lol! Thanks gordy!!

Yeah, GW and Vallejo have some "colorful" names for their paints.

Okay this is going to be a bit heavy on the pics but it's a main part of the article I'm going to be writing on this color. This part covers Legs and Hooves.

Remember how I said, horses with white legs are never clean. Well, we want a way to add depth but just shading gray and going down the road leaves the model lacking in realism. For horses with black legs, it's a real pet peeve of mine seeing the feathers or their legs highlighted in white but the horse doesn't have socks. That's contrived, sort of like a plot device that bails the hero out of trouble and both are things that don't need to be used. There's a simple, better way.

First I used Vallejo Black Glaze.



This is the premixed version and I added more glaze medium and water to it. If it's too thick it will just make a mess and you will have to repaint.



I took the thin glaze all the way up to the knees and hocks. I wanted it in the feathers on the legs but also in the deep recesses. I blended the transition at the joint only a little. Don't worry too much over it, it will be covered later, but you don't want it so dark you can't cover it.



Once the glaze dried I took an off white color and lightly drybrushed it onto the leg. I start at a high point on the joint and work my way down.



And I really mean lightly. I barely touched the model with my dry brush. I don't like the chalky look you can get with drybrushing so I thin my paint extensively and just sorta wave the brush at it as I go past. lol! Seriously it was so light I really can't feel any drag on the brush from the model. I covered the high points and hit the feathers.



Then I did the same thing with thinned white.



Depending on how much off white you want, you can simply lighten your off white mix if you prefer. It just depends on how dirty you want those legs to me. I'm still pretty white here but this is the color I want.



Once that's done, I sit the model up and look for places I might have missed. When I'm drybrushing and have to reload my brush, I always apply first to a high point of a joint. Those areas are going to be white anyway, so if I accidentally have too much paint, there's no harm done.

Here's some close ups on the final version of the legs. See, it was only three steps, that's it. Simple huh? The whole thing lives or dies by the color chosen. Even with this technique, if you chose white to highlight black legs, it's not going to look right. So keep in mind highlights and shadows on black and white don't always have to be white and black.





Now for hooves. As I've said in the past, as a GENERAL rule of thumb, or hoof, horses with white legs have shell colored hooves. Horses with brown or black legs have black hooves which is actually a dark gray. So picking one of these colors will usually be correct. For hooves, first I paint all four of them shell - off white basically.

I must stress the importance of a reference if you you're going to detail hooves. Usually you can only see this if the hoof is clean and it really shows up when it's wet. So if you have the opportunity to check out a live horse, I highly recommend it. The markings in the hooves are like finger prints, no two are alike.



I used colored pencils and charcoal pencils for this part. Black and white charcoal pencils and regular Derwent colored pencils (not oil pencils). These are relatively soft and easy to use. make sure your base coat is dry otherwise the pencil will just gouge the paint. I drew some lines in various colors, dark gray, dark brown, light brown and of course black and white.



I make a variety of vertical lines some evenly spaced, most not, most are grouped together to form stripes.

Then I take my pointed cotton swab and start blending the lines horizontally, this softens the vertical but also adds to the illusion of growth rings.



When I'm done, it looks like this:



See much more natural.

I proceed to do all four hooves the same way but then run into a problem.



The feathers on the back hooves are too low for me to get a pencil in there. What am I going to do? I simply put light markings where I could.



Then I add a small amount of brown ink to help with shading.



If you have a horse with hooves off the ground, add some of that ink to the bottom of the hoof.



If you're not happy with your hoof after blending with the swab, you can also add ink to it.



After the ink dries, I got back and hit the high points of the frog only and leave the rest shaded.



If you need to fix the outside of the hoof, you can also do this as well with your base coat, just lightly touch it to the hoof wall to help soften the details.



And there's our hoof where we had no room to work.

Wow! I seriously need to update this thread - lots and lots of changes.

So, after the hooves, I decided to start on the metal base.






Talk about just plain boring! The rocks are okay, so-so with the shading and highlight but on the other hand....it's a rock.

Even adding greenery didn't help much. GAH!



I'm going to have to work to get that hoof to fit in right, the leg is a little off.



