Tuesday 20 May 2014

Squarg the Frog Rider - Part 3

With the frog all but done, I’ve turned my attention to it’s rider – Squarg.
I decided to paint Squarg with a yellow/brown flesh tone. In part to contrast with the frog and in part because I used to paint all my GW Night Goblins this colour back in the 1980’s. I’ve never understood the received wisdom that all Orcs and Goblins should be green!
I started off painting Squarg’s flesh in a similar way to that of the frog by building up layers of translucent colour. Once I’d reached a flesh tone I was happy with, I built up some stronger highlights and shadows to give his features definition. As I was doing this I also worked some red tones into his nose, ears and lips. This prevents the flesh looking monochrome and helps to give it life.
At this stage I felt there was still something missing, so I enriched some of the shadows around the eyes and nose with purple. This made a huge difference! Although the colour doesn’t look purple on the mini it’s presence made the face come alive.
It’s a basic application of colour theory to use complimentary colours (yellow & purple in this case) to liven up a colour scheme. What really surprised me was how effective such a subtle application of colour turned out to be!




5 comments:

  1. Looks exquisite so far - although the placement of the drill makes me wince...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lovely work on the face, can't believe I've just notice his cape is a skinned mouse...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The mouse skin cape/hat was the thing that finaly made me decide to paint this mini. It's a brilliant bit of character enhancing detail.

      Delete
  3. Excellent work on the frog and Squarg thus far! He's a pretty small goblin if he's riding around on a frog and wearing a mouse pelt nut I have to say, the skin-tone looks particularly effective and real! I rather like your style, Dave and really have wonder why all goblins and Orcs have to have that cartoony green GW says they should have but after looking through pics on various "Oldhammer" blog sites it is something they've been doing since day one of Warhammer© 1st edition. Go figure and happy painting! ☺

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. He is a very small Goblin. It's been a lot of fun recreating the skin tone I used to paint my Goblins with incorporating all the 'modern tricks' I've learnt. Green isn't a bad colour for Orc and Goblins but it does frustrate me that, because of GW's huge influence, it's often regarded as the only colour to paint them!

      Delete