Painting Beetlebiter

With the boy sculpted, time for paint!

First a base coat of white, to cover up the dark green and the grey putty, and give the character's rather light colour palette a chance.

I painted the toe claws a light brown instead because the finger claws were painted on top of light brown, too, in case that makes a difference in getting them to be the same colour.

Next, in a perhaps less obvious work order, I painted the eyes. I knew I was going to dread messing them up, so I wanted them out of the way as soon as possible, and also when there's less around them that would also need fixing, mistakes are easier to deal with. Both eyes are surrounded with black, so I can avoid going too near them as I paint the rest of the face.

The right eye is the figure's original eye repainted with a layer of white under the colours. The left eye is the glow-in-the-dark polymer clay one, which apart from the pupil got only a thin coat of paint to let light through.

After that I went over the underbelly areas with a more off-white colour (white mixed with turquoise and light brown), painted the mouth corners pink, and touched up where I got the pink on the lips.

Then a first coat of his light brown base colour. Mixed with a lot of white still, for added opacity.

A coat of red mixed with light brown on the splotch markings.

A second coat on his base colour with raw sienna.

A darker wash on both that and the red markings, to bring out the sculpt details more. Purple for the markings, burnt umber only along the back for the base colour.

For a third coat on the base colour, I drybrushed on a couple of different shades of light brown that are more muted and lighter than the second coat. After that I gave the back another burnt umber wash, and also another purple wash to the red markings that I touched up after getting drybrushing on them.

Then I applied a wash to the throat area as well. As the other two raptors in this set have green at their throat, I decided Beetlebiter should, too, though his is a more yellowy green. The wash is a mix of raw sienna and primary cyan.

While that dried I gave the feet detail, with claws, scutes, and some small spot markings. The scutes are painted very imprecisely like how I colour them when drawing pictures of these guys, too, I feel it makes them look more organic. I still tidied up around the claws a bit later, where I got the dark green on the toes. I focused more on getting an even coat than on staying strictly within the lines.

Then the black outlines to the red splotches, starting with the more complicated face markings. It's just pure black at this point.

I left the outlines on the splotches on the back for last, since they're the easiest to reach, but started on the dark and light outlines elsewhere. The black markings also got some dark purple and blue highlights, to give them a bit more colour and dimension.

Tidying up the JP logo I decided to keep on the figure. It says "Site B" on it and Beetlebiter has never been to that island, but it's where Trespasser is set and that's where his design is from, so it works.

And painting pink the scars I also kept.

With the finishing touches of one more coat on the underbelly, the back splotches' outlines, and some subtle highlights on the red parts, he's finally done!

I gave this figure, as well as Serene and Singer which I finished earlier, a photoshoot to show them off, and you can find the photos of the finished figures here at my site and here at deviantart.