I just wasn't happy with the sucker. A friend suggested adding a few more colorful washes to it, like blues and purples. I liked that idea. And once it started cooking - look out, I'm off and running again.

I had started with a basic gray, added a mid-tone as a highlight, then tried a "weathering" type wash where I mixed a rust red dry pigment with rubbing alcohol and applied. The alcohol evaporates faster which leaves the pigment with interesting effects. I used it to add a little "iron ore" look to the base, and you can kinda see it in the pics. But when my friend suggested different colored washes, I thought about doing the pigment technique. Unfortunately, all I have are horse colors. Blue and purple I don't have.

Although, I have this Pewter Gray pigment I don't like, it doesn't lay down any color but it makes a good neutral mixer. Then I spotted my inks which I do have in green, blue, and purple.

Hmmmmmm....the experiment begins. Add a little gray pigment, rubbing alcohol, and a couple of drops of ink. Mix well and BAM! I've got color!

And that's going to be in it's own post, coming right up.

I started applying my make-shift color weathering washes.



Well that looks like something you'd find in an aquarium.

I used a black glaze followed by a light wash of brown ink. The color from the weathering washes are now more muted with the inks but they do show through quite well.



Better but still no real detail.

My "dry-brushing" technique is so far removed from "dry-brushing" that I hate to call it that. I mix up my colors with water and acrylic retarder as if I'm going to wet blend. I take my stiff dry brush and lightly load it, then wipe it off almost completely - that's where the similarity ends.

Because the paint is still wet because of the retarder I don't get any chalkiness or that heavy dry brushed look. I feather the color very lightly over the high points. It's easier to control and the paint is thinner and blends better with the color under it.

Here we are at medium gray.



I did the same thing with a light gray. That looked a lot better but it was still flat and still bugging me.

That's when I realized I was hitting the high points too evenly. Every highpoint got the same color and the same amount, so I forced myself to only pick out small groups of rocks and I changed up how much highlight went where.

Then I did the exact same technique with some of olive green color and a highlight that I mixed up for it. Both colors were from when I originally did the cloak in acrylics way back when. Except this time I hit areas where moss would grow on the rocks. And there ya go - it worked!. I then used beasty brown and got it on some rocks but mostly in crevasses. Then a very dark brown in the deepest spots.



Then I went back to highlights with an off white and finally the lightest gray I'd been using - almost white again picking out only a couple of rocks here and there but also picking out only the highest raised edges on those particular rocks.

And at last! I have something I can not only live with but I actually like it!



This is almost completely dry but there are a few damp spots. I'm going to take my brush on gloss and only put a small amount in those crevasses where the moss is growing, to make it look like a little moisture trapped in the cracks rather than actual water. But this is basically it and I'm finally happy with it now!

Whew! That was work but it was fun! I now have a better way to paint bases - at least mossy, rocky ones. lol! I'll have to experiment more when it comes to other types.

So whatcha think?

Bravo'..keep it coming!

Thank you Steve! So glad you like the base!

Cheers,
Karrie

The base looks much more alive in your last picture! The brown really helps.


You could also pick out some individual rocks with various light brown/greyish acrylics to add even more life. And if you're really into it, you can paint lots of vividly coloured lichen. Many natural rocks that have been lying around for a while are covered with lichen. Easy to do: add a relatively light almost-circular-but-with-somewhat-rugged-edges blob, and later fill it with a smaller, darker shade, just leaving the outer edge bright.


I used this on my Vietnam figure's trees if you want to have a look... Here's the link: http://www.planetfigure.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40563

Cheers,
Adrian

Thank you so much Adrian! So sorry for my delayed reply, I've been absolutely swamped over here. I'm definitely going to look at your link as soon as I finish this. I definitely like the idea.

While I have been rather quiet here, I once again have a ton of updating to do because I've been painting like mad. lol! More soon I hope.

Cheers,
Karrie

Well, here's the sad news and where it stands now.



I need to figure out how to fix it now.

I need to figure out how to fix it now.[/QUOTE]

Karrie, I think this figure is giving a lot of headaches.

http://www.mininet.tv/egminiatures.html