Hey Jungle Painters,
this week's tutorial voting
saw a not so close contest. The
winner of the voting (counting this morning) is obvious. Davidè
vs. Goliath had 18 votes and the Dino 8 votes, which makes "Davidè
vs. Goliath" the
winner.
Important MV's Year of the Painter 2 NEWS:
Next week, Roman is in the thick of finalising preparations for his first Advanced class ever. Roman will be rather silent next week on your jungle blog. Maybe there will be Tutorial voting by another monkey, maybe not. Future will tell. Roman will reduce his blogposts to a minimum next week just for you all to know.
If you want to keep track with an overview on what has happened so far
please check this link!
Support Massive Voodoo!
If you like to support the monkeys of Massive Voodoo in what they do, please feel invited to drop a
jungle donation in their direction via paypal or check their
miniatures they got on sale.
Roman is now taking over and writes the article for you!
________________________________________________________________________________
FOREWORD
Allright, here we go again, another day, another article to share some of my thoughts. Actually I was not sure if I should put this project in an article. I can already tell you it will not be a typical step by step that explains each step I did in detail. You will find a walkthrough with me showing you insight in the creative and non-so-creative process of the project. As always: If you got any questions please ask them via comment.
EVERY PROJECT HAS ITS TIME
This 90 mm Barbarian Model by Pegaso was started by me during my first private coaching ever. Great memories with my buddy Thorsten in 2012 when I look back at the coaching. I came out of the coaching with the model looking like this and it was standing in my "One-day-to-do-cabinet". Once in a while I added some putty I got left from other projects to the base. Why? I did not know yet :D
I had several ideas for this project. They changed over the years and the amount of putty I added to the base in a random way. Fact is all were including a contrast in scale. A big giant and something tiny. My ideas:
- A fisherman's village with small houses, a boat, the giant standing guard on the coast.
- A herd of sheep, the giant standing guard
- A siege of a city with fierce battles on the ground while the giant watches and thinks were to enter the fight
- The giant standing, thinking of eating a cow
- The giant speaking with a frog
- The giant looking at whales
- The giant protection wood cutters
- The giant on a battlefield after a battle
... and so on. Something tiny, smaller than the giant, but no idea focused my powers back on the project until early this year.
THE TIME HAS COME!
In fact I thought about a small virgin girl, dressed all in white, sacrifcied to the giant to keep the city of his wrath.
I thought about using a
1:100 tiny model like I did on the X-Wing, but with some small conversions to make her chained to the wood pieces, which were actually just pieces of matches. I used some stone flags to create the build up and added some soil to hide my crazy putty madness.
The stone flags were a gift from my friend Heiko from Hamburg, who said they can be bought, but I do not remember where to search for them, sorry. You can also do stone flagging with magic sculpt though:
Article Link.
Well, back to the base. I did made some thoughts on why I did build it up like I did. I want to share these.
COMPOSITION THOUGHTS
As the giant was already fixed to the base I had to work with his heavy weight. He is standing in
Contraposto and his leg with maximum weight on it is to the far left when you look at the overall scene. With the club supporting this I got a lot of weight and pushing down there. So I was in need to add some balance.
While I build up the standing ground for the sacrifce I needed the same pushing down momentum, but I also wanted to create a flow to it. Please understand me right here, I am trying to reconstruct why I did what I did with placing putty there over the years and adding the stone flags.
The flow came by thoughts on what I will present with the scene: A sacrifice, some kind of two models facing eachother, like a duel, but rather unfair in this case. It is a good thing to focus the project with such a topic some kind of circle wise. Close it inside itself. So I had that flow to the base sacrifice side with the matches angle going back to the giant.
The giant is closing the scene by its sculpt as his ponytail goes back downwards again, his arm holding the club follows the line and the club itself goes back in the base again. Even with the giant standing so heavy to the left side of the base this flow will create another weight center, in the center of the "flow".
Well, I hope you get what I try to tell. Explanations comes in In orange and aquamarin-tourquoise-greenish-example-colors:
Without explanations weirdo lines:
Yeah, well. I did not like the sacrifice idea anymore and I remembered that I still got a lovely miniature by former Origen-Art, now Black Sun Miniatures that I wanted to paint since ages. The idea of a female David vs. Goliath story was born out of a moment. I felt the right powers arise to finish the project now.
