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Been a while since my last update. Been working on a few projects at a time now but I've been jumping around too much because no project is currently holding my interest. Morathi has been progressing very slowly. It's frustrating, I want to paint her, I really do, but I'm struggling so much with colour choices that it's stalling me at every stage. Maybe you guys can help out a bit? Below is her current state. Where I'm struggling at the moment is her robes, I'm just not sold on the tealy/green I gave her. I'm thinking of painting it a dark magenta/pink tone instead now, similar to Yvraines robes from the Ynnari force, you guys think that'd look nice? Any other ideas that'd blend well with what's already in progress? Let me know what you guys think, I'm trying to get a sense of where I'm going right and wrong on this model.

By the way the wings are in a dreadful state right now. You can see multiple stages of paint on the one wing alone, two panels are further washed than the rest. Still not sure if I'm going to follow through with the rest of that idea. The wings are giving me much more trouble than I anticipated they would.

thanks for looking ladies and gents.

I like the green.

Overall you have a very muted palette. Not a bad thing, but worth noting. For a centerpiece model I might have chosen a brighter accent color. My knee-jerk thought was a nice rich purple or burgundy, although the green has some of the qualities I like. Someone with more color theory than me might want to take a better look at your colors and check the wheel. It looks like cyan/green is where you should be for a third color, with lavender and orange/brown/bronze as your other two. That’s with the classic triangle approach. Going with the weighted side thing, red would work, and would be offset nicely with some green accent/spot colors. (hair, emeralds, ? )

Some of the lines on the wing seem a little pronounced. The washed parts mute that a bit.

Keep at it. It’s coming together nicely.

I'm with Nev, I like the green. I think it works rather well with that desaturated purple. The work on the scales, by the way, is fantastic. I am looking forward to seeing how the wings mesh with the rest of what you have going on. I am a little concerned about the gold in the wings blending in with the fleshtones, but that is all still WiP. My advice is to really push the contrast between the two, and maybe consider glazing some purple into the recesses on the wings to tie them back a little to the rest of the model. The deepest recesses and around the "fingers" mostly. On the whole I think you are well on your way to one awesome snake-lady.

Thank you very much for the comments guys. It's helping me to zero in on a direction here.

@Nevelon: I'm not so much against the green in practice as I am in style. As you pointed out it is a solid option based on the colour triangle however it just seems to be off still. I think part of my issue with it is that I plan to be using a fair amount of blood for the blood god on the model and I worry about making her look like an x-mas tree (red and green combo). The original colour of her gems was red and it really evoked that xmas vibe for me, that's why the gems are now blue. As for the wings I certainly have a lot of cleaning up to do on them, just been stalling until I have a clearer idea in my head on how to proceed.

@youwashock: I agree about the gold on the wings. It'll be easy for it to be eaten by the fleshy colours there. I'll look into giving it a bit of colour to make the metal pop a bit more there. I like the idea of some purple by the fingers, I'll certainly be trying that out. I'm glad you like the snake bit though. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. I was inspired by the lore behind how Morathi got her bestial form as a byproduct of being eaten by Slaanesh and wanted to tie in some bits of her with the traditional pale purple of Slaanesh skin tones.

Thank you guys for your help so far. I have some paints on the way (should be here on Saturday) so I can try some new ideas. I really appreciate your help here.

I don’t think you’re in danger of Christmas Morathi, the green is blue enough that when combined with every thing else you’ll probably be fine.

Looks amazing to me. I like the green, always works well against purple.

I would only have a couple suggestions, maybe take the green to black to another level, go darker on the black and bring the highlight of the green up, but not to yellow, more to a bone colour. The wings are a wip so hard to judge, many things don't look great during the process. But I am sure they will come good. I have used a deep purple to wash yellow/orange /red just a touch in the deep recesses.

Please take all of that with a pinch of salt, I don't have any colour theory behind me, and aint that good a painter anyways, but that is my two pence worth. TBH it is looking fantastic as is and will come together beautifully, as I knew you would.

I like the green also, can see Cam's observation about darkening the dark as being a nice way to accentuate contrast. I'm not very familiar with the figure, but are those armor scales on each side at the hip? If so, you might could consider a brighter, contrasting color for them ( a highly metallic but muted copper, say, or metallic primary color like red) to include the currently gold girdle piece- that might act as a contrast with the very rich green you have going on plus help tie in with the wings?

