Spring Painting: Update Two

One more week is past, and I squeezed in another few hours of good painting time. For the most part, I continued to focus on the Battletech Thor model I've been working on, but I did put a little planning and thought into one of my RPG models.

As planned, I finished the NMM blue shading Monday night. I will go back to smooth out a few blends and add some further details later on, but I am satisfied with the work, as far as the initial shading process goes.

Wednesday night I started to shade the green paint on the 'mech's armor, starting with the right leg and working my way upwards and outwards. I pretty much always find it easiest to start on a limb and proceed continuously across the body of a sculpt. If nothing else, it helps me to keep things methodical and to avoid missing key areas.

By the end of that evening's session, I had the whole leg and most of the hip section completed. It was not a very long session, but still, I paint slowly.

The green paint is a blend of the Reaper Master Series "Warm Greens" triad. The very darkest shades on the 'mech's underside use a mix of the triad shade color and a small amount of black paint. It might be a bit nicer to mix the green with a red or red-purple for shading to get a better shade hue, but black was expedient.

Friday was unexpectedly free for me, so I sat down to finish up a bit more work. As I started work on the torso, I noticed that the armor plate on the right side still had a nasty mold line on it. Even though painting was well under way, I couldn't leave it alone and brought out the needle files to file away the offending mark.

With the surface improved, if not perfected, I applied a fresh spot-coat of brush-on primer to prepare the new surface for paint.

With green applied, and the torso shading around half completed, the repair is no longer detectable. I wish all last-second repairs were so simple!

I devoted my brief painting window on Saturday to finishing up the green paint, In retrospect, I should have found another 30 minutes to get started on the yellow, but I suppose that will have to wait until the next week.

Once I had all of the green roughly shaded, I hit the 'mech with a light coat of matte varnish to provide the paint with a modicum of protection. I liken this to "saving my work" in a digital project.

I still had a little time wile the varnish was drying, so I devoted a little bit of time to planning out the color scheme for an RPG miniature in the paint queue.

I have tinkering with this halfling model off and on for several weeks. I have never been totally satisfied with his color scheme (which has changed several times.) I don't want to strip the paint now that he has a sculpted cobblestone base, so I am trying to make a plan before I proceed. As you can see in the picture, I made a sketch of the main elements of his outfit in pencil.

I painted in the outlines using colors that I thought might look good on a sorcerer of some type. I have not made a final decision, but the purple is winning right now. If anybody reading this has a bold suggestion, I'm open to hear it.

For Monday and Tuesday this week I plan to shade the Thor's yellow completely, choose a color scheme for the halfling and get his base coat finished.