Abalám

I finished painting this sweet little bust from Hera Models. I might still tweak a few things, so if you have any comments or critiques, please let me know in the comments!

The more I paint busts the more I find I enjoy them. They are large enough to give you lots of room to work and play with things like textures and freehand, but they still paint up very quickly, and you can focus on the fun bits like the face.

Abalám ended up quite close to my initial vision. There were only two minor changes that happened as I painted. Originally I planned to have an Oni Kanji on his breast plate. I tried painting it three times, once in red, once in black, and once in gold, and each time I decided I wasn’t really happy with it; eventually I ended up just painting over it and bringing back the beaten metal texture I had. The other change was the shirt, which was originally painted as brown leather, then became yellow, then green, before finally ending up as black cloth.

Unfortunately the large metallic areas make this guy difficult to photograph. This set of photos came from my third attempt. I’m still not entirely happy with them, but they’re a big improvement over the first two sets.

The lighting study I did before priming him didn’t end up being quite as helpful as I hoped, but I did make some use of it. I wanted the red glow to be much stronger than the one in the study (which was just reflected light from a red coffee mug, not an actual red light source). Still, it’s a useful trick and I recommend it for anyone who has difficulty painting lighting effects.

I’m really looking forward to my next bust!