Brisket Bust by Broken Toad: Lawnor's first ever bust (& a cheeky attempt at winning the Spring Cleaning comp)
NMM Iron Axe and Red Insignia
Bow down to my MS Paint skills in awe and wonder! I know this isn't pretty, but I think this is kinda where I want my shadow and light? Please correct me if this looks wrong as I'm about to start painting. Please bear in mind that the connection point on the wrist will be horizontal, so the axe will be at more of an angle. Also, MS Paint only has 2 greys so when I've drawn black, I might not necessarily mean black for all of it.
The videos I watched all suggest blocking out where you want your highlights and shadows without caring about delicasy. Just slap it on so you can see what you're aiming for. Then, once you're happy, start blending and glazing and blending and glazing again and again until its smooth. First I layed down an even base coat of Dark grey, then I mixed in a little white and applied the outside highlight. I made a midtone and painted that, then I mixed a liitle black in to the dark grey and picked out the darker areas. I'm just working on this one section of the blade for now as a proof of concept. If it works I'll do it elsewhere. If it doesn't, then I've not wasted as much time.
I've got my black, dark grey and my white all on my wet palette all blurred together and I'm going back and forthe pushing them ove the blade, almost using it like a mini palette itself. Everything is bluring and smudging and its starting to look like something. I've also realised that while I can't tilt my pics by 10 degrees I can tilt my camera by 10 degrees to show the axe at the corrent angle. OTT: Can we please have these text boxes bigger when typing in?
After another coule of rounds of smudging and blending and drying between each round I decided to edge highight the area, put a little Nuln Oil in to the cracks and underline them with white and it actually looks pretty damn good. I also painted the undersides of the tapered blade. Any plane pfacing towards the milk bottle top got my darkest shade and the edge at the end facing the bottom left corner got a lighter dark shade over it. I don't know if the very edges of the blade should get a white line or not, but I did white line the upper tips and upper sharp edges of the teeth. I think I'm going to leave this area alone and expand out now. I may revisit it later if I feel I can do better after more practise. 
I've done everything over the qhole of the axe, except the nuln oil and edge highlight stages. I applied the same techniques over the handle, applying a long shadow on the underside and 2 highlights at the 2 and 10 positions along the handle. I then blended up and down, almost erasing that highlight. I replaced it by getting almost no paint on my finest brush and then making small lines along the length of the lighlight by touching the side of the brush tip vertically repeatedly along the horizontal length. The long highlight is then made out of a series of overlapping blurred vertical lines instead of one straight horizontal lineline
I painted my nuts and did the nuln oil and edge highlight bits. This just leaves the chain, the arm band and the shoulder mounted guild symbol. Then i might mix up 50/50 dark grey / dark prussian blue and apply a dark shade where plates join, like Mr Giraldez advises.
Work done on the remaining metal parts. I tried the 50/50 blue/grey mix and didnt like it so i went with a nuln oil line along any overlaping plates For anyone curious, I started the NMM at about 10.30AM and finished it about 7.30pm. Bear in mind I got everything before the gold done in 3.5 days, so its taken the longest of all the colours by far.
I just took 2 red, smeared them in to each other and painted the insignia. I'm going for the look of, "It's metal, but the bits facing out have been painted red" look.
The two paints used on the insignia
Posting the above pi and seeing it here made me realise I needed to go one step further. I mixed a little white with a little Scarlett Blood and edge highlighted where apropriate.
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