I didn't think it appropriate to put this in the blog, cos it has nowt to do with the GW universe, at all ;)

Been working on new colours and consolidating my blending. Also wanted to do something quite moody.
Picked up this model - Oni Bushi of the Okko range from Hazgaard - at Salute earlier this year with the intention of painting it up for a mate as a present.



Went a bit mad with GIMP for the background, so here's the montage...



The shadows are painted onto the floor, BTW ;)

Hope you likey B)

I love his pants! (what an odd thing to say :P)
No really, the blending is superb on the trousers. Nicely moody and controlled palette overall. Is the model 32mm or larger?

Wow! You've managed to tie the blue and red together really well and the flesh tone is great. I do think the helmet crest looks a bit plain when compared to the rest of the mini though.

Still, great model, I'm sure your friend will be chuffed with it.

@Mara - He's 28/32 scale. I'm very happy with the blends on the pants ^_^

@Itko - Thanks :) I guess that the ostentatious look of a living Samurai has faded somewhat ;)
I had considered a gold crest, but then gold doesn't actually tarnish, so I went for a blackened, slightly rusted iron look. The pics are a bit of lose on that particular part, but it goes from a dark grey/blue into a dulled iron red. I decided in the end to keep it a similar palette to the sword, but not so shiny.

Ah, that's fair enough. I think my impression was in comparison to the sword anyway... :)

Very nice! :)

How do you do a muted palette? Its something I've wanted to ry for ages but I just never worked out how to get the different colours to look coordinated, and how to do the highlights without things becoming too light and bright... do you need to mix greys into everything, or use a particular colour in the highlight mix?

Thanks Ano. Well, the easiest way to do a muted palette is use muted colours ;)
seriously though, I used mostly P3 and Vallejo model colours as the basis of this model - the pants are a mix of P3 Exile blue amd VMC dark sea green, highlighted with GW SW grey added to the mix. The armour is either VMC hull red or VMC black red, again with SW grey added. The skin is P3 Thornwood green and GW catachan green, guess what? Highlighted with SW grey.
The SW grey was the basis of the moonlit effect and I even washed it across the "lit" areas of the floor around where I did the shadows.

You can mute some of the GW stuff with some careful mixing, but is it worth trying to remember the formulae, probably not for the sake of a couple of quid to get just the right tone from Vallejo... ;)

thanks for the answer - very interesting! So you're basically saying that the GW range is, by its nature, a bright range, and therefore less suited to producing muted colours, hence I should look at the Vallejo's and P3's.

Cool, thanks again!

Exactly so. The GW and Vallejo Game Colour ranges are very vibrant bright colours, but totally at odds with the majority of things we see in real life. By all means use them, but, for instance, army fatigues aren't bright orange or bright green. even their white is just BRIGHT white, there's no off white or similar.
The foundations are heading in the right direction actually, but I don't use all of them very often other than laying down a base coat, which they are great for ;)

So this is what you've been up to! He looks bloody awesome (like that Yoshimitsu dude from Tekken!), and the muted colours look lovely. I hate the saying usually, but I guess you could say that less is more in this case?

Thanks for the explanations of colours as well, its something I will keep in mind for the future!

Looks very nice. :) Thanks for posting the colour tips, too.