Oreo

Posted on May 15, 2017 by osographic

My longtime friend, Richie, commissioned me to work on a stylized portrait of his beautiful French bulldog Oreo. Oreo was diagnosed with cancer a couple years ago, and despite rather bleak predictions he’s still with us (thanks to some great doctors and Richie’s bank account). I love animals and have dealt with my fair share of sick pets in the past so this project seriously hits me in the feels. And so, with out further dejection lets move on to the fun stuff! 😊

The portrait is based off a Pop! French Bulldog by Funko shown below. Painting vinyl figures are always a fun change of pace from my usual tabletop miniatures. Their usually simple design and large smooth areas are great for stylized paint jobs and freehand.

Original Funko paint job.

The first step was to clean and prime the figure. You can’t really see it in these photos but there were a few air bubbles in the vinyl that I had to cut out and patch up using some putty. Also the original factory paint had a visible raised edge to it so I smoothed those down with some sandpaper. Nice, clean and ready for some freehand!

Oreo Prime

Using the original paintjob as a guide, I started planning out Oreo’s unique facial markings. The transition from black to white on the muzzle was tricky but I think the feathering technique I used worked out pretty well as you will see in the final. I also accented the wrinkles in his face.

Basecoats

I knew that I was going to use cool, blue-gray tones for highlighting the black areas so I thought using warm ivory tones for the white shadows would contrast nicely. Then I added flesh tones to the inside of the ears again using a feathering technique for the blending.

Almost done!

Here we have the final result. As you can see it’s come a long way since the previous photos. I was in the zone so didn’t stop for more work-in-progress shots. Basically, I added the blue-gray highlights to the black and painted his eyes along with the rest of his body. After analyzing my references I also decided to narrow the white space between the ears and eyes and add more black to the inside of the ears and front of the mouth. Adorable!

Once the painting was done I sprayed the model with matte sealer, then went back with gloss varnish and coated the eyes and nose for a wet look. And of course, I signed his little hind paw. 😊

Finished!

So there you have it folks! A fun paint project for anyone to take on. I’d like to thanks Richie for entrusting me to paint his best buddy and look forward to painting more of these in the future. Particularly for my Boston Terrier, River.

Have any questions? Feel free to ask them in the comments below. If you’d like me to paint a commission vinyl dog for you then message me through this blog as well.

Until next time, keep painting and hug your pets today. 🐶

Voodoo Ninja in 3D!

Posted on March 31, 2015 by osographic

My good friend and fellow artist, Alex Cheparev took a character that I designed and brought it to life using Maya, a 3D modeling program. He’s been documenting and posting videos of the entire process on his youtube channel, Crashing Maya. If you have any interest in learning how to design in 3D I highly encourage you to check out his videos and subscribe to his channel. His tutorials will really help you appreciate how much work and attention to detail go into 3D modeling. Yessir, Alex is a true wizard using evil pacts to create artificial life!

So now that Alex’s work is done, it’s my turn to jump in. Very soon I will have a 3D printed model of Voodoo Ninja for my painting pleasure. The plan is to paint this little guy and record it for my Youtube Channel. Furthermore, you can buy this model at Shapeways! That’s right ladies and gents, you can be the proud owner of you very own Voodoo Ninja model. So that’s it for news folks. Click on those links and sink some time into videos. Cheers and happy viewing!

Holy Rusted Metal!

Posted on February 8, 2015 by osographic

Metal is hard to maintain. It get’s gritty, looses it’s luster, accumulates rust and eventually falls apart but that’s why we love it. It grows character with age. In this post I’ll cover my technique for painting my favorite of all metals, the rusted kind. Come sit, and paint with me.

Firstly, I designed these 55mm bases for use on some of my Infinity models. By using sheets of platicard, corrugated cardboard, aluminum wire, and even a BIC pen, I was able to create an industrial look. I highly recommend trying this project out to any hobbyist. Just go nuts and have fun.

Once the bases were built I spray painted them using Army Painter’s Platemail Metal. It’s not the best surface to paint on being that it’s so glossy, so I also sprayed a coat of clear matte varnish over it.

Next is a heavy wash of P3’s Battledress Green. I like to mix in a little bit of Liquitex’s Flo-Aid to keep the paint flowing a bit more evenly.

