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I posted this to reddit as well, so apologies if you are seeing it twice.

IMGUR album: http://imgur.com/a/8akAz

THE BACKGROUND
Scroll down to the last image in the album to see the conversion that I'm nearly ready to start painting. The kit came with two spare arms, so I figured I'd use them to try out the color scheme I want to use. Apologies for the garbage cell phone photography.
The broad theme behind my army is the Northern California redwood forest, which prominently features partially burned but still living redwood trees. I'm using this motif throughout my army, with lots of reddish-brown bark and burned surfaces ranging from sooty to out and out ashen/charred.
In this model, the concept is that a forest spirit has amalgamated a bunch of burned trees into a corporeal body and is restoring them. The viney tendrils represent the forest spirit itself. So the effect I am going for here is a totally blackened/ashy tree surface, ethereal vines, and patches of restored redwood bark emanating from the vines themselves.
I've tried to capture that effect in the sample parts that I painted and feel pretty OK with the results so far. However, I am running into a bit of trouble with one thing: the restored redwood and the object source lighting from the vines are kinda in conflict with one another. They occupy similar space on the miniature. So far I've addressed this by making the OSL extremely minimal, but I'm worried that it's too minimal. At the same time, I'm worried that if I go more aggressively on it it will just overwrite the restored redwood or obscure it to the point where someone looking at the miniature won't really get what I'm representing.

THE QUESTION
So, keeping in mind what I'm going for, do you guys have any suggestions on how I might either improve what I'm doing or effectively balance the tension between the OSL and the restored redwood?

TECHNICAL DETAIL
Primed black, painted Reaper Pure Black, drybrushed layers of Concrete Grey -> Icy Grey -> Misty Grey -> Misty Grey+Pure White starting with a pretty aggressive and moving to very fine to give it a chalky but also sharp look. I then painted the redwood areas Driftwood Brown and hit the edge between the vine and the redwood with GW Nuln Oil shade. Next, I drybrushed with Reaper Harvest Brown -> Orange Brown. Last, I stippled the edges of the redwood parts with pure black to give it a more organic border.
I did the vines in Reaper Mossy Green before going over that with GW Nihilak Oxide. After that I mixed up my own shade from Reaper Mist Green and Army Painter Medium Blue to a result that's pretty similar to the Nihilak Oxide and aggressively drybrushed the vines in that. I then hit it with an old wash of GW Thraka Green and drybrushed it in the oxide-like color again, this time a bit more finely. I then mixed in some white, drybrushed that, and finally added a touch of that color to a pure white base for the final drybrush.
Both arms were done in the same way with one difference. In the arm on the left (the less bent one), I used both Thraka Green ink and Asurmen Blue ink in different areas and also used a slightly bluer version of my oxide-like mix in addition to the normal tone one. All in all the result is very similar with maybe a touch more variegation.


Thanks in advance for any help!

I like the idea of the vines rejuvinating the wood but I think you need to boost the contrast a lot to really emphasise it. I would also restrict the rejuvination effect to half the length of each log bit. At the moment the rejuvination effect seems like it covers whole areas rather than spreading out from the vines and the effect isn't as intense. I think OSL from the vines would just further hide the cool concept so I wouldn't do it at all or if you do make it only certain bits of the vines that are glowing like seed pods or flowers or mushrooms or even just tiny glowing dots moving along the vines insides.

wtnind wrote:
I like the idea of the vines rejuvinating the wood but I think you need to boost the contrast a lot to really emphasise it. I would also restrict the rejuvination effect to half the length of each log bit. At the moment the rejuvination effect seems like it covers whole areas rather than spreading out from the vines and the effect isn't as intense. I think OSL from the vines would just further hide the cool concept so I wouldn't do it at all or if you do make it only certain bits of the vines that are glowing like seed pods or flowers or mushrooms or even just tiny glowing dots moving along the vines insides.

Thanks for the response! I like your ideas, and I was kinda afraid that the effect looks like exactly how you described it.

I could really use some more technical description of what you are suggesting as I'm having a hard time interpreting exactly what you are recommending. Nixing the OSL is clear, but the rest I'm not sure about. When you say up the contrast, do you mean between the wood areas and the burnt areas or between the wood areas and the vines? I think getting rid of the OSL will help with the latter by itself at least to some degree. Practically speaking how would you suggest upping the contrast? Brighter highlights on the wood part?

Lastly, what exactly do you mean by "half the length of each log bit"? Are you suggesting restricting the effect to be closer to the vines or only having the effect on part of the length of each vine?

Sorry to ask so many questions, it's just that I think you are making suggestions that get right at what I'm trying to accomplish but I'm not sure that I understand the details!

swarmofseals wrote:

wtnind wrote:
I like the idea of the vines rejuvinating the wood but I think you need to boost the contrast a lot to really emphasise it. I would also restrict the rejuvination effect to half the length of each log bit. At the moment the rejuvination effect seems like it covers whole areas rather than spreading out from the vines and the effect isn't as intense. I think OSL from the vines would just further hide the cool concept so I wouldn't do it at all or if you do make it only certain bits of the vines that are glowing like seed pods or flowers or mushrooms or even just tiny glowing dots moving along the vines insides.

Thanks for the response! I like your ideas, and I was kinda afraid that the effect looks like exactly how you described it.

I could really use some more technical description of what you are suggesting as I'm having a hard time interpreting exactly what you are recommending. Nixing the OSL is clear, but the rest I'm not sure about. When you say up the contrast, do you mean between the wood areas and the burnt areas or between the wood areas and the vines? I think getting rid of the OSL will help with the latter by itself at least to some degree. Practically speaking how would you suggest upping the contrast? Brighter highlights on the wood part?

Lastly, what exactly do you mean by "half the length of each log bit"? Are you suggesting restricting the effect to be closer to the vines or only having the effect on part of the length of each vine?

Sorry to ask so many questions, it's just that I think you are making suggestions that get right at what I'm trying to accomplish but I'm not sure that I understand the details!

Yeah, so I would come in with a bright vibrant orange right next to the veins and rapidly transition it into the brown wood colour and then into the background ashen colour. This makes it clear that the closer the wood to the veins the more the healing effect takes hold. I originally suggested shortening the brown to ash transition but just increasing the contrast (adding more orange) right next to the veins might be enough. I'd start there and see how it goes.

By halfing the length of the healing effect I was meaning making the healing transition

If you look at this image of a treasure chest you can see the front looks super alive and glowing and its yellow infact.

wtnind wrote:
helpful stuff

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense and I will try that out. I should note that I do generally go for a more naturalistic look with my painting (particularly with sylvaneth), so the color on that chest is quite a bit more contrasty than I'd like (finished wood vs. natural wood). That said, I do think that brightening it up next to the vines would work well. I might try underhighlighting those surfaces when I do the actual model, but for now I'll just it it with some more aggressive highlighting and see how it looks.



Just for what it's worth, here are some pictures of redwoods: