The final harlequins

Avast me hearties, we are finally, finally at the end of the Harlequin road. These bad boys were in the same box as the griffon so they had hit the same brakes as the pidgeon of death.

I've never made any secret of how hard I have found painting these. It isn't just a matter of fiddly paint jobs or motivation. Those I can handle. It was, bizarrely, the bright colours. I just don't normally paint in a vibrant, cartoony style. Mine is a much darker more "realistic" (yeah right, that space goblin with a hamster cannon is really realistic Jeff...) and grungy. As a result I had to practically teach myself how to paint again. White undercoat helps though...

I was able to deliver these to the client in person so live feedback is nice. The comment "It's like a 70's disco" pretty much sums these lads up for me! I would be curious to paint a set designed to go with a Dark Eldar army some time. All deep tones and sinister details, hmmm....

Given that overall there are 20 or so of these guys (click the harlequin tag at the bottom of the post to see the others) I painted one of them as a spare troupe leader. Annoyingly the lamps cut through the layers again making it look scrappy. Grump. Mercifully lightbox v.2.0 should solve this, I'm doing a collaborative construction with my dad (well, I say collaborative, he's the one with the knowledge and manufacturing skills). I'll take some shots when it's finished. Well, that's it for now so until next time.

TTFN

A Ringmaster of Clowns

Todays post is showing off the leader of the Harlequins that I've been painting on and off for the last few months. The Troupe Leader is the senior Harlequin and thus warrented a little extra work:

To my considerable irritation the camera caught the darker paint under the thin highlight layers. He is a LOT cleaner than he appears in these shots. Not sure what to do to stop that happening, might try diffusing the light so that there is less strength to it. Might stop it penetrating the upper layers of paint. Anyway, on with the show! I decided to go for a flamboyant classic domino pattern for the lining of the coat. Checks aren't hard, just very, very slow which is why you haven't seen any on other harlequins so far! I removed the legs before working on the coat as it made it much, much easier to work on. I chose yellow, red, blue and green as these are classic clown colours. Check out a cheap set of juggling balls some time!

grr, the wraithbone edge IS painted, stupid lighting.

Equally, the coxcomb of hair wanted to be bright and colourful. A nice blend of rainbow colours seemed to do the job. Broad stripes of blue, green, yellow and red are applied first. Then mix the colours 50:50 to create the inbetween tones. Finally shade with appropriate washes, if you allow them to mingle a little while damp it will help the blending.

For his back I decided that a nice tragic and comic mask design would suit his demeanor and role. A quick google trawl turned up a decent image and I went to town on the freehanding. The masks are painted using the same NMM method I talked about last time.

As with all the other Harlequins the troupe leader's mask was painted to represent a mirror. Mithril Silver is basecoated on and then shaded with very thinned black wash. Once this is dry I paint thinned blue, brown and green inks in a rough sky-mountains-grasslands pattern. Once this dries I rehighlight with mithril silver and then hit it with water effects to give the mirror shine. Works nicely.

I've got another 8 of these lads almost finished (pics soon!) and that would leave only six to complete. More later!

TTFN

More Harlequins, the troupe grows...

Six more harlequins for the troupe! I took a slightly different approach this time to help variety within the squad. Lots of fades from one colour to the next.

When doing this kind of paint job do not be tempted to use a third colour as the transitional shade, mix the two colours together. I started from Sunburst Yellow over a white undercoat. Enchanted Blue was the other colour, I gradually mixed the two together and blended from yellow over to the blue. Go from bright to dark not the other way around. The mirrormask look worked particularly well on this one.

Instead of mixing colours you can use faded out washes to graduate shading. In this case Smoke Ink over red.

This harlequin shows the advantage of owning a colour wheel, blue and orange are an ideal contrast. Colour wheels help you choose which colours work together.

This bright fella shows the advantage of using neutral flat tones to contrast bright tones.

Again with classic contrasts, yellow-purple is another excellent combination. The claws were done in the same crystal scheme as the gun from the last batch. Essentially a mithril silver base coat. Heavy Blue Ink glaze and then edges and cracks picked out in a 50:50 white to silver mix. Catchlights added in white and the whole thing gloss varnished.

I've never liked Scorpion Green much but when it is glazed with a thin mix of Green Ink and Glaze Medium. it leaves a nice tone. The purple sash along with the wraithbone and emeralds bind the unit together.

As you can see, the two batches work well together because of the linking bone and purple. I've got another two batches to go before they are finished. More later!

TTFN

Harlequins dance in

Finally, we have a post that includes painted Harlequins! Hurrah!

I won't lie, this commission has been something of a trial so far. I don't have much experiance painting bright, bold colours despite all my time in the hobby. As anyone who reads this blog knows I am a fan of the grunge so I have had to re-teach myself to paint for these guys! Add to that the wrist-crippling in the middle of it and it has taken far, far too long as a result! Now to business, the interesting bits of painting: All of the bright colours have to be applied over a white undercoat otherwise they lack intensity. Given that harlequins have a whole "riot of colours" thing going on you have to choose a couple of features that will bind them as a group. In this case I chose the masks and the wraithbone. Lets take a squint at the masks first.

I wanted to create a mirrored effect on the masks as the old fluff for the harlequins had their masks mirroring your worst fears. In this case the masks are basecoated in mithril silver. I then created a horizon line reflection with glazes of inks (green, brown and blue) to make it seem as though the mask reflects the surroundings. Rehighlighting the mask with mithril tones down the glazes and a layer of gloss varnish finishes the mirror finish. Seems to work well enough.

The models are a mix of the new and the old, all of them treated the same way to try to bind the models together. Instead of the incredibly laborious lozenge patterns that harlequins are usually painted in I decided to go with a more Cirque du Soleil look. Bold patterns across the bodysuits. To balance this I chose a very neutral leather and wraithbone contrast. Lets have a closer look at the wraithbone:

Wraithbone is a living psycho-plastic so needs to be bone, but not bone. My method starts with a clean basecoat of Dheneb Stone, I then use Ogryn Flesh wash to warm the colour and shade it, that gives it a disturbing fleshy quality. I then highlight first with Dheneb Stone and then with increasing amounts of white added to increase the highlights. Dheneb is a very dead colour and creates the look of artificial bone nicely.

This trio of bad-asses are the Death Jesters. I painted all at the same time to make them as identical as possible. The black was achieved through layer upon layer of badab black over a dark bone colour to create a smoothly toned and unusual shade. The rest of it was just the wraithbone and purple as contrast.

The last model (in this batch, there's about three more batches this size) is the old solitare model. Using black for the undersuits creates contrast for the bold colour without introducing yet another shade. The odd weapon in his hand seems to be a crystalline gun grown from wraithbone handle. I made the colour transition from the wraithbone into a blue crystal. I used mithril as the base shade again before glazing in layers of blue and adding white catchlights and gloss varnish.

Thats all for today folks, more soon!

TTFN