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Well I finished a Muse and thought I’d try my hand at one of the PYO griffins I have on hand. Wanted to keep it simple since this is my first time painting one of these. Well….I can’t post pictures, and just as well, because it would upset you all to see such pyo abuse! Wanted to paint this thing in browns, neutral colors so what could go wrong? Well I strated off with a coat that looked something like a bronze tan and it looked sort of cool….well not the next day it didn’t. Then I mix some brown and lightened it a bit and painted the feather areas with this–a little better but the poor thing looks like I dipped it in copious amounts of poo! 😮 Maybe it’s my state of mind–one of my birds (Meyers parrot) got smarter than her own good and undid one of the hooks for her toys (forget what you call them, but they screw close) and got it caught in her beak–underneather her beak! So got her dislogged, called the vet for advice and it seems things are okay but she is still quite stressed and is hiding in her little hide-away. Thought I’d paint to de-stress—-wrong!!!! I think my Muse turned out better and that’s not saying much! I put the dixie cup they send with the Muse over the griffins head so it wouldn’t glare at me–who could blame it.
Well Windstone warns you that these things aren’t easy to paint. The contrast of the darker brown with that coppery bronze color looks all right–for now anyway. Like putting darker poo over the light poo and maybe some sparkles on top stand back and admire. Yeah, right! :negative:
Well I guess I’ll take a shower and wash my hair–stink in more ways than one right now! Whenever I get a camera I’ll post the pictures–the good(yeah right), the bad(oh yes) and the ugly (definitely)![sigh] 🙄
I’ve found brown is one of the hardest colors to paint with. I just can’t get it to look right. Any other color I can get to look fine, but brown…no way.
Actually, I find the griffin the hardest one to paint.
You could try to strip the paint and start over, depending on the thickness of your paint, or you could repaint it all in darker colors… like a deep brown and drybrush a lighter brown. I’m just throwing stuff out these since I haven’t seen it.
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http://www.sarahjestin.com/feedbacklists.htmYeah, browns are a pain in the butt. 😛
It can’t be that bad! 🙂
And, the feathers of the Griffin are hard to get used to, but I love to paint them the most so far, but I haven’t done a Keeper yet so who knows? 😕I’m looking at this grif again, after I gave myself a little facial, took a shower and washed my hair and I think it has some potential. It has light blue eyes and for some reason that light bronze copper look just didn’t look like a nice contrast. Maybe I should have left it that color and dry brushed more browns–I don’t know–it just didn’t look good at all to me. The brown with the blue eyes looks better, but I’m going to leave it alone until next weekend. So on a hurl scale of 1 to 10, it’s now about a 6 :puke: One thing, Windstone doesn’t have to worry about me painting my pyos to look like their sculpts! But I feel soooooo sorry for the person that will have me painting their pyo in the upcoming swap. 😥
LadyFirebird wrote:I’m looking at this grif again, after I gave myself a little facial, took a shower and washed my hair and I think it has some potential. It has light blue eyes and for some reason that light bronze copper look just didn’t look like a nice contrast. Maybe I should have left it that color and dry brushed more browns–I don’t know–it just didn’t look good at all to me. The brown with the blue eyes looks better, but I’m going to leave it alone until next weekend. So on a hurl scale of 1 to 10, it’s now about a 6 :puke: One thing, Windstone doesn’t have to worry about me painting my pyos to look like their sculpts! But I feel soooooo sorry for the person that will have me painting their pyo in the upcoming swap. 😥
You’ll do great! *hugs*
You’ll be allright. 😉
And IMO, there’s nothing that blue eyes in a sculpt don’t go nicely with. 😆
Don’t know if this’ll be useful, but I have just one technique that permits me to paint my way out of a wet paper bag. I call it glazing, though I’m sure there’s a proper technical term for it. Essentially, it’s going from light to dark, with a pale base coat, and thin darker coats added on. It requires some forethought, but is reasonably forgiving of minor errors. I worked for a very gracious, frighteningly skilled carousel horse painter, (mostly doing simple prep-work) and it’s the only technique that sunk in well enough for me to take home and use.
