Young Miniatures - Wardaddy, US 2nd Armored Division, 1944-45
This the work completed so far over the COVID-19 Easter weekend on the Wardaddy bust from Young Miniatures. I consider this as an experimental piece in an attempt to render a secondary light source onto a three-dimensional form.
Unfortunately I do not have a step by step guide on how to achieve this effect as it was mainly a trial and error process from the start, plagued with lots of back and forth. In summary I managed to gleam two takeaways from this exercise.
The first being that since I chose to depict a secondary light source from a oblique direction, the recesses will have to be illuminated and thus overturns the traditional approach of rendering highlight on top and shadows beneath. I have to make a careful observation on how the light falls instead of following through with routine.
The second takeaway relates to the appearance of color under different lighting conditions. For example, how does khaki or skin tone appear under blue light? To seek out the answer, I shone a white light through a blue cellophane onto the actual color and tried to match the tones on the wet palette to re-create in the illumination. Another useful approach is to study the lighting in the films and to observe the nuances of color within each region of lighting.
To create the illusion of blue light, the colors within that zone have to be harmonized. This involves a process called toning the palette - meaning adding a common color to all the colors on the palette to "reign" in their chroma. Harmonizing the colors thus allows those tones appear analogous.
The main idea here is to paint in the light such that the illusion of the secondary light source "moves" as the figure rotates. This is commonly referred to as Off Source Lighting (OSL) for short but I prefer to call this intrinsic lighting as the light is registered on the model itself and not outside of the figure's space.
Personally that this stage, I am quite satisfied on how this turned out. I am still trying to figure out the nut and bolts of making this approach of painting appear natural and not overtly graphic as in a fantasy subject. Lots of work ahead of me for now.
Stay safe and happy modelling.
Calvin
