Friday 18 December 2009

Father Oak


I really love this mini. I say 'mini', but that seems an incongruous description - the model is big! That said, it was harder to paint (and photograph) than I originally expected. The Father Oak sculpt is by Sergio Alonso Leon.

Father Oak is a quite literal force of nature, with no particular allegiance (he is a Hero/Villain in Pulp City terms). The model is excellent, and a superb take on a treeman. The concept was half of a winning entry into a contest run by Pulp Monsters (the people behind Pulp City).

Generally with big models that have large(er) surfaces that are not simply flat, I think they tend to be more manageable for painting. What I found with Father Oak was that I had to try to refine certain skills that I have relied on for years. I am not the world's greatest painter, but I like to think my technique is 'adequate bordering on effective' (ie you can 'tell what it is'), but I honestly found Father Oak to be more of a challenge than expected.

Not due to size, but instead due to the textures that are represented (bark, vines and robes), as well as the pallette to use. Trees are rarely just brown as such, even though we often think of them that way, which makes painting a tree or even treeman in a satisfying way something that is worth thinking about. I don't know if I am fully satisfied by the end result, but what I did was use grey as a highlight before using brown washes.

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