Somewhat productive week.

So.  Getting there.  

The Eagle Rider is done, or as done as I am going to be able to make it. I ended up ripping off the one I did before and redoing it totally from scratch.  This one has come out a bit better.  There are still bubbles, and that's going to be my bane until I can get a vacuum chamber.   However, these were much smaller and are likely to disappear once the owner starts painting it.  I can barely make them out with my eyes, although when I zoom in to take the pics, they show up fairly well.

The sculpting was ok.  I still don't like the cape, but I suspect that I could work that over and over and over and I'll never be happy with that.  I'm getting a handle on the flow of cloth in wind.  I'll do a bit more when I do Malekith as well, and also when I work on the mounted Witch Hunter.   On the other hand, all four horns were pure sculpts, because all the horns didn't fill in the mold, I figure I need to learn how to make vent holes.  But the horns were easy enough to hand sculpt and attach.   I am looking forward to seeing how this will look when AngryHippy gets done painting it. 

Speaking of painting, I ran several more tests of colors and techniques on the head of the Dragon.  I have three raw casts of it so I can see how the colors come out.  Another trick that I need to keep in mind is that some of the parts are smooth, since they're the plastic pieces from the Dragonlord model, and the pieces for the Warpfire Dragon are more raw and textured.  I haven't figured entirely how I'm going to handle that, but I suspect that there'll be some liquid greenstuff and putty greenstuff to build up textures on those smoother surfaces.

I finally got a wash/base get me what I wanted.  It's a Black Grey undercoat with a Black Wash and drybrush of Royal purple  (Vallejo Model Color Black Grey, Gloss Black and Royal Purple)   The next thing I needed to do was figure out how the horns are going to look.  I hate the "all one color" look of a horn and prefer a transitionary color.  I tried a lot, from black to purple to purple black to gray, to bone to purplish bone, etc.  You'll see several different styles in the pics below. 

With that done, it's time to figure out what color transitions I like.  I think the one that works best for me is the the black-to-purple-to-bone transition.  I like the fade and hint of purple as it goes darker.  Of course, that's probably the most complicated of the paintschemes, but hey, would I be "me" if I chose otherwise?    The thing is, I'm going to have to do this to *all* the horns.. and this guy has a lot of them.  Wheeeee.  Good thing I'm not in a hurry or anything.