Sunday 29 January 2012

Blanche on a larger canvas...



A little while back John was in the studio with his latest painting project, the new Forgeworld Cursed Ettin and I was suitably impressed and intrigued. This was something rather different from John: a monstrous figure. Okay, possibly a poor choice of words as John is rather gifted at making monstrous out of even human sized figures but this was on a much larger scale and on a figure with a rather different sculpting style...

The Cursed Ettin model is a figure sculpted by the enormously talented Edgar Skomorowski who slaves away in the Warhammer Forge section of Forgeworld. He tends towards a more sculptural style than the very graphic rendering employed by the sculptors in the Design Studio. The Ettin has an incredible level of texture in it's skin, rather like an Elephant's, which John saw as rather a challenge. His normal painting style is to paint texture on rather as he would in 2d and he uses paint rather thicker than most mini painters. Both of these factors needed weighing up in painting the Ettin.

The skin started with a basecoat of mostly white with a little orange and snakebite leather added. John followed this with a wash of nut brown ink to pick up the incredible textural detail. The skin was then re-highlighted adding yet more white to build the contrast and then more shading painted into the recesses with the ink mixed with a little black. Then repeated extra shadows with a mix of orange and black ink moving towards orange dominated washes. John leaves the top off his orange ink so it thickens, becoming redder with time. He notes that he doesn't have any red colours of any description. An interesting aside given the rich reds in his work but it reinforces that sometimes getting the effect you want doesn't come via the obvious route and that John has decades of experience to draw upon to achieve the effects he desires in either 2d or 3d.

The bionic eye is a ball bearing with no colour added and he added black washes to the eye sockets. John tends to leave the eyes allowing the sculpture to define them and isn't a fan of the goggle eyed look.

A fairly limited palette of materials and a lot of Snakebite Leather used. For me this one is all about the rendering of the flesh and it's vibrancy speaks for itself. Like all of John's work, it's a vivid slap around the face which demands an opinion. And here's the whole beast...


17 comments:

  1. Utterly, mind blowingly awesome as ever! Great write-up too Steve. Thanks!!! Xxx

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  2. I have a problem with this paintjob. To me it looks like a 2D painting wrapped around a 3D model.

    The paintjob would stand alone as an example to people to look after their skin because, hey kids, this is what you'll look like if you don't. Superbly grotty, smelly (I can smell it through the monitor) and dirty. I think it gives exactly the impression John was after. However the paintjob is so powerful it overshadows the miniature completely - it might as well not be there.

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  3. I think it's stunning: painting such a vast expanse of skin (however detailed) is really tough without it just looking 'flat', and the complexity of JB's painting really does it justice, without swamping the details of the sculpt. It's also interesting to see a larger miniature as I can begin to get a better impression of how JB paints his miniatures and his style is achieved.

    Thanks for the write-up, too, Steve. Really informative.

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  4. Marvellous and very inspirational. Agree with those above too - really good post.

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  5. be a bit floppy without the model kev - but i agree however i have no other route in painting such a miniature - however i do see lots of flesh as a jenny saville/rembrandt excercise ........

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    1. I'm getting a bit of a Freud or even Ensor vibe, as well!

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  6. Really nice work, especially the shouting head, of which the 2D effect is the most outstanding. But damn, that creature is really ugly, lol.

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  7. And true beast it is! Splendid work from master JB!

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  8. it reminds me of a bloke i know

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  9. Glorious, the heads are incredible. Those mouths. Amazing model too.

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  10. Soemthing about the use of stark white under the washes of inks doesn't sit right. The faces are amazing and I like it as a whole well enough, but it seems almost unfinished to me....

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  11. Deeply spectacular. Really fantastic work. I really like it.

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  12. mr deadestdai - the white as an undercoat allows for a fairly vibrant colour base layers - but what you see here is not showing thro colour washes but it is painted highlights on top of a base flesh tone - i think maybe the balance between surface detail [ skin texture ] does not lend itself entirely to my technique - the pupils need adding to the eye at this scale of photography but look much better in life - yesterday i finished a LOTR troll which has a smoother skin texture and seems to suit the finished result far better as i tend to paint detail on - they both look great, are just little model men and i tend not to analyse such things .....

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  13. That's a big un , the silvery blue veins are a nice touch, quite a simple model that has been treated with a sympathetic conversion. Nice work.

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  14. I am surprised no one has yet asked...what brand of orange ink? I'm guessing W & N?

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  15. yup - leave the top off and as it thickens it goes redder just like using layers of washes ......

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  16. Hi Steve, I accidentally stumbled across this blog the other day, and I would just like say how much I've enjoyed reading through the archives over the past couple of days. Keep up the good work, my friend!

    John, I'm a huge fan! I remember the first time I saw the 'Renegade Confessor' conversion you did a while back - that model blew me away! So much so, that I had to track down the parts to make one myself! The mood and atmosphere you managed to capture with that model was nothing short of breathtaking.


    All the best,

    John Triplow

    Ps. The giant looks awesome!

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