WIP: Ch'od

Now that my airbrush is fixed, time to start up on this guy.

So I've posted a few of these pics before, but I figured now that I'm working in earnest on this commission piece, I'd aggregate them all in one place.

Most of you don't know, but I spent the last few weeks, when not working on my giant Ork diorama, agonizing over what was wrong with my airbrush. After weeks of trial and error, I finally got the thing working again, so I spent my day off yesterday working on this, as he is WAY past due to the client.

I primed him in black to create a good baseline shadow effect that I could use highlights to work up from. I sprayed him a base coat of green, then realized the texture of the piece was more suitable for picking up raised highlights via drybrushing than spot spraying. So after my first coat, I drybrushed some lighter tones, and sprayed a few other light tones to get a subtle highlight mix that made the musculature pop a little. I also sprayed a few gradually lighter tones of brown, starting at a khaki color all the way up to a dark yellow for the ears/lips/fin on the back.

After the messy spray work was done, I started up on the eyes, which were a real treat to do. Usually, the eyes I do are extremely small (Warhammer style minis) or you don't get to do interesting effects, like the average human eye with a pupil. So, this time I got to do a really cool transparent effect that you see on Wathammer minis on a much smaller scale. I started with black, gradually mixed and blending dark reds all the way up to an almost orange shade, then a dot of white for a glare reflection, as well as picking out the teeth.

I also finished up the little critter that sits on his shoulder, though there wasn't much to him. Just lighter and lighter tones from a base gray. I also duplicated the eye effect on a smaller, and more dark red/subtle scale. He will be permanently attached at some point, but is so small and fragile that he won't ship back to the client attached, so this is the last you'll see of him before he gets packed carefully for shipping:

At this point I just have to pick out smaller details. I've shaded the ears and fins and need to highlight them back up, then just the nails, weapon, and belt. I'm waiting on a darker color metallic to arrive, as the spray I used on the base wasn't as dark as I'd hoped, so that will probably be the last part to finish up.  Thanks for stopping by!