So… in a nutshell, the steps I use. It takes some planning, it’s best to start with a preliminary sketch of the color scheme, there’s probably an easier way, but… 😕
1. Prep the PYO with the lightest color that will be used. Mixing in some metallics (if they don’t take away from the proper color) will give it a nice final glow. So, if the lightest part of the griffin is a silverish white, that would be the base color.
2. Thin the next lightest color down dramatically, let’s say… yellow, and paint the bits that are supposed to be yellow, and the bits that yellow undertones wouldn’t hurt. To thin my acrylics down, I use Golden Mediums GAC 100, 200, a tiny bit of water, and a tiny bit of Retarder. Instead of my funny mix you could just use Golden Mediums GAC 100, or some other clear drying Acrylic Polymer, or if you’re on a major budget, water.
3. Go to the next lightest color, let’s say it’s a sun griffin so the next color is orange. You’d mix that color thinly, and avoid the parts that are supposed to be silverish white and yellow, but go to the parts that you want to be orange and red, and use it there.
4. And so forth, continuing darker and darker. Several notes about mixing. If you want a really pale color, thin it down greatly. Mixing white in, gives it a chalky look and knocks out any glow you’ve been building up, so it’s best reserved for emergencies. Shiny colors, silver, gold, etc, tend to be very agreeable when a little bit is tossed in. The beauty of this technique is that since the paint is really thin, a missed brushstroke or an extra brushstroke will have a minimal impact and can just be smoothed out, with the same done on the other side. But the bad thing is, once it gets too dark, or too much of a darker color infringes on a lighter color, you’re pretty much stuck. In that case, your best bet would be to try to work with it, somehow.
5. Lastly, would come any intense dark crisp markings, or gold markings, or very, very white thin markings that were at too much at risk of being painted over to simply paint around.
6. Sometimes, mid-painting, this technique has some pretty frightful results. Wanting to make a reddish brown unicorn, I started with silver, added a thin red, and the poor beast looked like she had been skunked and soaked in tomato juice or worse. Several layers of brown made it behave perfectly, but it was frightful for a while. 😮 :shout: 😮
There are many very excellent ways of painting, and some work better for some people than others. This is just the way I know.
Ack! Essay length! Sorry ’bout that. 😆
Edit: Now thinking about it, I hope this didn’t come across as a lecture, bossy, or thread-hijacking and I’m sorry in case it did. I like to share what works, but wanting to cover all bases, combined with my know-it-all and essay writing tendencies makes my posts explode, sometimes more than they ought to. 😳
Oh no, Maplecarver, I didn’t take your post to be preachy or a long lecture. This is what I am looking for–advice in any shape or form. You made some excellent comments–personally, I may have overreacted to what I was doing–couldn’t see the complete picture. Artists can do that–I’m learning to. Just saw what I felt was a hideous color and wanted to do something about it–NOW!
It’s still salvageable, but I need to sit down and look at it more. Work on it little by little. In time, I’ll post the pictures so you guys can really give me advice. Might just get a cheapie camera–cutting us another day at work so I have to nix trying to get a real nice one. And No, I personally don’t worry about people hijacking my thread–this is what this forum is all about. Makes me feel good to see other people’s minds wander like mine! LOL!
With an extra day being cut I’ll have more time to paint this thing and make it look like something! 😀
I also glaze (or layer) when I paint. I find it easier than blending when it comes to acrylic paints. You can get some really neat effects when you layer the paints, too. But I do, on occasion, layer with white.
I actually have two whites.
1- Titanium white – which is an opaque white and makes colors chalky as maplecarver said. I do not use this for layering. This is my cover-my-mistakes white. 😆2- Zinc white – a transparent white and gives a more silky color when mixed. Depending on the outcome I am looking for, I may leave it “silky” or lightly glaze the other color back over it to bring back out its vibrancy. I use this technique when I go too dark.
I also have the Golden mediums. They are worth getting (or other mediums). Depending on your paint, if you thin them too much with water, the paint tends to flake off – some worse than others. My Citadel paints are TERRIBLE in this respect!! :negative:
Don’t worry, you’ll do fine. Sometimes, all it needs are the finishing touches to make it work! 🙂
I’m sure you’ll get better. You should have seen my practice piece before I started on the PYO’s. It was a cheap bisque griffin. Let’s just say that I went over his wings so many times that the feather patterning was gone by the time I gave up. 😳 Hubby just laughed (which I hit him for…several times).
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