Thanks Paul, glad you like it so far! We Got another robe and some more cloth elements - all with more freehand patterns on them. I'll be doing a breakdown of all those too!
Phil

Thanks Tony - I'm glad I'm able to help out!

Hey guys...

So today I was getting ready to do the large red robe, and I totally forgot that there are some ribbon like cloth elements that should be done first. Of course, like everything else on the General, they're fancy and have some free hand patterns on them.

One notable difference between the freehand on these cloths and the freehand we just did on the robe, is that the patterns on these aren't geometrical in terms of having a single repeating element. Here we're just painting in some lines, curves, shapes or whatever in a completely improvised fashion - just going where our fancy takes us.

The paints used are:





First well make a mix of Burnt Sienna with a little bit of Vat Orange for our base coat, and then cover the first ribbon:



(The above is is also shaded with just pure Burnt Sienna - it's hard too see)


Now, let's just paint some patterns in using a mix of Titanium White and just a speck of black to make an very light, off-white color. Here is each section showing what is essentially just doodling:








That's it for the top ribbon. Now let's do the same thing for the back section of the bottom ribbon:


We don't have to be particularly fancy on this piece because a lot will be covered up by the bottom ribbon cloth.


For the bottom ribbon itself, we're doing pretty much the exact same process as the top - here it is section by section:












With that finished, let's glue this on and take a look:



Unless I forget something again, next should be the red robe!

Thanks for reading,
Phil

I've missed this for some reason, how I don't know. But I have read through it and I must say
it's magnificent, and I must say a big thank you for detailing how you have done it, it will be of great
help for many, me included especially, looking forward to the rest.

Chris

Impressive work Phil. Thanks for the SBS

Thank you for the very kind words, Chris - you're welcome. I've been enjoying writing this up, and I'm really glad to hear it may help you!

Regards,
Phil

Thanks Tony - glad to see you're checking up on the progress.

Regards,
Phil

Phil,just as I was saying that it can't get any better,it did.You make it look easy (a gifted artist's characteristic).This is a cracking figure and an awesome tutorial.You should definitely make a habit out of it.

Oda.

Thanks Oda, I think I should be done the General within the next couple of days. I'm totally open to suggestions as to which figure/subject to tackle next!

Regards,
Phil

Hello Everybody...

For today we have the top robe. The robe consists of two parts, the collar, which is black with (yet another) free hand pattern on it, and the rest, which is just a more traditional robe with a reddish-orange hue.

We'll cover the collar first. There is really no reason why I approached this first, it just seemed to me it would require less cleanup work if I did the collar first. The approach is similar to all the other freehand patterns we've done so far, so there is not much new here.

One thing I'll mention (this came up in a real life discussion from somebody who saw the figure in person) is brush size. This is fairly subjective - so your mileage may vary here.

Here is the brush that I've been doing all the patterns with:



This is a Winsor & Newton Series 7 000 Miniature brush. Brush sizes and brands are pretty subjective, but this is what I've been using. I like this brush a lot, although many prefer the same size but the "non-miniature" version. (Just the standard size 000). I find that the smaller length of the bristles on the miniature series vs. the standard series allows my shaky hands a little bit more control.

The problem with using this brush (or any really small size brush), is that when using acrylics, the paint usually dries way too fast, and won't come off the brush and onto the miniature properly. So in order to mitigate this, I use Slow-Dri Fluid Retarder from Liquitex. (This was mentioned in one of my first posts on this thread). I use a fairly generous amount; when done right, this allows me to use a brush this small and not worry about the paint drying out. As a result, I don't have to rush or hurry to get the paint on the miniature once I've put it on the brush. This allows the whole process to be a little more relaxed, and I don't have to use a brush that would otherwise be a larger size than warranted.

