Painted these two largely as an exercise in painting white and black: Saruman the White (but not too white) and Grima Wormatongue, both from the GW Lord of the Rings range.
The white was a chance to use the P3 Shades. I started with a base of Hammerfall Khaki for the darkest shadows, then added Menoth White Base until painting pure MW Base, then into Menoth White Highlight, etc., and finally Morrow White. In the past I have always had trouble painting with Vallejo white, but the P3 shades are simply awesome. I also like the less-than-pure white effect here: as Saruman had turned to evil, it makes more sense to me.
I went for a very “soft” approach, applying multiple layers of thinned paint from one colour to the next, intermixing as I went. Very time consuming, and not something I will do on rank and file gaming pieces, but something I have wanted to try for a while now. I’m pretty happy with the cloth overall, though there are places where the shadows could be softer: something I need to work on.
The main part I don’t like on the figure is the hair: it’s just too strong a contrast for my liking. The face could also do with a bit more definition I think, as is the highlights appear too dark (or rather not enough contrast between layers).
Grima Wormtongue was the candidate for painting black. In the past I have always worked with black followed by dark greys as highlights which always ended up looking like....dark grey. Here I confined the greys to, well, the stringy bits on his arms and the fluffy-looking thing on his shoulders...technical terms these. Apart from this the cloth was painted black and only the very edges highlighted with a mixture of P3 Thamar Black and P3 Coal Black, the lightest highlights being Coal Black. This gives the black a blue-ish tinge, but to me was preferable to more dark grey. Dogey pics don’t show this too well though.
I kept the face suitably pale and tried to give it a wormy look, a slight reddish was under the eyes, etc. The Grima character in the movies was, for me, one of the better adaptations from Tolkien's work.
As always, C&C more than welcome.
CdlT