Quick Tips: Eyes, Triadic Colour Scheme, Cloth Patterns

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Painting the Asandris Nightbloom figure sculpted by Bob Ridolfi appealed to me because she is a great representation of a low to mid level character, the type of character I’ve played most often in role-playing games! Asandris is available as one of the free bonus selections with $40 US (or equivalent) purchase from the Reaper site, or you can purchase her directly. I’m going to share a few work-in-progress pictures and some tips that would be useful to painting her or many other figures.

Other views of the finished paint job are found at the end of this article.

The Base

I used a mixture of materials to make the base. I have some base texture press moulds, like those produced by Basius. When I have left over epoxy putty, I use it in a press mould. I cut off some of the integral base of the miniature with a pair of flush cutting shears and glued the remainder to the plastic base. I glueed pieces of cobblestone texture from a press mould around it. Then I applied superglue and dipped the base into a mixed-size gravel mixture. I built up a few areas with additional applications of glue and gravel. To add a little more variation, I applied some fine sand texture paste in a few spots. I over-did the glue and gravel stage a bit for my original intention of having it look like an overgrown road, but at least it looks like a nice mix of earth and rock textures.

The grey parts are the epoxy putty cobblestone pieces, brown is the gravel, and white is the fine sand texture paste.

Colour Scheme

I decided a simple, classic colour scheme would be a good fit for a simple, classic character archetype like this. I chose to use the red-blue-yellow primary triad. Any decent colour wheel should generate triadic colour schemes. One of the challenges with getting familiar with colour schemes and using a colour wheel is that they generally refer to very bold saturated colours – cherry red, royal blue, sun yellow, would be examples of a red-blue-yellow triad scheme with saturated colours. But bright colours like those didn’t really fit my vision for the character. When a colour wheel/scheme talks about a colour like ‘red’, it means the entire family of red – brick, blush pink, terracotta, red-brown, all of those would be considered ‘red’ colours for the purpose of fitting into a colour scheme. So I picked colours that were weathered and worn examples of blues, yellows, and reds to use. I used slightly more intense versions of those colours on her hair, lips, and her jerkin to try to focus attention to the main area of interest – her face. The belts, scabbards, and wood staff are desaturated yellow browns to keep them from drawing too much visual interest.

You can see that the base echoes colours used on the main figure to tie everything together and help it appear lit by the same light source.

Don’t leave out the base in your colour schemes! I dabbed colours used on the miniature or mixed from those main colours on various sections of the base to tie it in with the figure as a whole. I used red browns from the jerkin shadows, yellow browns from the wood and belts, and mixed a green from the yellow and one of the blue colours to use on the base. I also glazed some dull blue colours and a bit of yellow here and there on the stone sections. You can also use one colour from your colour scheme within other colours. There’s a little bit of red brown shading on the staff to give the wood a little more depth.

The Eyes

Painting eyes on gaming scale figures can be a real challenge! One thing that can make it a little easier is to paint the eyes looking off to one side instead of aiming for a straight ahead gaze. This can also add a bit of interest or personality to a figure. Here I think it helps give her a little sense of being in motion, as if she had been looking off to the side and has just shifted her gaze before turning her head to look back in front of her.

Close up view of the eyes painted off to one side.

The Cloth Pattern

I wanted to do a little something with her dress. Sure she’s an adventurer, and a low level one at that, but she can still enjoy a little personal decoration as most of us do! I had the inspiration for the pattern from character clothing in the Lord of the Rings Online game.

I wanted to try to create an effect like the pattern on the skirt above.

I started off by using a stipple brush stroke to add the highlighting and shading to the dress. The stippling technique can be used to create a range of results. I have used in the past with a very small brush, uniform application, and a LOT OF DOTS to create textures like this. With a more dynamic range of colours and applying a lot of dots I you can get something like Madame Delia’s dress. You can apply it more loosely with a larger brush to get hammered metal or scuffed leather effects that work particularly well on larger figures like giants or busts. I used a brush stroke along these lines for the leather on Asandris’ jerkin and boots. In the case of the dress, I was going for a rougher woven look, so I used a smaller but not super small brush and applied the stipples somewhat haphazardly. This is one of the techniques that is I find challenging to explain with words and pictures, maybe some day I’ll be able to show it on a video. There is a bit of a WIP example on the Madame Delia link above.

Dress pattern tests.

The underlying fabric look was just one element of the pattern. I also had to create the diamond shapes or criss-crossing lines. Here I was on less familiar ground, so I did a couple of tests on another figure. Painting flat lines with the tip of the brush as on the above left did not result in the look I was after. It might work well for more of an embroidered decoration look, or a strongly woven pattern like a tartan, but it didn’t fit with the soft woven pattern I was aiming for. So I experimented with doing lines of stipple strokes on the above right. That looked like more of a woven effect to me, so I used that technique on the figure.

In this picture you can see the base fabric texture stage on the sleeves, and the addition of the diamond pattern on the skirt.

Additional Views

 

Paint Colours Used

For the most part I painted from darkest colour to lightest, though there were a few areas where I added additional shadows such as the hair and the staff. To save time I use paints straight from the bottle as pre-mixed layer steps whenever I can. So it would be entirely possible get similar colours using a smaller set of paints and more mixing. I am not suggesting you need to have all these paints to paint a simple colour scheme like this!

NOTE: Colours in italics are out of production. Colours in bolded italics are currently out of production but are available for preorder in the ReaperCon HobbyBox. (And will be available for sale outside of the boxes on the main Reaper website closer to ReaperCon 2020.) Turkey Brown will likely be available to purchase again during the next Winter holiday season.

Skin: 9224 Redstone, 89542 Shoanti Sienna, 9494 Gnome Flesh, 89540 Taldan Pink, 9487 Yellow Mold

Jerkin and boots: 9307 Red Liner, 9235 Red Shadow, 9223 Redstone Shadow, 9224 Redstone, 9225 Redstone Highlight, 9494 Gnome Flesh. Glaze with 9663 Big Top Red.

Blue cloth: 9229 Worn Navy, 9230 Soft Blue, 9056 Templar Blue, 9231 Heather Blue, 9057 Ashen Blue, 89529 Hobgoblin Blue. Diamond pattern: 9317 Moonstone Blue, plus a little white.

Belts and scabbards: 9199 Russet Brown, 29829 Golden Brown, 9429 Rich Leather, 9075 Buckskin Pale. Glaze 9691 Turkey Brown on belts and scabbards. Glaze 9074 Palomino Gold on side pouch.

Staff: 9429 Rich Leather with a dab of 9231 Heather Blue to dull it down. Then add 9075 Buckskin Pale for highlights. Added a bit of 9199 Russet Brown for shadows.

Cloak: Base of 9109 Ruddy Leather. Washes of 9307 Red Liner, 9685 Corporeal Shadow, and a little 9066 Blue Liner in the deep crevices. Then highlight up with 9109 Ruddy Leather, 9305 Tarnished Copper, 9232 Bright Skin Shadow, and a touch of 9306 New Copper. 

Hair: 9429 Rich Leather, then 9199 Russet Brown for shadows. Highlight up with 61101 Terra Nova Tundra, 9074 Palomino Gold, 9075 Buckskin Pale, 9039 Pure White. Glaze with 9095 Clear Yellow mixed with 9247 Saffron Sunset.

The greys of the non-metallic metal steel and stones on the base were mixed from colours used on the figure. Mixing a little bit of colour used elsewhere on the figure into standard neutral grey paints would work as well.