I removed the matches, brought up some colors to the base. First it was green, because I did not know yet that they were fighting at an icecold place. I even started painting on the giant here and there.
Looking back at the work I had done on the giant back in 2012 I realized how much I learned myself once again during my
journey of the path of the painter. It is a great thing that learning never stops and I was up to paint the giant like I do paint these days. It was so funny planning a duel and seeing the eyes of the giant I painted back then: Completly looking in a different direction and way to big, making him look like comic bambi. Well, I gotta change that for the better.
Top view, placing a healthy amount of
zenithal light to the giant and the base:
To the small lady then. These days it is hard for me how I paint. I can say I enjoy it a lot, test new things and do weird things, but I do not care. I got my vision and I paint it. No matter what I mess up, or do wrong I just do not care. I paint until I reach what I want to reach. For me this works best in sitting down, looking at the actual project and asking myself what I do not like, if I find it, I change it. If I do not find anything that I personally do not like, I say it is finished. Cool way, eh? Give it a try for yourself.
I saw some WIPs from my buddy Matt diPietro on facebook where he sketched white color on top of black primer, really rough and wild and free, like a free mustang. Wheeaaarr!! I wanted to start like this too, so: Slappidslapp! White color!
I loved it. And here is the only photo where I can show you the conversion I made on the model: I did not use the helmet nor shield nor spear, I added a small slingshot to her right hand. Done with a small piece of thin metal and a small waterfilter ball inside (stone).
I started painting her really freely, often catching myself in using the textures which the unusual way of "priming" provided. She went rather cold in her colors. I think that is the step where I saw that the overall scene might become cooler than cool, icecold.
SNOW IS STARTING TO FALL
Therefore I used
Jo Sonja's Texture paste I once recieved as a gift from my buddy Weisern. You can check this article to understand the process on
how to create masterclass snow effects (that sounds so stupid!).
Using a toothpick and applying the snow where I wanted to see it:
As I learned from
visualising real winter snow can have shadow and light temperatures. I used my Harder & Steenbeck Airbrush and added a gentle glaze of tourquoise-blueish something the to lower part of the base. Just a sketch to see my way ahead of me.
I worked more on the paintjobs of the two characters.
I pushed further on the models, once in a while hitting the whole scene with more blueish cold glazes via airbrus, but soon realized that I have only blue snow left. Still better than only yellow snow, but well I gotta chance this again.
I used the paste again, went in with glittering crushed glass by Secret Weapon on top and even used pure white to paint on top of some snow areas and liked it. Lesson learned: Applying snow is not only a once only done thing. It can also grow and sometimes you go a step back before you do some steps forward (of course depending on the project. I would not do such a snow on many army bases).
I decided to add icecles. You can create
icicles on your own in this way or buy some - for example on Amazon - by the company "Busch". Pro in creating your own: They look better. Con in creating your own: it takes ages.
They come like this:
Cut them in pieces you like to add.
Glue them with the help of a toothpick (for fixation and use it as small-amount-of-superglue-application-tool) and superglue:
Result:
I wanted to make them stronger and more connceted to the base itself. Therefore I used a paste that was bought at a big german art store. There are many more like this, important is that it dries clear. Do not test your paste on your model straight away do a test beside your project:
Packing the base with the paste:
I mean really:
My testrun - took one day to dry in thin areas, two days in thicker spots.
Well, final works on the duel were done with good care and everything went icecold, much cooler than cool.
More photos can be found via
Putty&Paint.
AFTERMATH
Well, I was really happy to see the project turn out how it turned out. The only thing I might have considered a little bit more in the end would be the icicles. Moses, a pretty cool guy and painter himself pointed out that the icicles are too clear. Iciciles, bigger ones show tonalities. I did not. Got to study this effect for future projects and application.
I hope you enjoyed the article and the insight in my process. I want to thank the collector who bought this piece of my work. Thank you for your support in my passion, art and work. I am also happy to tell that I am able to show the project until after Monte San Savino Show. After Monte the project travels to his destination in the UK.
Anyone of my UK friends willing to bring it safely to the island?
So far, this took me quite an afternoon in only writing it, dayumn
:D
Support Massive Voodoo!
If you like to support the monkeys of Massive Voodoo in what they do, please feel invited to drop a
jungle donation in their direction via paypal or check their
miniatures they got on sale.
Keep on happy painting!
Best Wishes
Roman
