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