SBS: Uther, Light of the Realm

Good Wednesday Morning jungle,

welcome to another step by step insight into a project I did paint in 2017. You can not imagine the amount of articles I got from this era, still unwritten. Well, what can I do? Yes, write them for you so you can enjoy them and hopefully be inspired :)

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Uther, Light of the Realm

This article is about the steps I took and the thoughts I made to finish this bust, a sculpt by Raul Garcia Latorre:

First,
I fell in love with the sculpt when I saw it for the first time.
A fierce warrior priest that could be easily transported into the realm of Warhammer Fantasy. My senses were tingeling so I decided to paint him up. This is always a good sign and I often follow this call.

After preparing the bust and removing mould lines and glueing everything, except the sword together I decided for a very uncommon priming method ...

I used GW's colorful primers to prime the figure. Using a brown, blue grey and yellow here. Why?
Well, I was just bored starting always with black and white and my thought behind this was to place the colors I wanted to place influanced by the primers guideline.

Well,
it did not work as I was to shy somehow. After I placed all my basic colors on the bust I quickly realized that this was a neat idea, but I was not able to pull it together somehow. I got stuck on the red dark brown color from below and some gentle touch of yellow in the highlights of the face.

I do not see such things as a mistake. It is just part of the journey.

After this step I worked more and more on the true metallic metal - using mainly Scale75 silver colors - which in this case was quite the surface. Slowly the figure turned from a cool sculpt that I want to paint to a massive metal monster that was exhausting to paint.

Still keeping that red glow from below in the process ... if you flip him and look from below.

If you look from the front you don't see that ... yet.

The face was the most fun part on the bust for me. I enjoyed playing with skin variation colors, like the yellow influance on the forehead, the reds and oranges in the middle area of the face as these areas are packed with organs that need a lot of blood: eyes, nose, ears ...



The lower parts and neck kept a touch of green in it.

I wanted more of that red back, so I used the airbrush and sprayed it in from a steep low angle.

From below, yes.

From the top, no.

Having a second light on the figure, a colorful from below allows the figure to deliver more interesting areas, especially when you got such big metal surfaces that reflect from here to there or elsewhere. Like a mirror.

I also painted more detail to the armour by checking back with its upper light situation. It is a pain in the booty to take proper photos of this, but who am I telling you this. Everyone who paints a lot of true metallic metal knows about this issue.

So far the red glow was just sprayed to the figure and not really included in the concept ...

So it was time to paint it over again, but using redish tinted metal colors for it. Focused on strong edge highlights from bellow. Kept it dark in areas of shadow and the overall look closed in much better.

My highlights on the armour turned blueish, cold. I did the same to the hair, skin and cloak as there is no reason to change highlight color here. Metal is always a great guideline to show the color of the sky and so delivers a guideline of colors you should use to bring other areas to brightness.

The cold/warm contrast appearing in the figure is really enjoyable, even it is far from my initial primer plan :D

This photo of a brush sneaked in this step by step. I do not find a reason for it, so let's take it as a beautiful photo of a brush ...

In the final stages I increased the contrast from dark to bright areas in the armour by glazing in darker shadows and painting stronger highlights. This is when the shine of a polished armour appears.

I was checking back with single volumes of the armour that pointed downwards and should recieve stronger reddish influance and added this with reds and oranges.

Here you can see what I mean. I focused with more orange and yellowish orange to the edges of the metal that would reflect the strongest.

For the final steps I increased the level of detail here and there. Mainly on the face, smaller highlights, deeper small shadows. The sword was painted and added to the light situation with the reds. Then glued to the figure.

Somehow I was really fascinated by the character of the bust, while painting it was kind of too much metal going on . I know, some of you will say, there can never be enough metal :D ...

The way I paint is always from a rough overall look to detail. Usually in the middle of it I know the final look and where I want to go. I see my vision. Somehow I was missing this in this bust as I saw too much metal all the time. Nonetheless I finished it, but far from my initial primer color vision. Well, happens. I am really happy about the amount of textures I was able to bring into the metallics and it was a pleasure working on that red light.


I hope you enjoyed the insight!
More to come in the future!
Keep on happy painting!

Sincerly,
Roman