I started the final work on The Judge first, because he has no skin on him. >.>
He was both a good test, and an unfortunate failure. As I said a while ago, I’ve been working towards the idea of “highlight up, then shade down”. It’s been working for me, but I’ve been too lazy in most cases to actually highlight up, so I’ve been starting with a single bright basecoat and shading down and I wanted to see what actually highlighting up, then using a larger variety of glazes and mixed glazes did.
On the one hand, this model looks pretty sharp. On the other hand, Mephiston Red (+layers) is such a strong colour that it’s difficult to get any good coverage to bring it down. I see Mr. Wappel making big changes in colour and tone with his glazes, but the best I could do here was to get the cloak looking a lot less bright and a bit more “in the mud”.
I used a lot of SW Flesh Wash, mixed with other things. I’ve noted before that I found the SW washes to to dry shiny, so I mixed it with the Red in some places. I used also used the SW Soft Body Black to add some slight darkness to the shades, and the SW Red Black for beneath the cloak. GW Waywatcher Green I used in spots to make a little change of colour, where I could. And lastly, Seraphim Sepia because sometimes you just have to get somewhere quickly. >.>
I brought back my old friend the Golden Fluid Matte Medium, because I read that if I mixed a bit with the SW washes it would also dull the shine, but without changing the colour, which is what I wanted. But I need to figure out the right ratio of it, because adding to much leaves the layer looking so thin it doesn’t do anything.
The base was drybrushed up with Fortress Grey over white, then some Seraphim and Waywatcher before drybrushing again with Codex then Fortress and then Waywatcher again to add more variety on the stones.
As an odd last step, I took some really watered down black and lined a couple areas that looked like they needed more contrast. I don’t usually do this, we’ll see where it goes. I had the black on the palette. 😛
