Finished - The First Wolf

 Ok, stick a fork in him but I still ain't 100% happy.

Things I like:

I love how the metals turned out. I got lots of practice painting old bronze/gold with my Iron Warriors. It is Shining gold washed with Dev Mud and only then touched up with Mithryl Silver. It looks dirty and worn but cared for and that is just what I want.

I chose to paint the shoulder pads and the cowling on the Storm Bolter Iyanden Darksun rather than any other yellow and highlight with Bleached Bone. I like how these turned out. the model is overall very dark (more on that later), and I did not want to make those shoulder pads too damn bright and overpower the model. Far too often, painters loose track over overall model composition to their detriment. 

The FACE! I love how his face came out. It is some of the best skin I have ever painted. The shades, highlights and eyes all turned out great. The hair is wonderful and it was just some Bestial Brown with Bleached Bone mixed in. I would paint on a little then come back and highlight it with the same color with a little more bleached bone in. The lips turned out really real. I am trying to mix in more colors into my skin tones. I am gettin comfortable with red on the lips. I want to get better at painting stubble and BoLS has one in their increasingly rare good (or even adequate) articles guiding you through flesh. The last little bit left in my education of the flesh is using blues and purple under the eyes. It'll come with time. 

I love how the wolf tail came out. I found a good article on how to paint furs that uses mostly washed and it works great! It required a little touch up to meet my standards but I used it pretty much as it is written. It beats the pants off of doing it the 'Eavy Metal way.

Things I ain't happy with:

The model too a lot of skill to paint and it looks like a muddy brown mess. This is one of the downsides to dipping models is that you change the whole tone of the model to the same color. My armor and metals all have brown tones to it. I had a similar problem with my Crowe model where, though the model was black, all the gold and cloth was sepia toned and it made the whole model look dingy. It is hard to tell from the picture, but trust me.

The whole model is not an entirely bad thing. Because the armor and metal is all brown-toned as it makes anything that is not washed in Dev Mud really stand out. This makes the focal points the yellow (hard NOT to look at anything painted yellow) and the face. What I don't like it that it also makes the gold really blend in and I really want to dray attention to them. Maybe I could try to do some lighting effects and make them all blue and glowy. That is unlikely but a thought.

I do not like the base. It is my typical lazy basing which is Calathan Brown with a mix of GW sand, playground sand and model train sand mixed together. I do not like painting the bases for a variety of reason that I will not go into here but I may have to think again. The base matched the model and make everything all brown. When the mini was on the black base, it looked fine. Maybe if I put it on a darker base, that will make the model look brighter.

My plan is to paint up a Grey Hunter and a Long Fang before moving onto the power armored boys.