I'm also a 'pinch of salt' guy though, because you have to remember that my strongest suit is painting Imperial vehicles dusty, muddy brown and green.

Thank you very much for your critiques ladies and gents, it's been really helpful in organizing my thoughts into a plan of action.

My plan will be to keep the green for now but make a slight change to the robes to add a bit of extra colour to it. I have further plans on how to get the skin tones of the wings in order, will have to do that after I finish the robes though so as to ensure the wings don't clash with the robes too much.

All in all I'm feeling much more confident in the direction of this model and I thank you all very much for your input.

Got some more progress done on Morathi over the past couple days, specifically her wings. They're not quite done yet but they're getting there. The photos are a bit bright so the colours are off a bit, still a better camera in my opinion than my last one.

Looking great! Love the hint of purple, will be interesting to see them attached and how that plays off the scales of the snakey bits.

Damn. That's the ticket. Lovely texture, color, and detail. And the gold pops! Great job!

Fantastic work on Morathi , the wings are coming out great and I think the green works perfect in the mix.

The wings are really looking great.

Thank you very much everyone for the kind words. It seems the wings are being well received and so with that I'll just have to tidy up the "fingers", back , then details like the gold and leather straps. Things are coming together and I feel I'm finally getting some momentum on this model.

Completely switching gears here. Remember these guys below? My jetbikes, farseer on jetbike and converted striking scorpions (they'd work equally well as storm guardians to be honest). Well I'm cleaning some space in my home and I feel I'd like to get them sent off to a new home that will appreciate them a bit more than I have, I haven't played Craftworld in a while and I'm enjoying my Drukhari far too much to realistically consider going back right now. I'd like to sell them as 2 units, the scorpions/guardians in one and the jetbikes and farseer as a second unit. I figured I'd offer them up here before I open this up to the wider world seeming as some of you have been watching me flail around with paint long enough to remember when these guys were made. I have no set price in mind so if you're interested send me a PM with an offer and we can hash out details or you can post that you're interested in here and I'll PM you. A note on the bikes: I do have a 9th bike but sadly it's missing a rider, it's fully painted though. Total of 9 bikes, 3 with shuriken cannons and 6 with catapults, 1 missing rider, with farseer that makes 10.

The texture on the wings is awesome!

Thank you very much aku-chan, glad you like them.

 Inevitable_Faith wrote:
Thank you very much everyone for the kind words. It seems the wings are being well received and so with that I'll just have to tidy up the "fingers", back , then details like the gold and leather straps. Things are coming together and I feel I'm finally getting some momentum on this model.

Completely switching gears here. Remember these guys below? My jetbikes, farseer on jetbike and converted striking scorpions (they'd work equally well as storm guardians to be honest). Well I'm cleaning some space in my home and I feel I'd like to get them sent off to a new home that will appreciate them a bit more than I have, I haven't played Craftworld in a while and I'm enjoying my Drukhari far too much to realistically consider going back right now. I'd like to sell them as 2 units, the scorpions/guardians in one and the jetbikes and farseer as a second unit. I figured I'd offer them up here before I open this up to the wider world seeming as some of you have been watching me flail around with paint long enough to remember when these guys were made. I have no set price in mind so if you're interested send me a PM with an offer and we can hash out details or you can post that you're interested in here and I'll PM you. A note on the bikes: I do have a 9th bike but sadly it's missing a rider, it's fully painted though. Total of 9 bikes, 3 with shuriken cannons and 6 with catapults, 1 missing rider, with farseer that makes 10.

Inevitable_Faith,

Start a thread in the Swap Shop and folks interested will reach out to you.

Cheers,

CB

Wow, stunning work on those wings!
She will look gorgeous when done.

Thank you very much Ezki.

Well I was hoping to have an update today as I have been painting but then I hit a snag. Turns out when you're painting you should pay attention to which colour you grab, who knew? I was working on the arm/finger portions of the wings and my highlight skin tone wasn't blending at all, it was far too contrasting. Turns out I grabbed the wrong flesh tone from my paint box and did half a wing in it. Time to re-base and fix it. Feeling like a total tool right now lol.

 Inevitable_Faith wrote:
Well I was hoping to have an update today as I have been painting but then I hit a snag. Turns out when you're painting you should pay attention to which colour you grab, who knew? I was working on the arm/finger portions of the wings and my highlight skin tone wasn't blending at all, it was far too contrasting. Turns out I grabbed the wrong flesh tone from my paint box and did half a wing in it. Time to re-base and fix it. Feeling like a total tool right now lol.

