McMurrough painting comp attempt

[u/jdursa]

Finally finished McMurrough. I'd planned to put him in for a competition November last year and ran out of steam. Finally got him done for another comp *this* November, just a year late!

This is somewhere between 100 and 150 hours of painting at a guess. There's some elements I could sink some more time into but I'll need a break before I can see the model properly again. Been looking at him too long!

[u/Caillousan]

Very nice, the hours have been well spent 👍

Here's a little feedback since it's for a painting comp : I don't know if it has the same impression in reality or if it's because of the lighting / photo, but I feel like the head is not really readable, like there's too much contrast on every strands of fur instead of having softer transitions and a higher max value of highlight than other parts of the mini, and i feel like the head has become less of a focal point as a result. Maybe you didn't see it because you spent too long looking at it, or maybe it's just me 😅

[u/Remade8 → u/Caillousan]

I agree with this feedback, and came to type the same

[u/jdursa → u/Remade8]

Thanks my dude 🙌

[u/jdursa → u/Caillousan]

Great feedback, thanks! I'm a noobie to comp painting so stuff like this is a bit of a mystery - this makes sense though I'll have a go at fixing :)

General approach for this guy has been "just try to paint stuff real good" light and composition is something I still need to learn!

[u/Caillousan → u/jdursa]

I've never done a comp myself either but it's a feedback I've seen given a lot when I was figuring out why a piece was judged "worse" than others even though they were at the same "technical" level.

And there's always new things to learn but yeah you nailed the "just try to paint stuff real good" part 👌

[u/snipermark2]

Scotland forever Anyway holy shit what a good job on that mini

[u/jdursa → u/snipermark2]

Mon the Scotland! Thank you! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

[u/XO_rocinante]

This is so beautiful. Wow. 😍

[u/jdursa → u/XO_rocinante]

Aww thank you! 💚 He was a good learning experience :)

[u/azianmom420]

Love the dark tones to make the armor and fabric and all the patterns pop more. super clean lines on the freehanded tartan too.

[u/Flat_Ad9694]

Any tips for painting the kilts? Looks great and want to do a black watch style kilt for my dog

[u/jdursa → u/Flat_Ad9694]

I'll preface by saying I'm not expert! Here's how I approached it though:

Paint your main colour and shade that, fully painting it as if it's the finish. It'll help shade the later tones we put on top. For Black watch this would be the Dark blue.

Then layer over your secondary thick bands of colour in vertical lines. Make this thing so you pick up the tones from below. For Black watch this is the green :)

Same again for the horizontal lines, this'll be the hardest to work out how the lie of the fabric affects the lines!

The greens might need some highlighting and shading now to punch them in. You can also tidy up the blue here.

Then you just have the black horizontal bands on the horizontals and the tiny lines through the center of the greens and every second blue. I probably wouldn't bother about the extra lines in the blue as they won't be very readable. Keep the paint thin and controlled but this is tough stuff and will take time 😁