I’ve made good progress on the pigs, but I lost track of how long I’ve been at them. Even finding the zen a little each night, they’ve grown somewhat tiresome, which is a bummer. I don’t think the issue is the pigs though – could be time to troubleshoot the process.
I would like to take more pictures, but I’m still frustrated at how difficult it is to capture color accurately and without glare. The idea of dragging out all the lighting crap to end the day cursing at the camera (again) does not currently appeal to me. And I still need to set the diopter. One headache at a time.
Headache #1
My current lighting setup is sufficient for my needs and works for just about everything, but it takes for.ev.er to set up and is cumbersome to work around in my teeny-tiny apt. It’s really only worth it for large projects, which the Zig seems to have innoculated me against. So. Collapsible light box it is. It’s likely not going to be a perfect solution, but it should help get to the shutter faster and better assess my works-in-progress. And it was on sale with backgrounds. If it works out half as well as my collaspible air brush booth, it will be worth the closet space.
Headache #2
My own lack of gloves. Not that I don’t have them, but unless I’m airbrushing I don’t much like wearing them. Leaving the manglers and grots separate made it a breeze to get to into the weird nooks and crannies, but because I didn’t pin or otherwise affix them, I ended up handling them directly. Frustrating to realize you wore a bare patch in the tail getting the snout done and now the oils from your fingers have made it difficult to get fresh paint to adhere. Rather than continue rotating rounds of fix-this-next, I glued the beasts together, patching bald bits as spotted. Also helped me stop obsessing over bits no one will ever see.
Headache #3
I never know when to quit. They still need a round or two of highlighting, but at least it won’t come at the expense of what I’ve already done (knock on wood). They’re not going to be perfect, but they’re also not going to be seen by more than a half dozen people, so is that really the key takeaway?
I minimized the spill over of silver dry brushing in most places, but jumping at every miniscule gleam is a losing proposition. I need to worry more about return on investment. With the details based and the bits glued, it’s feeling a lot closer to done. The eyes help too – they were feeling lost in all that hog rage. Time to start thinking about basing.
Fortunately most of the spine damage is at the tips, where I can get away with a fairly opaque highlight. And each one is half the size of my pinky nail. No one is ever going to look this closely at it again, including me, provided I remember to varnish. I should do a mass round once I finish Evie. And maybe the tree lord.
huh. Hitting the tree lord with an air-brushed base coat might actually make that guy palatable.