We’ve all been there. Could be worse. I personally know that there is a significant difference between blue and black inks, despite similarity in tone and sharing many letters. I’ve heard horror stories about grabbing the rattle can of gloss varnish and getting primer instead.

A minor, yet highly annoying, setback. My tendency to bounce between projects means I sometimes forget what color I used for something. I have taken to writing schemes down for stuff I know will take time to finish. Good luck on the recovery!

Oh yeah it's certainly not the end of the world, just the difference between progress and a standstill for a bit. Sadly won't get a chance to work more on her this week as I have the Calgary entertainment expo to prep for so my cosplay project will be prioritized. I am stoked to get her finished after the con though!

Hello everyone! My updates are so infrequent and erratic I apologize, life has a way of not letting you have all the hobby time you desire. With that said I have a Morathi to show off! Truthfully I've been staring at this model for so long across the painting process that I really don't know whether to call her finished or not. I haven't hit that "aha! this is done!" moment with her and I always feels there's things I can/should be tweaking/improving. Maybe it's just part of that whole figuring out hw to paint larger models problem I have. Anyways here she is and I'd love for you guys to pick her apart, what you like, what you don't like. How you think I could improve or what I could add to make her feel more complete. I want to apologize as well for the washed out looking marble base. It has a lot more contrast in person but while the natural lighting I feel was good for Morathi herself it did end up over exposing the white marble. Thanks in advance for all your comments!

There are always tweaks you can make, at some point you need to put the brush down and step back.

Fist impressions
Nice work on the scales and skin. Those two things make up the bulk of the mini, and are very well done.I personally would have gone with a richer purple for the scales and a paler flesh, but that’s me and the army pallets I prefer.

More detail pics! You tease us with some long shots, and then a detail of the wings and base. It’s like a teaser trailer, or someone fishing to get subscribers for their patron to see the rest. Show me her face! I get that huge models with bits out in every direction can be hard to photograph, but some zooms or at least crops of big pictures would help.

I did open one of the pics up in a seperate tab to zoom in myself, and she is amazing. She does tend to blend in with all the browns and soft golds. As a lot of that is the flesh of the wings, I’m not sure how much is avoidable. Possibly going with siver, rather than gold. But I do like the warm, soft palette you are running.

Blood work is fantastic. Good splatter, and the runes are a nice touch.

Fantastic! Good to see you finish her. I think she came out great. The runes are a great detail, as Nev stated.

Absolutely fantastic work.

From the top of my head I could not find any mistakes or areas that would need more touching up. Maybe if I'm really nitpicky the gold bits blend a bit with the skin. But I think that's an issue only in the picture, and even there not a big one.

Other than that, top notch. Especially the gold looks really good.

It's often hard to know when to call a miniature ready. I know the feeling all too well. The never ending "fixing" and reworking of details. In a few cases it has lead me to exhaustion and unwillingness to paint at all for a while. In many cases the model has been ready for a long time, at least in the eyes of everyone else.
That being said, everyone should paint for themselves and as long as it makes them happy. So I'm not the right person to say when to quit, but I can say that in my eyes it looks finished

As Nevelon stated, a few closer images might help.

The back muscles are some real good body horror, I had a squick moment with it that I've never gotten with any other version of Morathi, so good job!

Thank you so much for all your comments/critiques guys it really does help me learn a lot and I really do appreciate it.

I agree that after I was wrapping things up and finally took a step back I noticed the gold and darker skin blend into each other a bit too much, going for an iron/silver metallic would have been a better choice I think. I partly blame poor planning on my part and the fact that I actually painted gold parts before the skin so I didn't know how they'd interact right out the gate.

I'm glad you guys like the runes. I see them always get done in a magical glowy state and I wanted to try something different. I figured it just made sense, given the DoK proclivities towards blood, that some literal runic flesh carving was well within their scope.

I'm absolutely in love with how GW sculpted the muscles on Morathi and some of the Melusai (particularly the bow wielding ones, you can see the back flexing with the drawn bowstring and that's incredible attention to real life detail since as an archer you should be drawing by flexing your back). I'm glad it struck a chord with you Gwyn Chan 'r Gwyll.

I will definitely be getting some detail shots up soon, gunna bust out the photo booth to do them properly tonight.

Once again thank you very much everyone for commenting, it's always nice to know what went well and where I can improve. You guys rock.

Inevitable_Faith,

She looks finished to me.

Cheers,

CB