Painted twice you might say. The image below is Pegaso's 15th Century Roaming Knight 75mm historical figure. This is a white metal model that comes unassembled and unpainted. This is a WIP pic from about two years ago. I was using photo refereces for the horses coat, painting it after a Gypsy Vanner with extensive Sabino markings and blue eyes.
The medium is dry powdered pigments and pan pastels along with testors dull coat to seal the dry pigments. I literally paint with the dry pigments in layers building light to dark and sealing each later to get a smooth surface. The only acrylic is the red on the tack and the white for the markings on the horse. And the knights face is acrylic as well. The metallic is Jacquard metallic pigments which I applied dry. I can seal with dullcoat a couple of layers before it looses its sheen but then I go over it with brush on gloss sealer and the shine comes right back.
The black markings are pan pastels, the knights cloak was done in brown tones of Earth Pigments and as i said the metal is Jacquard metallic pigment. He's not even half way done in this picture. I have several WIP because I was going to create a tutorial for painting horses and using the pigments but when he was almost done, I returned to my table one day only to discover one of my cats had gotten up there and knocked him over. Being metal this is a very heavy figure so he broke into several pieces. and the soft pewter dented in a couple of spots. He's definitely repairable but after putting in so many hours and discovering a shattered model, I didn't have the wherewithal to work on him. I saved all the pieces and put him away deciding I'd tackle him when I had the energy.
Well, that turned out a little differently than I planned.
This is a digital photo manipulation of the above image. So I guess that means I've painted this model twice physically and digitally. A friend of mine created a character for an RPG game the character has a mount named Gypsy. So I immediately thought of my little Gypsy Vanner and wondered how a photomanipulation would turn out.
The face is from another image of her character and lots of work done on. The hair is hand drawn using custom brushes and I basically repainted the horses's coat, also using custom brushes, from the ground up. Not only did I used to paint gaming miniatures, and historical figures, I also painted realistic equine sculptures and competed on the national level. One important trick with horse hair is to always go in the direction of the hair growth pattern.. It adds a lot of realism even though it's subtle.
Had to totally change the torso since we're going from a guy to a girl here. I used custom brushes on the cloak but painted over what was already there for a foundation then picked out the detials with those brushes so it started working toward unique. I'm not too happy with the swords but all the tack is completely repainted in photoshop.
So my roaming knight got finished at least - just not the way I originally planned, but I was happy with the result.
Yes, someday I really do plan on fixing the original model.
This is the image masked to show just the digitally painted fur. The red tack is the original model, the coat and main are all digitally painted, not the model. I wanted ot mask it off so you could see it without distraction.
Digitally painted horse and tack. I'm just starting on the rider.
First step - turn the guy into a girl! lol! So I had to adjust the torso appropriately.
On the image above - I used a mask to block out the original face but I left just a little so I could match some key points like the eyes, the position of the nose and the chin. I then took this image of a female face and placed it apropriately in the image below. Also finding an image with the eyes looking in a direction appropriate for the position of the model's head and body was a key consideration.
Then I added hair and the appropriate shading/
After that I painted the cloak and started work on the armor. I still have to fix the sword she's holding.
