Well Alright then. To save you all from a 3 page long post I decided to make incremental posts of the work in progress of the Chaos Manticore. It's not quite done as of yet as I'd like to tweak and micro fix a few details as well as varnish it with both matt and glossy varnish. Note also that the Character and basing is not shown. Ok, here we go....
I started by painting the entire model white followed by 2 coats of Leviathan Purple ink.
To bring depth to the shading I later added 2 coats of Devlan Mud. It also helps to neutralize the purple and browns are a great way to give an area a leathery touch to it.
To deepen the shading further I added 2 coats of Badab Black. Worst part about all this inking is the time it takes to dry inbetween all these washes... :S Ok admittedly I went crazy with all the inking but I don't know any shortcuts for bringing diversity into the skin color I was going for. The time imo paid off though, alot is happening in the color shift (patience is a virtue I hear).
Now it's time to build up layers of highlights. I wanted this Manticore to be a bit greyish gargoyle(y) with hints of a subtle leathery purple underlaying the surface. I probably spent an hour or two googling manticore pictures but there really wasn't ANYTHING that caught my attention and tbh I'm tired of seeing the same old reference pictures of a pea soup colored Manticore drawn back in the 70's. I went with my gut instinct and if questions at any point were to be raised I'd just defend it with a, "Hey It's Chaos! It's not supposed to make sense!" ;)
I didn't have any greys laying about that I liked and this is where living with an artist comes in handy. I used her professional acrylics which I've been hogging more and more lately. I used Titanium White, Lamp Black, Burnt Umber, and a touch of Cobalt Blue to get the color I was looking for.
Heres the result. I used a simple but effective drybrushing technique though I'd like to use the words "dusting" or "powdering" as there really is nothing left in the brush except pigment by the time I'm done drying the brush on high obsorbant paper before adding it to the model. :)
Let's leave the skin for now and have a look at the mane and fur areas. Again I didn't want anything crazy or too bright. I've seen some versions of this model floating about on the internet and don't get me wrong because they're all professionally painted but I swear to god they must have been smoking crack when they picked colors. some just look like clowns. I wanted a color to bring a little contrast to the rest of the colorscheme and I pretty early on excluded black or white thinking it would be too dull. I finally settled for a green. I used a green called Hooker's Green.
Now lets tone that down a little so that it doesn't look like a green street signal at an intersection. I inked another layer of Hookers Green followed by a Denab Black wash and finalised with drybrushing a mix of Lamp Black, Titanium White and Hookers Green.
I was going to do all the horns and nails a Bleached Bone tone but quickly abandoned the idea after having done a little test area on his hand as shown in the picture previously. Here you see a much more symbiotic result, black...I also spent a great deal of time adding layer upon layer of Devlan Mud in all the concave areas of the wings as I wanted a substantial shading difference here.
One would think it's time to work the streets with what only can resemble cheap lipstick. The gums and tongue were first cleaned up with white followed by a pale pink and later a watered down gore red.I also did the eyes at this point. First painting the eyeballs white, then bright yellow, and finally adding black irises. Since the Manticore is standing on it's hind legs I wanted to paint the eyes as though he's looking down with a crazy rabid glare.
Staying on topic and the mouth, I washed down the red with a few layers black and mud. I then took care of the teeth with first applying a bleached bone, washing them with mud and finally drybrushing a scarce layer of white ontop of the tips. I then moved on to drybrush and ink all the horns and claws with whites, greys, and blacks to make a blended transition. At this stage I was also done with the shading and highlights of the wings. several more coats mudin the concave areas, drybrushed greys in the convex areas and finally to blend it all together, 3 washes of leviathan purple. You can see on some pictures that som areas are almost a light pinkish purple. I used a "rubbing technique on the body. Basically I just rub and rub and rub until the underlaying colors come forth to further make the skin just that little bit extra "alive".
I apologize in advance for the quality of the photos as all are taken with a phone while working. Finally I'd like to express my thanks to everyone that's taken their time to read this quick tutorial and you should now all run off and buy this model. Don't be intimidated by the model, with easy painting techniques and patience anyone can get these results, I'm living proof of it! :P I do admittedly suck at landscaping and should hunt down the guy at Utopia for some pointers as I really like the things I've seen from him so far at Playoteket. It is without a doubt the most fun piece I've done in a long time and with that I'll leave you all with a few final "semi" finished shots. :)
