Posted by Raffaele "Picster" Picca
Hey everyone!
First, let me say how sorry I am that this second part took me so long to write down, but we were really busy finishing the book campaign...
Second, this part will be the last one, I noticed after writing down the first part that I didn't take enough photos during the progress to really make a in-depth article about the painting of the giant, not even speaking about the huntress.
I still hope you can enjoy this small look behind the scenes of "Touch of Death"!
I hope you liked this small step by step!
To check out how the project turned out on good photos, follow this link!
Best wishes,
Raffa
Hey everyone!
First, let me say how sorry I am that this second part took me so long to write down, but we were really busy finishing the book campaign...
Second, this part will be the last one, I noticed after writing down the first part that I didn't take enough photos during the progress to really make a in-depth article about the painting of the giant, not even speaking about the huntress.
I still hope you can enjoy this small look behind the scenes of "Touch of Death"!
First step was a clean and thin, black basecoat with the airbrush. I used Vallejo Surface Primer for the basecoat.
A quick airbrush layer of Sepia was applied to break up the black surfaces and give them a nice, matte finish. I also started to paint the trees with Vallejo Model Color - Chocolate Brown.
I started to define shadows and lights stone by stone section. A very long and tiring work, but most of the time, very worth it. Trees and roots also got more definition and color.
Some more progress on the highlights and shadows of the rocks and roots.
I applied some natural materials to one spot to test the look and colors. All of those materials, except the laser-cut fern, were found in the forests. The nature is a real treasure chest!
A view on my "project wall". I kept all my reference sheets, time tables and progress control charts on this wall. Every day I updated them as the time window for the project was very, very tight.
And this is my painting table after a day of painting... you can see I added a lot of Golden Acrylics Fluid colors to my workflow. Try them out if you can, they are really great if you learn how to apply them!
I bough a pack of very small birds by Preisser and prepared them for painting by pinning them... they were pinned with small pieces of copper wire taken from a headphone cable (VERY small). Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of the painting progress, but you can see them flying away from a tree on the final photos.
The dead deer was added to the base and painted fitting to the base...
More laser-cut fern was added to the "cave" section of the base. I also added some small water streams. The hanging plants technique is shown in this tutorial.
A lot of different plants and vegetation were added to give it a real forest feeling. You can see I tried to give the plants a rotten, brown color as the "death" crawls closer.
The effect is even more visible on the top.
To create the treetops I used a very cool product by MiniNatur made for specially for treetops. With a little bit of airbrushing, the color was changed to bring it closer to the bases color scheme. I also airbrushed shadow areas on the bottom. In the front you can see how the original product looked.
I applied small pieces that I pulled out of the big "carpet" using super glue.
The almost finished treetop.
The other tree's treetop was created the same way as the smaller one's. I just painted a color transition to show how the tree is dying from the touch of death. Later the top leaves were painted much darker to make the dead tree theme clearer.
Now to the painting of the giant. First step was again to bring in some greys and browns to break up the black basecoat.
I started with a thin coat of dark reds to begin with the muscle tissue. The face got some highlights with dark flesh and similar tones. The black pustules were painted with carbon black (Golden Acrylics). It's a very dark black and has a nice shine that was perfect for this application. Skin parts were painted in a pale skin color.
More skin areas were started and the muscle tissue got some more highlights and shadows. I started to paint a teal colored tint on the skin to show the unnatural origin of the pustules.
The back got some more attention as well as the pustules. They were painted with very thin glazes of Magenta and covered with gloss varnish. I did this several times on all pustules to give them a nice wet shine.
The gloss effect really brings out all of the pustules.
The painting of the legs isn't very well documented... but it's the same color scheme as the upper body. I used water effect to give the organs a wet and slimey look, like some unhealthy fluid is gathering where once was a belly.
This is the giant, assembled on the base, the assembly was quite tricky. It felt like playing tetris to fit all the parts together...
The back view.
And last but not least, one of the few work in progress photos of the huntress...
On the last day I spent an hour to build up a small transport box to bring the project safely to the US. I couldn't use my normal box because of the space limitation on the plance.
I hope you liked this small step by step!
To check out how the project turned out on good photos, follow this link!
Best wishes,
Raffa
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A marvel for the eyes, a great talent of you. Regards.
Thank's for sharing this Raffa! Since I saw your "Touch of Death" at the Herzog von Bayern, I'm still speechless. Even if it's not my favorite of your works, it is probably your best.