Fey Project 5: Colors Revisited

In this installment, I will talk about color choices of for the Fey project, continuing the discussion I began in part 4. I will lay out how I built a color scheme abstractly in my head, executed it, and then cleaned up the mess.

First, a reminder of where we left off:

The big question looming over me at this stage was: How do I fill in those yawning white voids mady up by her tunic and her wings?

 I began this project with the traditional color wheel in mind: Red opposite green. Blue opposite orange, etc. If you're unfamiliar with the it, I recommend reading Autumn Stone's great introduction over at Handcannon Online. I wanted to try to build a harmonious color scheme based on a bright palette, and incorporating green to echo the bright green bracken that I was painting on the base.

My initial thoughts were to go for a "split-complementary" scheme, using yellow, yellow-green and green as my basic analogous colors, and a red-violet as the complementary anchor to go with them. As you can see above, I did start down that path, but I quickly found the array of different shades to noisy for this sculpt. I needed to cut down on the colors to a more select and focused set of shades, or at least smooth things out by bringing them a little closer together.

My first pass was to remove the purplish red and the yellow. I brought up the purple quite a bit, turning the tunic into more of a violet-pink, much closer to the other purple shades on the miniature. For the yellow, I simply added in a green tint to match it to the existing yellow-greens on the model.

 While painting the reds and violets on her tunic, I started to very much like the look of her very light-colored hair, even if the effect was being generated mostly by exposed primer. At first, I gave it a dark purple wash, just to see what it might look like in a finished product, and then, liking it, I pushed ahead with a remix of the tunic colors, skewed towards a much lighter, almost white mid-tone and highlight.

I also went ahead and repainted her dagger to be a solid color based on the same set of purples, but with much less red than in some other parts. I didn't care for the striped dagger. I tried to make it look a little bit more dangerous by sharpening the highlights to suggest edges.

This installment brings the Fey Project up to the present day state of the model. I will post more when I have some progress to report.