Another wash of P3’s Battledress Green. This time I try to focus more on the recesses.
Here I applied a heavy dry-brush of Citadel’s Iron Breaker to help bring back the shiny. To create that signature reddish rust color I applied a wash of P3’s Bloodstone. Once again focusing on the recesses and crevasses. To add more contrast and grit, I carefully applied a wash of Citadel’s Agrax Earthshade. Next I used a careful application of RMSP’s Brown Liner. This helps define the edges and enhance the details. Finally, I go back with some Citadel Iron Breaker using a fine detail brush to pick out some of the edges of the metal. I also painted the sheets of “paper” on the base using some browns and tans.
See, not too shabby looking and not very difficult to do. Try this out on your metals. You can easily apply these techniques to any metal color. Perhaps patinated copper, or burnished brass. Thanks for reading and happy painting!

Fleshy Bits: Purple

Posted on January 22, 2015 by osographic

Come play with my fleshy bits! Hehe. Welcome to the first of hopefully many more posts I’ll be writing covering how to paint flesh tones. One of the members of a Facebook group that I help admin requested this one (thanks for the idea Ulises).
When it comes to painting flesh I’ve found that starting with a cool tone and working your way up to a warm tone makes for a more believable effect. Please excuse my slightly crappy iPhone pics.

1. Basecoat- GW Genesealer Purple
2. Wash- GW Xereus Purple
3. Touch Up- GW Genesealer Purple
4. Highlight- GW Genesealer Purple/Ungor Flesh (75/25)
5. Highlight- GW Genesealer Purple/Ungor Flesh (50/50)
6. Highlight & Wash- GW Genesealer Purple/Ungor Flesh (25/75) followed by some detailed shading with Leviathan Purple

There you have it. See what kind of bizarre flesh colors you can come up with and please share any ideas you may have below in the comments section. Happy painting!

Repeat After Me: All Done!

Posted on January 20, 2014 by osographic

The EVO repeater is complete! The final green details were done using a base coat of P3’s Necrotite Green/Morrow White (50/50) followed by a wash of Necrotite Green and finally a dot of Morrow White. I also used the Necrotite Green wash for the outer glow.

Nomad Salyut Zond EVO Repeater

Nomad Salyut Zond EVO Repeater

What Zond would be complete with out a hacker to control it? None I tell ya! So here we have a Alguacil Hacker, looking all sexy-nice with here green haired self.

Alguacil Hacker

Alguacil Hacker

Yes I know she has no eyes, but I was tired. But I don’t wanna. Fine, it looks like i have some eyes to paint. TTYL

Repeat After Me: Black & White

Posted on January 14, 2014 by osographic

Hello! We’re almost done painting this lovely Nomad EVO Repeater. Just a few more colors to go! The steps used here are the same as my previous two posts so I’ll try not to bore you with the same old jibber jabber. Let’s get to it.

Before base-coating with Ghost White, I gave the EVO a light spray of clear matte varnish. This helps in two ways: 1) It makes it easier to quickly clean off any mistakes without removing the paint underneath, and 2) It prevents the color underneath from bleeding through to the next color. I’ve been trying this a lot recently and I’ve found that it makes base coating from color to color much easier.

Shadows with a wash of Snow Shadow. I did this twice making sure to let the paint dry fully between layers. Otherwise I’d end up with nasty streaks.

And then a pretty heavy highlight of Pure White. A little sloppy but that’s okay.

I then cleaned it up with a watered down mix of Pure White and Ghost White. Next is black but i’ll keep this brief.

Base-coat.

Wash.

First highlight.

Final highlight. The last thing it needs is some green lights. and a photo shoot. I’ll post all that next. Hope you learned something. Keep painting! 🙂

Repeat After Me: Blue!

Posted on January 8, 2014 by osographic

Hello again fellow lover of cool things! In my last post I explained the steps I took to paint orange on this very cool EVO repeater. Let’s continue now with the color blue. Or is that aqua? Whatever, just follow my lead. 🙂

First we start with the base-coat. I think this is the most important step when painting a model. It’s like building a house; you need a solid and even foundation or else the rest of it goes to shit. So take your time, keep your paint smooth and thin (like milk) and listen to your favorite podcast.

Next up is shading with a wash of Deep Ocean. As you can tell in the picture, I’m a bit messy with this step. It’s all good tho because in the next I cleaned it up and smoothed it out. That could be an R. Kelly song.

Here’s where I tried smoothing the blend between the base-coat color and the shade color. I used a mix of Deep Ocean/Marine Teal (60/40) and watered them down with a mix of H2O/Flo-Aid (20/1) to create a wash. Then I used this wash to smooth out the middle area between the two colors.

Note: These Reaper Master Series Paints have a really nice quality pigment; great for washes and layered blends.

Highlights with Surf Aqua. The contrast is a little too stark for my taste. Let’s fix that…

…with another wash of Deep Ocean/Marine Teal. That’s better!

And then I redid the highlight a little thinner. Nicey nice, with beans and rice!

On to the next color: WHITE!

osographic

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