Saturday 18 June 2016

Ben Hamilton from the Wild West Exodus


This is Ben Hamilton from the Wild West Exodus range. They have a tonne of great models, lots of character and this one is no different! Quite a lot of the detailing is very small, I found it quite a challenge to paint but the result was definitely worth the effort.

I used zenithal priming here. If you've never heard of that, essentially the model is first primed in black, it's then sprayed from above at about a 60 degree angle with white. It gives you a very effective preshade, letting you see instantly where all the highlights and shadows should be.



I don't often bother with it but I wanted to try out Ben Komets' leather technique which uses the natural grain left over from the primer to create the rough look of worn leather.

Painting Leather

For the trousers, gloves and backpack I simply used Army Painter Soft tone wash, applying it about 4 times directly over the primer. Then I went back and refined it a little here and there, adding some glazes to deepen shadows. I didn't want all the leather parts to look the same so for the straps I used a dark brown, highlighted with some dull orange and finished with a bone colour. If I'm honest I would have liked to get more contrast on the straps, they're a little flatter than I was going for. Still, the contrast between the two different kinds of leather is quite good which was the most important thing.


Painting White


I have a few different ways of approaching white, for this one, I wanted to show a bit of texture on the cloth so I started off darker than usual. I used Scale Color Graphite (GW Dawnstone). Then I gradually worked up highlights by adding more and more white to the mix. Once I got a few transitions on I started adding little lines and dots with each new highlight layer. To add more depth I glazed with black into the deepest shadows. It's ok to go quite dark with this, a common mistake when painting white is to ignore the shadows, or be scared to go dark enough. Check out the image below, it's white but look how dark some of the shadows are.


Painting Woodgrain

This was done quite simply. I started off with Scale Color Walnut (This is a desaturated pale brown, GW Dryad Bark mixed with some Karak Stone is roughly the same). Woodgrain lines were then painted on using Scale Color Birch (GW Ushbati Bone). Then a single glaze of Inktensity Woodgrain was applied to finish. A couple glazes of Seraphim Sepia will also give the same effect.



4 comments: