricky so I hope I've helped to shed some light on them. Ask away in the comments if you have any questions.

Fun side-story. This model's become known as "Maybelline" because people feel the hair I've sculpted for her is too blocky. Looks like a cape they say. In response, I tell them, "Maybe it's Maybelline." This actually becomes relevant a little later as it helped inspire the technique I ended up using.

Washing, Painting Light Colours and Layering Paint

"Nobody wants to paint yellow."
"Fine, I'll paint yellow."
"OK, you get Skull Bearers and White Scars."
"Wait... white too??"
- Ryan, manager of Warhammer store #88 and I.

He and the manager of another store were competing to see who could fill the Adeptus Astartes poster full of marines first. We, Canada, won.

The question gets asked often enough that I decided to use the opportunity to write a tutorial on painting White and Yellow including the techniques involved in the process.

Bonus, is my first video tutorial. You really should keep reading...

Object Source Lighting on the Elemental King

Last week I covered how I painted and gel'd the special effects for the whelps on my Elemental King project. The thing about some special effects, like fire, is that they can cast light which has to be taken in to consideration. Today I'll demonstrate how I achieved that on the Mountain King. I've also covered Object Source Lighting previously.

The tricky thing about OSL is always that there's no going back. Here you have a nicely painted object and then suddenly it's time to paint over it all and dramatically change how it looks. It's intimidating. But also rewarding.

So, read on to learn how I use just a few paints to turn the fire elemental whelp on a chain into a sort of lantern for the King.

Painting the Mountain King's Stones

After painting the Mountain King's skin, his stones were the other large task I was faced with. It meant a lot of airbrushing, time consuming edge highlighting and possibly the most tedious task I have ever done in my time painting.

All well worth it and along the way his "stones" became more "crystal." The artistic process is a fluid one. Allow your vision to shift if things start veering away from your original destination as long as you're pleased with how it's coming together.

Take a look at the Elemental King's completed photos and an outline.