It has arrived!
Aug. 17th, 2006 12:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bladesparkI did indeed get it done today. And it is indeed made of pure awesome.
Glee! I totally love how this came out. It was worth the ridiculous ammount of time it took to paint all that crackle texture. LOVE!
More pictures:
http://bladespark.topcities.com/flamegriff2.jpg
http://bladespark.topcities.com/flamegriff3.jpg
http://bladespark.topcities.com/flamegriff4.jpg
http://bladespark.topcities.com/flamegriff5.jpg
I'm going to hang onto him for a little bit and bask in the pure awesome, and then I shall be selling him on e-bay.
I also definitely plan to try this pattern out on a dragon or two. I'm also pondering making other elemental types, as I recall somebody suggesting to me. Though I don't know how on earth I'd do the other elements to match this! It came out even better than I'd expected, really.
Glee!
And as some of you might actually care about why I did it, and also how I did it, I shall explain all.
It started, actually, with a red-eyed gryphon. I still have him, sitting there unpainted. But I got a red-eyed one for my own personal use, because I wanted to do an evil gryphon, and I figured red eyes would be the way to go. Some of you may recall that I debated some evil ideas, and eventually decided to do a Balrog-based gryphon. This seemed just perfect, but as I started work I realized that a direct copy of the Balrog just wasn't quite right. So I took the thing I liked best about the movie's Balrog design, namely the way the flame or lava-like stuff showed through the black crackled skin, and just went with it. The yellow eyes were, of course, the only possible color, though I still wish I could get eyes without pupils, that would have been even better.
So I sat down to begin with my paints. This one was painted entirely in Reaper's Master Series miniature paints. A bit pricy, really, at something over $2 a tiny bottle, and I used up most of the yellow doing it, but ah well. Worth it!
I began with a coat of white gesso. For a lot of things I prime in black, it tends to give richer colors. But this needed to glow so white was the way to go. Then I got out the paints, starting with sunshine yellow. Nice and solid over the entire thing. Then I got phoenix red, which is really a slightly reddish orange. (I used it on my firecat. I get the feeling I'll be running through that color pretty fast, really.) I got a natural sponge with some good texture and cut off a small piece. Then I used that to sponge a generous layer of phoenix red all over it. I wanted some of the yellow to show, but not too much, just the deeper cracks. I then added a layer of blood red, less solid than the orange, working to get more of the nice speckled sponge texture. Lastly I sponged on some dark clotted red (I love the names of Reaper's colors, they're amusing), just enough to give it a bit of a smoky look. (Clotted red is, as the name suggests, the color of drying, clotted blood. A dark, rusty, smoky red. Very nice!)
Then I started in with the black. As you can probably tell, I followed the feather texture fairly closely, but I broke the larger feathers up into smaller pieces. I tried to leave space and color in the crevices, and in the places where cracks ought to be. I took two full days, working five minutes here and five minutes there in between other things, to do the black. I used just one drop of paint at a time. It was a pain, and I doubt I'll do another gryphon like this, though I do intend to try this out on dragons, because this lava/flame texture is just made for dragons!
Glee!
Glee! I totally love how this came out. It was worth the ridiculous ammount of time it took to paint all that crackle texture. LOVE!
More pictures:
http://bladespark.topcities.com/flamegriff2.jpg
http://bladespark.topcities.com/flamegriff3.jpg
http://bladespark.topcities.com/flamegriff4.jpg
http://bladespark.topcities.com/flamegriff5.jpg
I'm going to hang onto him for a little bit and bask in the pure awesome, and then I shall be selling him on e-bay.
I also definitely plan to try this pattern out on a dragon or two. I'm also pondering making other elemental types, as I recall somebody suggesting to me. Though I don't know how on earth I'd do the other elements to match this! It came out even better than I'd expected, really.
Glee!
And as some of you might actually care about why I did it, and also how I did it, I shall explain all.
It started, actually, with a red-eyed gryphon. I still have him, sitting there unpainted. But I got a red-eyed one for my own personal use, because I wanted to do an evil gryphon, and I figured red eyes would be the way to go. Some of you may recall that I debated some evil ideas, and eventually decided to do a Balrog-based gryphon. This seemed just perfect, but as I started work I realized that a direct copy of the Balrog just wasn't quite right. So I took the thing I liked best about the movie's Balrog design, namely the way the flame or lava-like stuff showed through the black crackled skin, and just went with it. The yellow eyes were, of course, the only possible color, though I still wish I could get eyes without pupils, that would have been even better.
So I sat down to begin with my paints. This one was painted entirely in Reaper's Master Series miniature paints. A bit pricy, really, at something over $2 a tiny bottle, and I used up most of the yellow doing it, but ah well. Worth it!
I began with a coat of white gesso. For a lot of things I prime in black, it tends to give richer colors. But this needed to glow so white was the way to go. Then I got out the paints, starting with sunshine yellow. Nice and solid over the entire thing. Then I got phoenix red, which is really a slightly reddish orange. (I used it on my firecat. I get the feeling I'll be running through that color pretty fast, really.) I got a natural sponge with some good texture and cut off a small piece. Then I used that to sponge a generous layer of phoenix red all over it. I wanted some of the yellow to show, but not too much, just the deeper cracks. I then added a layer of blood red, less solid than the orange, working to get more of the nice speckled sponge texture. Lastly I sponged on some dark clotted red (I love the names of Reaper's colors, they're amusing), just enough to give it a bit of a smoky look. (Clotted red is, as the name suggests, the color of drying, clotted blood. A dark, rusty, smoky red. Very nice!)
Then I started in with the black. As you can probably tell, I followed the feather texture fairly closely, but I broke the larger feathers up into smaller pieces. I tried to leave space and color in the crevices, and in the places where cracks ought to be. I took two full days, working five minutes here and five minutes there in between other things, to do the black. I used just one drop of paint at a time. It was a pain, and I doubt I'll do another gryphon like this, though I do intend to try this out on dragons, because this lava/flame texture is just made for dragons!
Glee!
