Miniature Monthly prize!

It never ceases to amaze me how photographs are actually MORE forgiving of my painting efforts than real life. The reality is that this is rather more Impressionist than the picture indicates. I will come back with some glazing to try and address this. So how did I get here?

Well the first coat of paint left me with something like a Son'a (Star Trek: Insurrection reference folks!):

I then followed (rather timidly) the Miniature Monthly video, using my highlighting and shading to get a pretty reasonable finish:

And this is where I got to off the back of the Male Face Painting videos. I got some great feedback from Aaron and Liz (push the highlights and play with some other colours in the mix)... and then... then I won an hour 1:1 lesson with Aaron! He took me through some amazing tips using photoshop showing me exactly what to do on my model and explaining the reasoning, how light plays across the skin, what happens below the skin (hair growth and blood flow) impact the colours in the skin. With the new inspiration I jumped back into it and in about 15 min I had gone to this:

The change is really incredible each of the stages is a world better than the previous. Now to put on some glazes and get to work on my female face... and maybe even return to the pile of Pro Elves!

- Raggy, signing out