STS Model Painting Month 2022 - Works in Progress

Dear STS friends,
the second edition of STS model painting month has started! You can share your work in progress pictures here
Share your process, tell us about your technique and inspiration, and ask questions if you like! I'm sure you can get helpful tips from fellow members

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And in a few days, I will also open the topic for your finished projects

I think, like last year, I'm going to break the ice on this topic and go first - although I haven't made much actual progress just yet!

All I've done to the model in hand is carve away the logo and text under the belly to tidy things up - it's got very neat, almost invisible seams, so there's no further prep work neccessary. I just can't start yet cos I'm waiting for my paint to be delivered.

But I have spent several hours working on the project in a different way.

When I paint my horses, I'm generally working from a reference photo or two for the colour or pattern I'm trying to recreate, or just making up something I know is realistic, from memory - because, well, I've seen horses before
With my other wildlife repaints, I've used nice big clear photos from Google to make sure I'm getting the markings and colours in as realistically as possible, in terms of placement, detailing, and paint mixing.
As with last year's STS Model Painting Month, I've chosen an extinct animal, but the Megaloceros (or Irish Elk) was a prehistoric creature rather than one lasting into the modern era, l so there's no photographs, no taxidermy specimens in museums, like I relied on for my Quagga.

I knew I'd be much happier and more confident working from some kind of reference, rather than trying to design my paintwork actually on the model with wet paint and trial-and-error layers to make design changes as I went along.
And I really didn't want to piggyback off someone else's efforts, recreating somebody else's reconstruction or illustrative art from books; even though that can be an honest tribute and perfectly valid resource, I want this to be my interpretation, not borrowing someone else's creativity.

So my theory of how to make painting easier is....draw a reference of my own  

Luckily, we do have one fantastic source for information on how prehistoric wildlife looked, in cave art which has survived all down the centuries from the people who saw the animals first hand.

Here's the first example. All we can really gain from this one is a general impression of darker on the neck and shoulder, and along the back - but it's possible the painting is either unfinished, or cropped to focus on the head and antlers, and the 'paler' part is just not there!

Here is the next example, a much more complete animal. Again, we see darker along the back, the neck and throat, and the shoulder added as shading within the outline. There's also a very distinct diagonal stripe from the hump at the shoulders down to where the hind leg meets the underside of the belly. This is a recurring detail in cave paintings from different locations, so can't just be one artist's weird quirk or error in constructing the body shape - more than one person painted a stripe, it's reasonable to take that as proof it was there.

Here is another example, two animals overlapping but if you just follow one set of lines at a time, you see the same thing - dark hump, dark shoulder (as a stripe this time), diagonal body stripe . There's also a dark throat, though this time the neck itself is paler.

Of course, all these paintings are simplified, and stylised, and all are more outlines with markings, rather than full colour like some of the horse and cattle paintings, where we can see shades of brown entirely filling in the body shapes.
But the general idea I get from them is a paler body colour with a darker top line, dark neck possibly with throat and chest 'collars' rather than a single wide band, and there must be a marking along the side.

When I was reading up on the Megaloceros, back around the time I was making my mind up about buying the Papo figure, I learnt they were a relative of the Fallow Deer rather than the Red Deer, which makes perfect sense when you consider the antler shape in all the preserved remains. This is my only real-life connection to the species - I have seen a head of 'Irish Elk' antlers on the wall at a castle here in the UK, found in a bog and mounted as an impressive curiosity in the 19th century gentleman-naturalist boom era.

So I decided it was quite important to avoid making the model look like an oversized (and over-antlered!) Red Deer when designing my paintjob, and the best way to do this would be to not even look at Reds in my preparation time, and take my colour palette from a darkish Fallow stag - this exact photo, to be precise.

The markings I've adapted, by adding in the diagonal band along the side of the body, and altering the placing of the white and dark from the throat down toward the chest. I just worked where it seems to naturally blend and mix with the real deer's colour, while keeping each marking we see in the cave art.
And I've taken the spots away entirely - because I'm sure if the ancient deer had had such a noticeable feature, the cave artists would've put them in. They painted some spotted horses, and recent DNA analysis on horse bones and teeth from the era has proven leopard spotting genes were present in the prehistoric horse population at that time. Similar related animals in the same caves, like Red Deer and Przewalski-looking dun horses, are painted in accurate colours we easily recognise today. So I think the painters can be trusted on this, and if there were spots, they'd have put spots.

