WIP: Lady Eliza Farrow

Back again with an update, this time of Lady Eliza Farrow. She's been sitting on my work desk for almost a year with nothing but a primer coat on so I thought it was high time she got some paint on her.

There's not much to her, apart from a pretty bad sculpt - one hand is basically just a blob at the end of her sleeve, the other grasping the cup looks like her fingers are way too long, her nose melds with the cup where they meet, and where her hair falls on her neckline separating her dress from her face from behind, it's a solid wall of what looks like a mould line from the front.

Oh well, she still deserves a solid paint job. As you can see below, it's a work in progress, but I've focused all of my attention on her dress to start with. In the box art she's wearing what looks like a steel skirt, ranging from neutral grey shadows to white highlights. I looked around the internet for inspiration, and decided to go with a blue-shaded white dress instead as it looks prettier and presents a more pronounced contrast to the fact that she's drinking blood from a cup!

I wanted a very smooth blend from VMC Sky Blue to White, so I started with an airbrushed basecoat of VMC Sky Blue:

The skirt was then blended using lots and lots of very thin layers, as follows:
1) 2 VMC Sky Blue:1 VGA Deadwhite:3 Thinner
2) 1SB:1W:2T
3) 1SB:2W:3T
4) 1SB:4W:5T
5) 1SB:6W:7T
6) 1SB:12W:13T

Each colour was painted in between 4 to 7 layers, and whilst it took a while to see any real difference, the 4 hours of patience paid off. The ruffles were simply painted with the mix from step 6 above, minus the thinner to ensure it didn't flood the crevices.

Here's the final skirt:

Then I moved on to the skin. I found this significantly harder to blend well due to the cramped location and my lack of skill. My colour process was as follows:
Base) 2 VMC Basic Skintone:1 Thinner
Shade 1) 1 BS: 1 VMC Beige Red: 3 Thinner
Shade 2) 1 BR: 2 Thinner
Shade 3) 1 BR: 1 VMA Gold Brown: 3 Thinner
Shade 4) 1 Med. Camo Brown: 3 Thinner

At this point, I just couldn't get the shadows to work the way I wanted them to - the cleavage looked fine, but I really wanted to define a cheekbone line without being heavy handed. Anyway.

Highlight 1) 1 BS: 2 Thinner
Highlight 2) 1 BS: 1 VMC Light Flesh: 3 Thinner

I didn't really want to keep shading further as it just wasn't working for me, but I did want to add more of a pinkish tone to her skin, so I mixed up 2 Beige Red with 1 Scarlet Red (and 3 Thinner) and applied it almost as a shadow to her cheeks. Whaddayaknow, it did a much better job of defining the cheekbone and shading than my previous 4 layers! Still not perfect, but much better.

I added some VMA Ferrari Red to represent blood, and moved on to the hair.

So far, I've started with a VGA Bronze Fleshtone all over, then I mixed 1 VGA Gold Yellow with 2 Bad Moon Yellow and 2 Thinner and gave it a solid coat (the basecoat was really to get rid of the blue overspray from the air-brush). I've also now darkened it slightly with Citadel Gryphonne Sepia wash.

Finally, I've covered the cup in black followed by a dark base of VGA Gunmetal. Here's how she looks right now:

I'm really happy with how she's turned out so far, particularly the blend on the skirt. Next up I plan to blend from a mid-golden brown to a very light blond for the hair (hopefully blending individual strands to maintain definition between them), and finish the cup obviously.

Until then, Happy Hobbying!