September Painting Challenge: Monsters

BizzareWarstar · **Posted:** Tue Sep 13, 2011 12:34 am

Outstanding Edge, the colors are very deep and rich looking. you mind me asking what you used on his underside?, its a very effective scheme.

Jobu - Those straightened out spines have definitely made him look more aggressive and the tongue is genius. I can just imagine him hiding in some dark place with his mouth wide open and only his tongue reflecting the faintest of light, wriggling and making noises, luring hungry wolves or curious minds to their doom, great touch.

edge67 · **Posted:** Tue Sep 13, 2011 3:03 am

BizzareWarstar wrote:

the colors are very deep and rich looking. you mind me asking what you used on his underside?, its a very effective scheme.

Thanks for all the positive feedback guys, I really appreciate it.

BW - the underside involved multiple drybrushes of tallarn flesh with washes of ogryn flesh inbetween each drybrush. I think this helps to give the depth in the colour (same principle I used on the scales). I then drybrushed a couple of times with dwarf flesh but more to the middle of the underside. In between these drybrushes were more washes with ogryn flesh, but I tried to add more wash to the parts of the underside closest to the scales to get that gradation of dark to light as you move towards the underbelly. Finally, I drybrushed a few more times with an off-white colour (I mixed this myself, but can't remember how - probably closest to something like bleached bone) only in the very middle parts of the underside.

For this model I have really learnt a lot about the effectiveness of alternating drybrushing and washing. The approach seems to work well on large models, but is probably difficult to do on smaller models. I think I'll use it again on my next large model.

Wah Wing · **Posted:** Tue Sep 13, 2011 5:50 am

Reminds me of the Dilophosaurus Dino. (Jurassic park: dino that spits on the fat dude). :-D

BizzareWarstar · **Posted:** Wed Sep 14, 2011 1:12 am

cheers edge, I'm going to try it out on a dragon, he's been unpainted for ages because I wasn't sure what to do with him.

proof pic. I added three arrows and two crude grappling hooks to give the piece a bit more history. Thinking about trying a grey/goldish colour on the huron and definitely some NMM on the troll parts, I've tried it out twice before with good results so hopefully it will work here too.

IsleStaggerholm · **Posted:** Wed Sep 14, 2011 1:16 am

This is the front runner in my mind. What an amazing sculpt and spectacular idea. How long have you been sculpting? I'd decent at mods, but straight up sculpts are my Achilles heel in this hobby. Color me jealous. Really good job.

Beowulf03809 · **Posted:** Wed Sep 14, 2011 1:31 am

I've made a little more progress than my latest pics show but I don't think I'm going to finish much before the end of the month. I'm really impressed by how quick some of you are tackling such large models and the sculpt jobs are great.

Forgive the quality of this. We're waiting to get a replacement for our good camera and in the mean time I'm taking pics with my mobile and I haven't figured it out very well. Hope you can get the idea at least. The tree is my first such work and is heavy gauge wire shaped and covered with GS. The shaping took a long time as I had to find the right position for everything to fit the Queen's legs (which are not "original" position for Shelob's legs to begin with) while still giving room to position victims...er...models around her base.

Since this pic I've finished shaping the base, added sand and gravel, and primed it all black.I've also started work on the Queen. I'm going to be painting her up with as close to a natural color scheme of Wolf Spiders as I can manage within the fantasy style of the Shelob/SQ mix model. You can see some reference ideas on my site ( http://tac-me.net/index.php/lotrmodels-wip/96-lotr-models-wip-sq2 ) though I will warn the squeemish that there are some close up images of real spiders on that page.

I know some people aren't fans of our eigh legged friends.

Wah Wing · **Posted:** Wed Sep 14, 2011 2:01 am

Beowulf03809 wrote:

though I will warn the squeemish that there are some close up images of real spiders on that page.

I know some people aren't fans of our eigh legged friends.

Guess I didn't prepare myself for what I was looking at.
I'm normally not..."squeemish" when I see spiders but the picture with the eyes really freaked my out.

Nice job on the base.

@BizzareWarstar - That sculpt has so much... story;... movement;... detail. It's inspirational. What did you use as a reference to sculpt the Huron?

Beowulf03809 · **Posted:** Wed Sep 14, 2011 6:23 am

Wah Wing wrote:

Beowulf03809 wrote:

though I will warn the squeemish that there are some close up images of real spiders on that page.

I know some people aren't fans of our eigh legged friends.