Enough rambling, here's the actual picture bit of the post (well done if you read all that instead of just scrolling this far, hahah). I've never drawn a deer before, so I worked from the Papo model instead of figuring out anatomy and inventing a different pose from scratch, and after all, it's for him rather than a stand-alone artwork in it's own right.

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Here he is blank and waiting for his colour.

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My intended design - though I'm not sure how easy it will be to match the actual paintwork to what I've done with him here! But I don't mind if it's a little different and I'm not going to drive myself crazy trying to replicate these precise shades and blending exactly, as after all it's all guesswork and based on tweaking a modern animal cos none of us have seen the real thing, except those cave artists who left us such helpful clues!

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And finally, here he is with a background, just cos he makes a pretty portrait (recycled from the folder of my older art - that one originally had a horse in front of most of it so it's a bit rough and unfinished, but was the only background I had which didn't include a hedge, gate, stone wall, brick-walled stable yard, or ploughed field )

GEORGEOUS
( Sorry )

I don't have time to read it all right now, but the drawings ar ever so beautyful !!!
And those cave paintings are so beautyful it almost gives me tears in my eyes.

Your drawing is incredible, George, already a wonderful project for the month by itself! Also incredible research and planning. I agree with Susanne, those prehistoric paintings make you feel things when you think about ancient artists at work.

This is stunning so far!! I can’t wait to see the final result!

Wow, as Jill said that is an amazing piece of art in it's own right! I love reading about your thought process with this model and how you plan to do it, it all seems really well-organised and can't wait to see the final result!

SUSANNE wrote:

GEORGEOUS
( Sorry )

I don't have time to read it all right now, but the drawings ar ever so beautyful !!!
And those cave paintings are so beautyful it almost gives me tears in my eyes.

Why isn't there a facepalm emoji? That's so bad it's good  

The cave paintings really are special, aren't they - I've been a fan of them ever since I was little but admit I mostly knew the horse ones and didn't pay quite as much attention to the other animals til doing my reading-up for this. There's also a lot more photography of the caves available nowadays, thanks to the internet, compared to the same few images which were reproduced in my history-of-horses type books.

Jill wrote:

Your drawing is incredible, George, already a wonderful project for the month by itself! Also incredible research and planning. I agree with Susanne, those prehistoric paintings make you feel things when you think about ancient artists at work.

Ahh, thank you! I'm used to drawing horses but hadn't tackled other species before (well, a hare once, and a few bunnies but they're easy cos the shape is mostly fluff and ears ) so I was rally relieved he turned out ok - I was kind of expecting the sketches to be bad enough that I'd just use one for my own reference and not have anything nice enough to share, but once I got started and he was going well, I changed my mind and decided that I'd include his digital self in telling the design process

It's hard to look at the cave art without imagining the people putting them there, especially when you see the close-ups of the surface and the way the colour's applied. And also how they must've looked at the real animals before and after drawing them (I can relate, a bit, cos that's how I feel about my own portraits!)

Joliezac wrote:

This is stunning so far!! I can’t wait to see the final result!

Thanks! My paint arrived today, so I'll start in a couple of days time (I don't like to paint after work, my hands are sore and my back says no to hunching over something tiny )

Bonnie wrote:

Wow, as Jill said that is an amazing piece of art in it's own right! I love reading about your thought process with this model and how you plan to do it, it all seems really well-organised and can't wait to see the final result!

I'm glad you like it! I think it helps that a deer is quite a handsome and impressive animal to start with, it's easier to make a nice portrait of a nice-looking animal than if it was something small and plain
There's usually a lot less planning involved, that's actually why I settled on the Megaloceros as my Painting Month project, cos there's more to write about as I go along, and discussion was such a central feature of last year's post. Doing just another horse wouldn't have been as challenging, or given me much to say about my choices or techniques. And you wouldn't have got an illustrated first post if it had been a living species where I could nab a colour ref from Google

George wrote:

SUSANNE wrote:

GEORGEOUS
( Sorry )

I don't have time to read it all right now, but the drawings ar ever so beautyful !!!
And those cave paintings are so beautyful it almost gives me tears in my eyes.

