Painting Skye

Photos from the process of painting the figure I made of my little raptor. The finished figure can be seen here at my site, here at deviantart, and here at tumblr.

It's a big step, getting painted, but mom's here for reassurances. And colour reference.

I started by getting dark paint in the sculpt's little crevices, of which there were many (thanks, past me). Not too concerned about the exact colour of the paint at this point, it won't show much.

Polymer clay and epoxy putty deal with acrylics a bit differently, it seems. The parts that are polymer clay got a pretty much full coverage with one coat of paint already, but watered-down paint doesn't spread very evenly on it, so just paint for those parts. The putty takes watery paint better, but is a bit glossier than the clay. I gave the putty parts a wash-like first coat, to keep it thin but still provide more tooth for the second coat.

It's so nice to see the different materials blend together! Skye is a bit greener and darker grey than Blue is, but this won't quite be her final base colour, either. The natural light I was painting in makes it look a bit greener than she looks in artificial light, though, because natural light always has a bit of the sky's blue in it (appropriately enough).

Drybrushing her with a bit lighter and greyer green-grey, and adding more of the underbelly colour.

Tidying up that underbelly colour on her snout, and adding the darker purple-grey on her remiges and the dark crest on her headfeathers.

Her colours are a bit stylized. Those greys would be more neutral instead of being this clearly tinted with colour in a more realistic depiction (not to say bright colours on dinosaurs is unrealistic in itself, but Skye is supposed to be about the same colour as Blue), but being that they're toys, the figures are designed in a more cartoony style, like how I draw them in my comics (especially Skye here, whom I gave a smiling expression that she would outside of cartoony stylization be anatomically incapable of making, because dinosaurs don't have facial muscles). I really like how Skye looks in this colour scheme (used in a bunch of other pictures, too, often but not always with a pink background if it's a single colour), so I'm basing her figure's colours mostly on that.

Adding more of that purplygrey for her patterns.

And more for more patterns. Tidying up the headcrest on the forehead, and adding highlights to the brows. Painting the coverts.

More tidying and details, including painting the claws and adding the blue markings. Defining her facial features a bit more with dark to the corners of her mouth and some "eyeliner".

I left finishing the tail for last of her plumage, because I tend to hold the figure by it when painting.

Then, when I was almost finished, the obligatory setback. I dropped the figure and two of the headcrest feathers broke. I found the tip for one and glued it back on, for the other one I made a new tip using acrylic paint as the sculpting medium and sewing string as armature.

After that had dried, I carefully shaped the paint chunk with a craft cutter and small scissors, added a bit of paint here and there, and now she has her headfeathers back:

They're not as smooth as the original ones, but they're feathers not spikes, so that's acceptable. The acrylic should be a more break-resistant material in case of future clumsiness, since it's flexible like polymer clay. Probably shouldn't have made long, thin, pointy parts with something that hardens when cured, since while it's strong, with enough pressure it'll snap rather than bend. But after I noticed the discoloration after that last bake, I just didn't want to put the figure in the oven again.

Then I painted the new feathers, and any touch-ups that were left.

The very last thing was adding little, white shine dots to her eyes. I made those with the rounded tip of a darning needle rather than brush to make them more evenly shaped. I left this step for last because it kind of feels like bringing her to life, with how much more alive that detail makes a creature look. So, now, she's finally done!

Hanging out with Dr. Grant and a Compy friend while drying on top of a tall cabinet away from the cat's reach (and hopefully not gathering any of that dust, yikes). They're to scale with each other, by the way! Skye is such a big girl already!