Guess I didn't prepare myself for what I was looking at.
I'm normally not..."squeemish" when I see spiders but the picture with the eyes really freaked my out.

You should go to the extended images with the spiders loaded up with babies. Those are bound to give a lot of people the willies. I have one I found but didn't even post that was almost too many to believe. When my kids saw one mommy carrying them around the first time they just thought it was a fat, fuzzy spider until they realized...they...were...moving...

:-D

Hilbert · **Joined:** Mon Jun 06, 2011 7:07 am **Posts:** 2088

Very nice progrss so far...

Erunion · **Posted:** Wed Sep 14, 2011 3:47 pm

Amazing work so far, everyone. I really need to get on the ball for this one!

TheBucklandBrewer · **Posted:** Wed Sep 14, 2011 6:01 pm

Amazing work already!
And I'm so jealous to see some are already finished!

I'm still highlighting the skin... and trying some shemes with the belly and mouth, but no luck so far...
I'll see when I finish the skin what fits him best...
I wanna try something like a "see-though"-skin on his belly (inspired by creatures in a book called "Wit'ch Fire" by James Clemens which I read recently)
The rest of his skin should become some kinda rotten-green-greyish-black if it turns out well.
For the wings I'm not 100% sure yet, but probably I'll try the darker way.

So far:

theavenger001 · **Posted:** Wed Sep 14, 2011 6:55 pm

Woah! That is one cool looking gulvhar. The wings will be getting a wash to darken them slightly, I hope? Anyways, Don't be too jealouse about those who have finished, at least you've started! (Looks at my poor ent who isn't even base coated yet...) :wink:

garmenhord · **Posted:** Wed Sep 14, 2011 9:01 pm

looks nice Bart! I really like the model (I should get one of those someday :-D

)

edge67 · **Posted:** Wed Sep 14, 2011 10:05 pm

Wow - some brilliant work. Amazing sculpting, imaginative ideas, fantastic painting. Best painting challenge ever?????????

Red Corsairs · **Posted:** Thu Sep 15, 2011 2:19 pm

Great work so far everyone!

@Bart - That Gulahvar is looking brilliant so far, the eyes are spooky!

@Beowulf - I love the base that you've given your Shelob

@BizzareWarstar - Again, brilliant sculpting! I can't wait to see this one painted up

GothmogtheWerewolf · **Posted:** Thu Sep 15, 2011 4:16 pm

These monsters here are amazing!

BizzareWarstar · **Posted:** Thu Sep 15, 2011 8:03 pm

Thanks IsleStaggerholm, I've only sculpted ents and hurons up to now, this is the fifth one in the last four or five years. Haven't really sculpted anything else besides some mod's like yourself.

Beowulf03809 - nice one with the positioning, its animated the spider a lot, your research has really payed off in that respect.

TheBucklandBrewer - Looking cool so far, I didn't think green eyes would work so well against green skin like that, its spooky alright.

Wah Wing wrote:

What did you use as a reference to sculpt the Huron?

A good bit of the texture on the huron is actually because of the material used, it naturally took those shapes after some manipulation. I'm not saying it was handy, I just think if I had of used greenstuff it wouldn't have turned out as nearly as cool. I make a point of having a good look at tree's anyway so I didn't use any references as such, just wanted something that spoke 'power'.
I must say though, I saw a conversion of one of UKFreedyBears's ent's by 2paintminiatures, he put arrows in the ents arm, looked really cool so I had to use it.

BizzareWarstar · **Posted:** Fri Sep 16, 2011 4:12 am

Painted black and white first which was mostly brushing, then glazed with colour, the major ones being; Desert yellow for the Huron. Badab black and Delvan mud for metal and Scorched brown and leviathan purple on the troll skin. I've just to paint the trolls cloth and straps, the arrow feathers, darken the ropes a bit more and then onto the base.

Sir Richard · **Posted:** Fri Sep 16, 2011 4:44 am

WOW!

Amazing!

I LOVE it!!! :yay:

edge67 · **Posted:** Fri Sep 16, 2011 4:55 am

BizzareWarstar wrote:

Painted black and white first which was mostly brushing, then glazed with colour

OMG! That looks friggin amazing :yay:

BW - would you be able to explain a bit more about your technique? Did you undercoat with black and then drybrush the white over that? How did you get the effect on the left hand photo? When you say 'glazed with colour' I assume you mean a very thinned out version of the paint?

Sorry about all the questions. It just looks unbelievable!

September Painting Challenge: Monsters

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