Looks like I was a little rusty. Luckily, I documented all the colours used (and mixed) to represent the different textures, so I had something to fall back on. The dark grey seems to have gone a little glossy over time, might have to consider getting a matt varnish for the lot of them.
A little group of just the peons (not including the slightly higher class civilians).
And a groupshot of everything, it became clear my display background isn't big enough anymore...
Intriguing... :-)
ReplyDeleteMarzio.
I'm surprised noone thought of it before, it makes perfect sense. :)
ReplyDeleteHi, do you have a painting guide on how you did this? Would like to try it for Walking Dead figs.
ReplyDeleteHi Robert,
DeleteWell, first thing is that you have to realise that there are two types of greys: warm greys and cool greys and that you can only use all cool greys or all warm greys if you don't want to spoil the effect. It may not always be evident which is which and you can only know for sure by painting them on a piece of paper and putting them side by side. And even then, there can be so many gradations in warmth that not all cool greys will work perfectly together.
Mainly, I have found I only use 4 different shades of the dozen or so greys I have and 90% of all the work is done using 2 out of those (a light one and a dark one, mixed together to create lighter and darker shades). So you really only need to find 2 that work well together. The fewer different paints used, the better the effect IMO.
The dark one I use is vallejo german grey and the light one is a coat d'arms one which I think is called light grey, but I'm not a 100% sure without checking. I also use one of the Foundry arctic grey shades when I do the skin, but don't remember exactly which one (the middle one or the shading one) and in any event, you don't really need it as a similar tone can be obtained when you mix the other two. The advantage offered by the arctic grey is just that your skintone remains consistent throughout, which can be hard when mixing shades (I have some trouble with matching my bases for instance as it's not an "out of the pot" shade).
I use black for blacklining and truly black items like zorro's clothes, anything else is grey. Even then, only the basecoat is black and then highlighted with the german grey, leaving black only in the deeper folds. I don't use any white anywhere.
Finally, do not expect this to be faster than colour painting, for the effect to fool the eye, you can't cut corners. You have to paint them as if you were painting in colour, but substitute different grey shades for different colours.
If you're not exactly sure what shade to use where, look at greysale pictures of the subject you are painting (with zorro it is easy to look for pictures of the TV show) and if none are available, find some nicely painted pictures of the same figures and convert them to greyscale, so you can see what to aim for. I have done this for inspiration on some of these perry figures and while I strayed a bit from it, it did help to give me a basic idea of what would look good.
A very cool project; I always like B&W minis projects. :)
ReplyDelete