A sprint down memory lane--it's paved, so watch out for the skid check PSR! This Arcturan Guards unseen Thunderbolt was painted as part of a Camospecs Online Christmas exchange. This piece, if I recall correctly, went to B1BFlyer.
When I work with unseen pieces, floods of nostalgia inundate my creative process. I reference old FASA source books, anime art, and the Battletech CCG-my gateway to Battletech, 'Mechwarrior, and now Alpha Strike. It's pretty easy to tell when I'm painting in a nostalgic mood because of the look. Expect metallic hands, feet, joints, and weapons. Often, the color paler will be a bit more retro, but faded a touch to give it an "old" look. To enhance the old look, I used a brown based white (blue would have been okay too, since blue and orange are complimentary colors). This piece started with a white base coat. From there, I diluted bleached bone into an ink-like consistency with water and polish and lined the piece with a size 1 brush. From there, did the same with sepia ink and a size 1 or 0 brush. The final lining layer was brown ink and a size 0 or 000 brush. After that, I carefully washed the entire piece in several coats of watered down sepia ink. A bit of white highlighting helped to make it "pop." This was also a fun piece to experiment with the tiger stripes. Using just orange would have resulted in a flat, uninteresting highlight. After researching rich color photos of tigers and painted tiger stripe patterns and miniatures, I decided on a fade to yellow, with the white being like the underbelly of a tiger. The base of this fade was orange, since yellow is notoriously challenging to paint. The yellow was added a bit at a time and layered. You'll notice, however, different highlights on the orange and the yellow. For the orange, I added bleached bone and for the yellow I added white. The stripes were carefully painted with black and designed to be asymmetrical. I didn't want to hide all that work with excessive wear and tear. To add a bit of worn paint, I rubbed a pencil lead on the sharp sides of the piece. The ridges on the body and around the left weist are good examples of this. I really enjoyed working on this piece. Unseens are always fun for the history (and usually easy to repose). The scheme was a great change to try new techniques. Most of all, I enjoyed this because I knew it would end up in the hands of someone who would appreciate it. Being a fellow artist, this drive me to push myself and my painting even further.
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