Why isn't there a facepalm emoji? That's so bad it's good  

A Palmface...  but why didn't we think of it sooner? 

I can't wait to watch your repainted Megaloceros, your "sketch" is very very promising 

Wow, this is just incredible George!!!! I can almost touch it, feel the furr, hear it' breath!!

Looking good so far George!!

I (spray-paint) primered my tiger today. I still need to do some white/primer hand painting to get rid of all the previous stripes and then it's on to the research :)

I started with a base coat of white today to cover up the original gray dots and yellowed body color. Thanks to tips from George, I had a better idea of how to approach white, but it's still a bit blobby and has brushstrokes in places. But the mold itself has got blobby bits, so I am not too worried! It's also quite sticky paint, and some little hairs and things are stuck to it forever now . . . but hopefully the final coats with help hide those, haha. It took about seven or eight coats over the day to get it mostly covered. First picture is one coat, and then the last coat for the day. I'm still trying to decide what degree of dappling I want to do, or more accurately, what stage of graying out I think I can most successfully recreate.

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Great start Jill.

Nice to see your progress Jill!

This is looking wonderful so far!

A good start, a blank canvas to work on once you've figured out your plan!

I thought I better get my painting done at the end of my long weekend off, cos work is so physically hard this time of year, I'm all worn-out sore and achey after a few days there, and then take a couple of days to recover again, so there's basically one day a week when my hands and back are fit for this kind of thing

Here's the before picture, a reminder what colour he started out :

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My reference ready on the computer screen, and the paint colours I'd be using.

And now some in-progress stages. Apologies they're not very bright or clear photos, I started too late in the day to use real sunlight, and I couldn't figure out how to switch on the flash on my camera

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Layer one, adding some more milk-chocolate brown to soften down the dark colour, and some tan shading where the lighter parts start.

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More of the paler brown, mostly to the lower half of the body, plus the initial layer of cream to the legs under the belly, and top of the head. At this point, I'm applying the paint straight from the pots so it's thick and sticky, smudged with a big brush to spread it as far as possible and rub into all the little hair details of the sculpt.

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Starting the texturing of the body colour, and beginning the detailing of the face, with light round the eyes and nose. At this stage, I'm using some dry-brushing to catch the sculpted texture on the mould, and at other times I lick the brush then touch it to the paint, so it's diluted and thinner. As I've said before, only do this if you're sure your paint isn't poisonous; if you're not certain it's safe and/or you're less lazy than me, you could set up a soaked sponge in a bowl to get the same wet-dipped effect without saturating your brush too much

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And now upping the contrast a bit, with added white for the chest & belly, and darker colour for the back of the neck, shoulder hump, and side/chest stripe markings. Again, there's some dry-brushing and some fine brushstrokes.

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More definition and detail for the markings, especially filling in the face with eyes and nose and a hint of pink inside the ears, then the feet (I always do them toward the end, otherwise handling the model on my lap to continue the body colour rubs the paint off the edges and toe-tips), and finally the antlers. They were done with a base layer of beige, then blacks and browns dabbed on with a very fat brush, to try to get a different texture to the body fur. The very tips are given white highlights - where deer rub their antlers the bone polishes very clean, white and smooth at the points.

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Finished!
I think. I'll need to have another look at him in daylight, and it's possible I'll do a little bit more refinement to the detailing, if I see any flaws or rough bits I can't make out on an indoor evening under one of those energy-saving lightbulbs

And I'll definitely take some better photos outside in the sunshine after that, but it might be a few days time cos we're due wind and rain, and as this is a project with a deadline and people following along, I wanted to get him posted promptly rather than wait for the weather to co-operate!

Wonderful!

Oh my goodness George that is just stunning! I absolutely loved this model when Papo released it and you gave it an extraordinary makeover! It looks very natural and I can totally imagine it walking through the grass. Your progress steps are really helpful and I love to see it come together

He'd look at home with a nice bit of wilderness to stand in! Unfortunately I haven't got any long grass bases, most of them look like very neat manicured field, or they're modern surfaces like road or block paving, but there is one with ferns which would do ok - if you imagine the short grass is nibbled down by deer and hares and whatever else we had back then!

