Thursday 17 November 2016

Painting a Bloodbowl Classic - Scrappa Sorehead

Using Pointillism To Add Texture To Skin


Adding texture to skin can be fun and daunting at the same time. The skin on the Goblin above was painted with a classical technique called Pointillism. This is used quite a bit by David Soper and Kirill Kanaev (both legends imo) to create amazingly realistic miniatures. 

So what is Pointillism? Pointillism is a technique where you apply lots of tiny dots to give the illusion of a blend. It works very well in a miniature context because from a distance, it looks like a solid smooth blend but as you bring the model closer you begin to see more and more detail.

Highlights


I started off with a flat base coat of Scale75 Ardennes Green, For the first highlight I made a roughly 1:1 mix of Ardennes Green and Sherwood Green. I very roughly layered in highlights, I made no effort to make these smooth, in fact, I left them quite streaky/patchy. I wasn't fussed at making things neat at this stage because I wanted essentially a rough surface to give me a base for adding more texture.

For the second highlight I made a 1:4 ish mix of Ardennes and Sherwood Green. I applied this using the very tip of the brush, making small dots over the upper surfaces. I kept the dots fairly tight where I wanted the highlight to be strongest and as I moved lower into the darker areas I made the spacing wider and the dots more infrequent.

Another highlight was added using Sherwood Green. I repeated essentially the same process, however this time, only focusing on the upper areas.

I added a couple more highlights by mixing some Tenere Yellow into the Sherwood Green.

Shadows


For the shadows I mixed a little Fantasy & Games Mayhem Red (half way between Khorne red and Wazdakka Red) with some Vallejo Armour Brown (Rhinox Hide ish).  Using this mix I made both a layer and a glaze. The layer paint was applied directly into the deepest recesses. I also used it to line the model where the flesh meets fabric to help separate those areas.

The glaze was applied towards the base of the muscles. I tried to get the glaze to go over some of the dots just to make things a bit more interesting, You can see that most clearly on the upper lip of his face. 

If you want to try this and you don't have Ardennes Green etc, you can just use whatever Green triad you like, you'll get a similar result, just with a slightly different shade of green. Good luck!

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