Kelts of the Drune Clan - An Army Project - Proof of Concept

WOAH!!!  Holy forgotten blogs right???  I mean RIGHT??

Well not exactly no, life has been coming like The Fast and the Furious and I've been doing my best to keep pace with the pack!  I spent the last few months working on a game contract and the office is two hours south of the house..so adjusting to living life in two different cities has been a bit odd.  Well it's full time now, so I'll do what I can to keep my hobby side up!!!

So some of you may recall I started in on a Rag Na Rok sized Drune army project a little while ago which I started chronically here on dragon painting.  I started this project with the 'community driven' mentality putting up a couple of polls here and here.  The point was simple to allow the regulars who post there (some top notch painters and all around pretty swell group of peeps) have a bit of input into my own personal project by picking from a few set choices with the almighty poll./popular vote thing.

Well the project itself has been going a bit slower than anticipated due to a couple of things, first, I'm still waiting on my buddy to deliver half of the army to me...it's missing the cav, the lanyfh warrioresses and the base foot sloggers still.  But it is full of Formors, Minos, Hounds, Karnaghs, Archers and most of the characters...so I've got plenty to work on.  Second, the above aforementioned job, it's put a bit of a damper on my weekly painting and my weekend painting has to compete with the long list of 'home improvements and chores' one must do...when oh when will they make a yard that is maintenance free????  And finally, like all you fine fellows who may be reading this, I've got painting/army collection A.D.D. like nobodies business, so I went on a Cryx tangent for a couple of weeks in there too.

So with all of that, I have finished a pair of models to prove my color proof of concept which is based on this piece of artwork.

Now I love this piece of work and find it just fantastic from an artists perspective (for those of you who don't know I'm an animator - so I actually make a living as an artist).  It's rich, emotional and has amazing contrast while being very stylized.  Now the color palette in question doesn't necessarily jump right out and say 'HEY I'M PERFECT FOR A MINIATURE ARMY!!!', it does say 'hey, I'm a challenge...can you take this unusual scheme and apply it to a bunch of toy soldiers and make it interesting?'

Well I think I can, but of coarse I took some liberties with it and will say that I will most likely evolve the test pieces a bit as I went more into the pink side of the reddish spectrum and more into the yellow side of the orange.  Also the fact that this is an army, means that I have to come up with a scheme that looks good and that can be applied fairly quickly across a bunch of figures, so making sure I follow those directives is important, so keep that in mind when 'scrutinizing' the work.  it's not meant to be competition worthy.

So my first test piece is a larger one, the Drune Minotaur- here I wanted to make him raw and feral looking - so I opted for a really bright skin tone bordering on muscle fiber-ish.  Again, heading towards a more yellow tone for cloth...I might bring this back to a more orangish look in the overall scheme though.  I believe the blue armor and sword contrast very well with the rest of the mini, but the plan overall is to make sure that each minotaur does have a unique look and feel to it...as I have 4.  Here's a couple shots of the first.

Here's a WIP of his back in the early stages as well:

Overall I think he's got a unique look and although the scheme does not follow the initial palette selection exactly, I think there's enough of it there to not bath him in the Simple Green and start again.

The second model I completed is Wandyr the Bloodthirsty.  I love this fig, it's got attitude and a real solid look, plus it just seethes Barbarian with the helmet, the half armor and the bare feet...siick.  Now this one pulls a bit more into the colder end of the scheme from the front and then a bit more into the warmer end from behind as again I went much higher into the yellow's with his cloth than that of the artwork. I also leaned a bit more into the pink tone in his fur cape  A couple of shots here:

Now as I'm sure you can tell, I am no maestro with a camera, and my lens work needs real help but you can at least get a good idea of what the look is.  As it stands however, I may very well move the next piece into a 'darker' overall feel but pressing into the orange spectrum a bit more and not going so high into the yellows and pushing the pinks back into a more magenta/red or even into a deeper purple - we'll see.

Any requests on the next fig for the test?  

I'm currently spending a lot of time on a Mountaineer of the Behemoth as he's going to showcase another little project that I'm working on that has suffered due to my time pressed schedule...but I do have a couple of pieces for that to show here as well...so a couple of sneak peeks!!!

So with that, I'm going to close this out and until next time keep your paints thinned and your brushes clean!!