Bushido: Painting Aya Minimoto Part 1
It’s time to put brush to these samurai of the mighty Bear Clan!
Step one as always is the skin.
It’s the same palette I’ve used on all my other Bushido models: a base of Bloodstone, Beaten Purple, and Menoth White Highlight. I add increasing amounts of Menoth White Highlight to the basecoat and layer it on to build up the highlights.
Umbral Umber is mixed in with the basecoat for the darker areas. I use a little Sanguine Highlight on the lips trying to make them noticeable without seeming overly made-up.
Next its pants.
I started with a basecoat of Umbral Umber. I didn’t wait for it to dry before I began highlighting it with Rucksack Tan and shading it with a mix of Black and GW Caliban Green. I prefer P3 paints overall but I really like Caliban Green. P3 doesn’t have a green quite like it.
It takes a few more thin layers to get the pants nice and clean looking. Then I moved on to the armor. I wanted it to have a really nice shine to it. Since the Minimoto Clan make such impressive armor I wanted it to have an almost magical appearance.
The blue mid-tone is Gravedigger Denim shaded with a mix of Thamar Black and Bloodstone, and highlighted with… you guessed it… Menoth White Highlight.
I also add a band of Hammerfall Khaki along one edge to represent a reflected light.
Then I noticed all those cool segments of steel on the leather padding and decided to delay finishing the metal for a bit, so I could paint it all together. You always want to paint the lowest or most recessed parts of a model first. But that meant that before I could do the leather I had to do her sleeves.
I decided to try Trollblood Highlight (which is a warm gray or dull pink depending on your perspective) shaded with a mix of Exile Blue and Umbral Umber and highlighted of course with Menoth White Highlight.
With the shirt out of the way I moved on to the leather pads.
These also get a base of Umbral Umber, but since I wanted them to look a little different than the pants I highlighted them with Bloodtracker Brown and Ryn Flesh. This makes it appear slightly redder than her yellowish trousers.
With the pads done I went back to the steel segments and the rest of the armor.
I paint a smooth gradient on each of the tiny metal plates.
A smooth transition from light to dark as shown on this little swatch always creates the illusion of metal. I tried to paint something like this along each metal strip on her shoulders. A thin line of Menoth White Highlight around the top edge helps bring home that reflective appearance.
A quick look at the back at the same stage. I had fun with the shiny helmet. I decided to go with basically two “light sources” for this spherical shape.
Technically there should only be one in an outdoor setting: the sun. But after trying something more like this I ended up preferring the two light source reflection. I think it helps that one is less intense than the other.
The next step is to really finish up the metal details lining the crevices and adding thin lines of highlight to the edges of all the metal surfaces. A thin tan (P3’s Hammerfall Khaki) line goes along the bottom of everything to represent light reflected up from the ground. And that wraps up the metal.
~That’s all for today. More Aya soon!
