Young Miniatures - Wardaddy, US 2nd Armored Division, 1944-45

Made some updates to this bust painted back in April this year. I realised that the colour temperature of the warm zone was too cold and desaturated. This lack of temperature contrast resulted in a colour scheme that is dull and thus lacking in visual appeal. The solution as I came to realise from studying cinematography lighting was to employ a complementary colour scheme which in this repainting the warm zone in an more orange hue. I think it looks significantly better and that is another lesson learnt in 2020.

Here's wishing everyone a Merry Christmas!

Calvin

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

Young Miniatures - Wardaddy, US 2nd Armored Division, 1944-45

A little more refinements done to the bounced light on the face and the insignia. If this exercise has taught me one thing, it is that less is more. Moving on to render the textures on the tanker jacket and the herringbone tunic.

Cheers,

Calvin

Young Miniatures - Wardaddy, US 2nd Armored Division, 1944-45

Just started work on this bust from Young Miniatures.  The face was done some years back for a painting demo and I thought I might use it as practice for painting directional light. It is only a quick sketch at this stage to visualize the lighting and the atmosphere. 

A small piece of blue cellophane was placed in front of a lamp to serve as a guide in determining the color tone generated by the blue light over the initial base color. Subsequently the tones and values were matched on a palette and painted directly onto the bust.

Cheers,

Calvin