Step by Step: Painting the Toad King

Aloa-He!

Today Massive Voodoo's year of the painter brings you the winner of last weeks tutorial voting.

Roman will write about his paintjob on the Toad King by Aradia Miniatures.
There are already some articles related to this cool model, check them here:

Mu 43 - Toad King, Aradia Miniatures

Post-apocalyptic Toad King
Roman explains his conversion work on Aradia's Toad King.

Let's see what Roman has to tell ...
We hope you enjoy!

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Let's start right off with my thoughts on painting this beautiful model. From the start on I was up to paint a typical green frog. Why? I can not explain, maybe I felt it in my guts, maybe I felt it would fit good to the base that I planned him on.

On the following photo of my thumb you can see the greens I used on the model:

The upper explanations is a guideline for you that might also help you in the future. While choosing your basic colour consider if it is a cold or a warm one. This takes influance on the whole appereance of your model later on.

I used a mixture of VMC Germ. Camo Bright Green + VMC Green grey in it. So far it was a more warm green I'd say as a basic tone. Applied via airbrush on top of the whole model. This is the first applyment on the model and natural it is not yet opaque.

Here you can spot the mixed colour I used in the airbrush - colours always look different on the model if you apply them with the airbrush, different then on your palette:

I did this again and again. Several times applying the base tone via airbrush to recieve an opaque and strong basic tone to work with later on.


Next I went for the highlights and just added more of the Green Grey to my mix. Still using the airbrush I went on the model mainly from above - already starting to work on my zenithal light situation.


While I was not caring about different materials on the model in the first steps I did so now.  First I used only the green grey in my airbrush to make the Toad's belly brighter. After this step I took a dark brown to prepare the rusty material parts with colour. This helps me to close in the overall look of the model.

The next steps included seperating all the different materials from eachother while applying their basic tone. Here you can see the palette and the colours I used for this:

The result looked like this. This step might take a little while but I you already work with mucho  concentration you will have less clean up work later on. I decided to paint a dark pattern to his face and planned to take it all over his back too. While working these steps I enjoyed painting a little highlight here and there on his lower mouth part, arms, legs and his back.

The pattern on his back:

 You can see the gentle lights that I painted on top of him:

In between the progress it was time to check back the model's appereance on the base to see if everything heads in the right direction. The photo looks massively oversaturated in its colours. Sorry for that, it was taken with my mobile. While the other photos in this article are a little too desaturated this one ...  yeah, whatever ...

Now it was time to take the pattern over his shoulder too and add some detail to it. Metal parts have been seperated inside the mass of rusty parts.


Now working on some details it was time to spread the detail work on top of the whole model. Rust parts have been worked on with Modelmates' rust. Shadows and highlights have been increased in the greens  and all parts recieved single attention on edge highlights. His lip and nipples recieved a gentle touch of skintone, mixed in the green grey before applyment. If I would have just used skin tone he would look like he used make-up on his face. Conisder adding a little bit of skintone to such colour changes and it will always stay inside your colour tones.

His eyes have been painted white as a preparation for the upcoming work.

More details visible on his back. Just check the varity of the Modelmates rust.

The eyes. I was looking at many frog eyes on photos and decided to do mine purple. I was sketching the eye first with two black dots. Painted the Iris on top of that sketch, black. Used purple to close all in. For the difference in the eyes I painted small dots, glazed them with strong purple again and repeated these steps to make the eye more interesting.

These are the colours I used for the work on the eyes:

Also paying attention to the sign he carries I did a little freehand. Do not forget such parts as if you do you might hate you for it if you have to do all steps again. Take seperate parts on your colourful journey from the start. Also added little damage here and there to the sign:

Well, time again to check back with the base, eh?
Again, too much saturation on the mobile colour look. Sorry.

I was ok with the base and model at the moment, but still felt the model pops out a little too much atm.  I needed a break from the big Toad and decided to do all the steps I have done on him on his small minion army. Many frogs from the Small Animal Set by Busch. 

First this was fun, but painting the dark, black green pattern and the eyes to them really stretched my nerves. For sure I did not went into the same detail as I did on the frog.

Well, I did some more work on final detail lights on the model but my main work to finish him was integrating him more in the base. So I had to make the base more greenish. After the model was glued tot he base with his pins I decided to take the airbrush again and use a warm green to be sprayed as a glaze gently on top of the lower area of the base and the models feet. This took all of it together and helped me to stop the look of two different pieces. Base and model were not alien-like anymore, more one unit.

I hope you can now see the warm and cold green I was talking about in the beginning. The model appears in a colder green while the base and everything that sorrounds the model appears in a warmer touch.

 The small frogs have been glued to the base as a final step. Quakidiquak!
 

I hope you enjoyed this colourful walkthrough.
Keep on happy painting!

Best Wishes
Roman