Basic prep goes in exactly the way you'd normally expect: prime, umbral from below with Payne's Grey and zenithaled from above with white, in this particular case a Daler-Rowney white ink plus Vallejo Game Air Dead White, and no those aren't affiliate links. Most of both figs were based with Pro Acryl Transparents (also not an affiliate link) which is starting to be my go-to for such maneuvers. Also, I don't have the transparent white but I'm super going to get some.
The pants are basically the same as Aline's boots from last week since I liked how those turned out. There may be hope for the Black Cat Challenge(TM) yet. I also mixed up the fleshtones this time around. I'm doing a tanned flesh + Magenta base like Kujo rather than my midtone red-brown and am highlighting with a pinkier light fleshtone rather than the sunnier, yellower Vallejo one I've been using and I've gotta say, I kind of like it. Their shirts aren't particularly interesting either but you can probably tell, but that's where the similarities end.
The magenta gal is done more or less the way I'd normally paint. The green gal is the special one and will count as a high quality fig. The brown leather boots and hat are scuffed and scratched and worn in multiple stages with glazes between a la Vince. Supposedly if you're careful with your hashes, scratches, and dots, you can get away without having proper blends. Can confirm. While time consuming, this seems to me to be a way more fun way to up the quality in a way that isn't completely mind-numbing. Note that a proper flowing paint and sharp brush are required for this neither of which I used which results to some of the patchiness. Note that this requires quite a lot of brush control since you're getting just barely on the fig with your nicely flowing paint.
The other hopefully obvious thing is that the green gal's metals are in NMM while the magenta one is using more traditional Vallejo Metal Colors. I am not good with NMM though I'm on my way to getting better. The sword kind of sells but the buckles and hook on her hat do not. Their prints are sadly not pristine and it shows up prominently on the bottom of the sword so only the upward facing NMM looks even remotely reasonable. I also would have liked slightly bigger volumes to work with since the edges of the blade and the handle are miniscule. Overall, I think the blade is functional and outside the cylindrical parts of the hilt, none of the brass really sells.
So which is better? One was certainly easier with the green gal taking probably 50% more time but not coincidentally, I learned way more. Is the difference in quality worth it? That's much harder to say. Overall we're somewhere like 20 hours total for the two and I didn't bring either as high as I think I'm capable of, though I did spend a lot of time on their faces and I'm particularly fond of the magenta gal's beauty spot which was a happy accident. Last year these both might have counted a high quality but I'm only counting the green gal as such. The attempt at NMM, feeble as it is, puts her over the top.
2022 finished mini counter: 9/100, 2/10 high quality
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