Fey Project 4: Color Choices

Hey! A new naming scheme: Now you can tell which WIP this post belongs to, and see my unhelpful tag line all at once!

Some may recall the Reaper Warlord Fairy miniature that I had decided to turn into a display piece this past Fall. When last we left the Fey project, all the way back in October, I had been playing around with eye painting techniques, leaving things here:

Surprisingly, this project has not been lying completely idle for two months. While progress has been slow, I have been chipping away at it, adding details and color. I am very much hoping to finish her by the end of the year.

I started out by blocking in her skin tones. I picked colors that would echo her base, but blended them with some standard skin colors to produce a mix that I am hoping will look harmonious with the end product.

To achieve the desired effect, I based the deepest recesses with the brown tones that appear on the tree stump of the display base, and shaded from that into a basic tanned skin color. As I moved into the highlights, I started adding in a more yellow-ish skin tone to provide a more yellowed contrast to the purples I planned to add later. In this case, I was using the Reaper "Bright Skin" colors in the brightest highlight areas.

A major part of this project is pushing myself to take on new challenges and try new techniques. Brilliant colors, especially yellow-greens and violets are a challenge for me. It seemed only natural to pick them as the dominant colors for a project designed to be a challenge. Blocking in the purple areas also gave me a chance to explore and defins the complex pieces of this model. It took me some time to decide which parts should most properly belong together.

In principle, red-purple and yellow-green should be a good pairing. At least, that's what my mental color wheel tells me. Throwing caution to the wind, I mixed up exactly those colors and forged ahead.

At the time, I was still not at all certain where to go with her tunic and wings, but I was able to take the time to do the basic shading on her chitin armor.

In the next entry, I'll try to bring you up to date with the current state of this project, as of early December. I'll also talk a little more about color choices, and what kind of mixes I settled on for the missing pieces.

Tune into the archives and see whether I went back to tag the older posts in this chain, or just got lazy and went to bed!