Jul 19
Slacking
Yes, yes, I admit it — I’ve been slacking on the posts and on my painting. I got next to nothing done on the Varghulf yesterday, although I claim to have a very good reason! In an absolutely unprecedented show of compassion, my sister offered to watch the kids so that Dan and I could go and see the new Batman. I guess she went to the midnight release show and had such THO (Titty Hard On) from watching it that she decided that I HAD to see it so we could drool over Christian Bale together.
All I can say is.. Oh. My. God. I made Dan say things in his “Batman voice” the whole way home from the theatre. Can we say “take me now, please, Batman”? Even without Christian Bale’s complete and total sexocity, the movie was fantastic. It makes me ridiculously sad to think that Heath Ledger’s Joker won’t be making any appearances in future films.. he was absolutely outstanding.
Anyway, stupid Batman and keeping me from painting my Varghulf x.x I spent forever (okay, maybe not forever — in truth, the lure of Christian Bale Batman was too strong and I had to watch Batman Begins again) today trying to come up with something, anything to make the stupid wing bones look good, but I just can’t figure out what it needs. My first attempt was going to be a grayish color but I just kept ending up with some sort of purply.. blah. Combined with the pink fleshiness of the wings, it was making the model look very.. pastel. I don’t think that pastel is a term that can be applied to “blood-mad killers that exist only to feed”. I mean, I’m all for unconventional paint schemes and techniques / colors that showcase my femininity in my models, but a pastel Varghulf is just WRONG.
Anyway, I moved on to experimenting with shades of red, but still nothing is looking right. I do, at least, think that red is what I’m going to go with — I just need to find the right red. I’d like the very tips of the wings to be the brightest red, and then I’d like them to fade down to a brown until they finally meet with the model’s flesh. Unfortunately, however, I can’t quite find the right red.. and the right brown. Hopefully a day at the drawing board tomorrow will result in some wing bones that don’t look like complete crap. Once those are finished I will also, by necessity, have figured out the color that I’d like the flesh to be which will, of course, lead to an obvious choice for the fur.
The fate of my Varghulf rests on some teeny little ridiculously pointy (my finger still hurts, dammit) wing bones.
Blogging - the bored, Warhammer playing housewife way!
OK, here’s a really obvious solution on what to do with the wing bones. Nothing.
OK, OK, get up off the floor and quit laughing at me. Un-knit your brow.
I don’t have a varghulf model here so I can’t really say, but it lookes like the wing bones of which you speak are just that, bones kinda sticking through the flesh. What I would do is leave them white, or some kinda bone-looking variant thereof, and instead go with adding some color to the wing surface area itself. Maybe some light washes with a brown, to bring it’s shade into agreeance with the body of the model without getting the actual color anywhere near that dark. But the point would be to keep the wash OFF the bones themselves, so they retain a boney look. This owuld give a distinct visual differentiation between the wing bones and the wing surface.
I would then go back and strengthen the FUCKING gorgeous red tones you have put around the holes in the wings, since a brown wash will mute them somewhat, I would think. And that’s too good a job to stand for muting. Pink it back up a little after the washes, and it would look fine, in theory.
Maybe, since you sound taken with a red for the wingbones, you could try a red wash instead???? But that sounds kind risky to me.
Now tell me what a shitt webfriend I am for giving you ridiculously bad painting advice.
OK, your idea works better. Sometimes I’m glad no one listens to me. Except my kids. They need to listen to me.
Your advice wasn’t bad — I just had my heart set on red. I actually was contemplating just leaving them alone because they were pissing me off so bad.
BTW, my kids never listen to me, even though they are supposed to =/