Wow he looks alive! I love how you interpreted his coat color and all the subtle variations within it, and how the diagonal line marking feels very natural. The detail on the head is especially nice, too, with the lighter fur around the eyes and nose. I can't wait to see his final photoshoot!

Wow, this is awesome George!!! He really looks alive!! The shadings and all!!

Did you use acrylics and which brand please? Or some pastels too? I am in aw!!!

Amazing !!! A nice model has turned awesome

Jill wrote:

Wow he looks alive! I love how you interpreted his coat color and all the subtle variations within it, and how the diagonal line marking feels very natural. The detail on the head is especially nice, too, with the lighter fur around the eyes and nose. I can't wait to see his final photoshoot!

Thanks! I tried to make the markings quite blended in and not have a 'painted on afterwards' look, I know some animals do have very sharply defined stripes (like the dark band markings on Thompson's gazelles) but cos the sculpt has quite shaggy fur I didn't think there could be quite such a crisp dividing line between black and beige, more of a soft overlap would happen.

I'm pleased with his face, but the sculpt has a lot of detail there anyway, so it's giving me a lot to work with!

Shanti wrote:

Wow, this is awesome George!!! He really looks alive!! The shadings and all!!

Did you use acrylics and which brand please? Or some pastels too? I am in aw!!!

Thank you! I don't think the original paintjob did him many favours, the dark brown was quite plain and the lighter colour lifts him.

The paints are called Citadel Colour, made by Games Workshop for wargames figures. Specifically the 'layer' range, not the 'base' or any of the technical shading/contrast/dry type colours. They're more expensive than most little pots of paint, but I find they're a perfect match for my painting style and get on better with these than anything else, even the artist acrylics other people absolutely love just result in a mess for me, where these ones make painting easy!

I never use pastels, I don't get on with sealant in the slightest so I stick to purely paint finish on all my customs, cos that stays where it's put without needing spraying

SUSANNE wrote:

Amazing !!! A nice model has turned awesome

Ahhh, thanks! I always did like this model, ever since I first saw it on here - which was winning that Figure of the Year award, so I know it's got a lot of fans!

Rain this morning so no new photoshoot yet, he'll make his appearance in the Completed Works topic at some point this week, I hope!

You're a pure taxidermist artist!

Wow, the Irish Elk looks amazing! Beautiful work George! I love the new paintwork, it's so much more beautiful than the OF! I'm also impressed with your digital artwork. And what a great preparation and research for this project!

I'll open the topic for finished projects today so you can post the photos there

EDIT: it's here!
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I started working on my model yesterday, it's still in resculpting stage! I'll share some photos later this week too.

It's looking really good, great work George!  I'm looking forward to seeing pictures of all it's glory in a nice sunlight
And great start on yours too Jill

I've started mine too, but it is still very much in the early stages. Since there is no visual recording of any blue tiger I search for information elsewere. I've read some texts and descriptions about the sightings but I do need some visual input for my piece. Since in the resources that I found, most of the arguments for the blue tigers existence, is that the "blue phase" colourations has been observed in other wild cats. So I started looking for other blue cats.  After a lot of google image searching with search inputs like "blue ocelot" "blue caracal" "blue <any wild cat I could think of>" the only visual images of a blue phase wild cat was that of a bobcat.

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This is what you see in the background here.  Only, these are not pictures of blue bobcats, these are pictures of one blue bobcat that was hunted and shot down in 2016 and is the only (real) image of a blue wild cat that I have found so far (if anyone has seen anything else I would love to know!).

In my search I came across a hunter website that discussed this bobcat (the hunter who shot it with a bow was also active there). It gave me mixed feelings since it is such a shame to shoot such an animal (the hunter didn't know it was special before he shot it), but other hunters on the forum where excited about the rarity and beauty of the creature too and were even excited about the (DNA) research that might be done with such a specimen to understand this mysterious colour variation in wild cats...

I will put these thoughts aside for now, this topic is for discussing happy things like repainting after all  And I much rather focus on the painting and discovering the colour that way, and some pictures of actual blue cats do help.

Here's that start of blocking out the colour.
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And that's how far I've come for now.