(Having said that though, you should always try to use the largest size brush you can for the job )

Ok - so onto the painting.
Here are the paints used for the General's collar:



The approach to the collar is the exact same approach and colors used to do the bottom pattern on his rear robe. As with that, we basecoat the collar in Carbon Black, and add some subtle grey highlights on the areas where light will hit it:


The grey areas are hard to see, but they're there


Again, as with the pattern done on the bottom of his rear robe, we have a bottom border, a pattern consisting of various kinds of elements, and then a top border. We'll use Naples yellow to create the pattern. Here is the bottom border:



With the bottom border in place, we can now put in the elements that will make up the pattern. We'll be using elements that based on various kinds of "S" shapes. As with the ribbons, I had no particular plan for this. I just started painting some patterns and just let it happen. The one thing we need to keep in mind is to leave some space between the elements and the top border that will be painted on next. (As an aside, I normally paint in a style that is far, far, far, more chaotic then this SBS would leave you to believe, but I digress). Here are some pics of the patterns as I painted them on:





With that in place, let's but the top border on:




With that finished, the next step was doing highlights on the pattern with a mix of Titanium White and Naples yellow. Unfortunately, I don't have any specific pictures for this, but you can see it on later pics.


That does it for his fancy collar, now let's do the rest of the robe and finish it off!

Regards,
Phil

Now lets do the rest of his robe. For the most part (except for the very end), this is painted in a more or less traditional way robes, cloaks, fabrics, etc... are painted.

Here are the paints we're using:



First, let's paint a nice Naphthol Red basecoat onto the robe:



Next I created a mix of Vat Orange and Naphthol Red (more orange than red), and started painting some highlights on areas that I thought the light would hit. The first pass is subtle, but can definitely be seen:




Here is the next pass, with the same color. I'm using a pretty diluted mix, so we can build up a subtle transition just using multiple passes of the same color, taking advantage of the translucent nature of the colors. Compare these images with the same ones taken from the same angles above:



Now onto the shadows. We're going to use Burnt Umber as our shadow color. Umber is essentially a dark orange/brown color, so this will work nicely. Other great colors to shadow red are dark purples or violets. These are basically made from some kind of combination of red and blue, so they have red in them already, and blue is the complement of orange, so using purple or violet to shade red can give us a nice subtle, harmonious shadow. We went with Burnt Umber this time because I wanted the General robes to be a little more dramatic looking. (In the completed figure forum, I posted some pics of a Spartan Warlord with a red cloak - there I used shades of dark purple and violet for the shadows). Also, while I painted the shadows, I also did some additional highlight passes:




That completes his robe... with one small exception. If you're familiar with the box art, there is a small Chinese dragon painted on the back. Seeing no reason why we shouldn't have one either, I went ahead and painted one on as well:


Unfortunately, due to the size and complexity, I really couldn't break this down in a feasible way that would make sense for our SBS format. For reference, our little dragon is smaller than a dime!


Here are some shots of our total overall progress so far:





We've reached a real milestone here! It's amazing when you compare how he looks now to the way he looked in the first couple of postings!

With the exception of the ax and groundwork for the base, we've now painted all the major elements of our General. The arms are composed of a combination of the shin armor and red robe; there are no new elements in either arm, so I will do those "off-line", and not bore you with something we've already done.

Thanks for reading!
Phil

It's coming together great Phil. Very impressive work on all the freehand, but I also very much like your color choices. Most impressive I find the blue robe. I think its large area makes the pattern especially impressive.
Looking forward to your progress.

Cheers,
Adrian

That's progressing so well. Your freehand work is splendid.

Cheers,
Andrew

Thanks so much Adrian. I'm glad that you're enjoying seeing it all come together!

Regards,
Phil

Thanks for the kind compliments. They're much appreciated, and very encouraging!

Regards,
Phil

The excellent work just keeps coming.

Chris

getting more and more impressive with each post. you have got one hell of a steady hand mate to do all the freestyle work as good as you do!!

tony

Now that's a proud veteran general.Great job Phil.

Oda.

Thanks Chris! I'm glad you're enjoying the work

Regards,
Phil

Thanks for the kind words Tony. Believe it or not, my hand isn't all that steady! It does more than it's fair share of shaking. I just brace my arms up against my desk, and use my fingers to brace my hand against the model or base when I'm doing all the freehand stuff. Finding a nice comfortable position with arms and hands braced will help with that kind of thing more than any other tip I could think of...

Regards,
Phil