Finishing Up Izzy (Patreon)

       And we come to our last art process installment on our pair of undead gentlemen. When last we left Izzy, his head and hands were painted, but everything else was still just primed.  Here we see that I've given him his first coats on his clothes. I mixed up enough of the basic color that I could save some in an old prescription bottle (with a wad of wet paper towel under the cap, but not touching the paint). That way, if I needed more later, I wouldn't have to go through the nightmare of color matching.

     He's really coming along at this point. I've added shadows and highlights to his coat and hat, as well as darkening seams and painting in coarse threads. I leave edges rough and pale, and dry-brush where necessary, to suggest long wear. I've started "dirtying up" his clothes, including his glove, with multiple shades of brown. I figure a gravedigger fresh from work is probably going to be pretty grimy.

     I often forget to take enough pictures, so we've jumped ahead here to basically the end. His clothes and the base are now completely painted. In an earlier post I mentioned staying flexible. I decided against the blue his tie was originally intended to be (to match his tongue) and went with burnt orange. Unfortunately the orange made his lavender lapels appear pink, which clashed like crazy. So a couple of pale blue glazes cooled the lapels back down to lavender, taking care of the problem. The orange hat band was painted a little lighter than it would appear, so that when it's seen through the gray cheesecloth it will match the tie. The cheesecloth was torn and distressed for appearance, as well as to make it behave more to scale. Brown paint was smeared on his coat at his waist, where he would wipe his hands while working.

     And finally, a close-up of the shovel, which was stained brown then dulled down with dry-brushed grays and lavenders. The blade of the shovel is Apoxy Sculpt, painted silver then distressed and aged with paint, including rust. The mud is also Apoxy, painted brown. A little red floated onto the corners of his eyes was followed up by some Sculpey Gloss Coat, to make his peepers nice and shiny.  Some final dry-brushing and sanding on the base to distress it (as opposed to his friend's pristine, glossy black base), and several applications of Dull Cote, and he was done.

     There you have it. Two Halloween  sculpture commissions finished and delivered barely in time for the holiday.  I hope you enjoyed seeing the nuts and bolts of how I approach something like this. I have a number of pieces in various stages of completion, which I plan to get back to. If there's interest, I'll bring you more posts like this one in the future. Bye-eee!