I finally got around to finishing the eye on this mini Zag that I was half-done with and brought to school with me. I wanted some nice muted colors on him after staring at the blue blank for quite a while. I just love all the texture on the Zag sculpts, so I wanted to highlight all that texture with the paint. Let me know what you guys think!
http://prometheusrising.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/gargamel-mini-zagoran/

i don't think it looks like m26m's piece; i think they are pretty different and likable for different reasons.

this zag is fun and the muted colors suit it well. the eye is good, but looks sloppy in the close up. I think if you want to do that kind of iris effect it might look better if you could blend them together at the edges with some slight shifting gradients from one color to the other. it's a very small surface, so that might be difficult. what might work is to paint the eye by hand with a brush as you seem to have done here and then use a colored clear coat airbrush paint on top of it to help meld the colors.

the rubbed cracks look best on the red section. and though i know you don't like it, i think this guy could only benefit from a gloss coat.

overall, good piece. nice mini-zag, keep up the good work.

While I appreciate the disclaimer in the thread title, I don't really think it's necessary.

While some aspects of our Zags may be similar, the differences are pronounced enough to distinguish the two from each other.

Drybrushing is a technique used by many painters and it certainly isn't something I would ever lay claim to. It's used to achieve a certain effect and, when done properly, can yield great results.

That said, I do have some constructive criticism for you.

The eye. Uberboy nailed it when he said that the close-up looks sloppy. It kinda looks like the iris is leaking a little into the black outline along the bottom. I also think that it might have been better if you "outlined" the eye (not the iris) with a deep, dark red instead of black. You were probably trying to draw attention to it (and you did) but since nothing else is outlined that way, it looks kinda weird. A dark red, in my opinion, would have given you the shading you were going for without being so harsh. You got pretty ambitious with the detailing here and that's cool, I just don't really think it worked out.

The drybrushing overall, while nice, could be pushed a little farther. The colors are fine and all that but you could have done more in terms of highlighting the scales by using progressively lighter shades of your colors. If you do this with a soft touch, you'll add some contrast and get the edges of the scales to "pop" a little more. Works great if what you're doing is trying to bring out the texture.

That's all I got. Keep painting.

-D

Thanks for the feedback guys, you two are definitely on the ball with this one. I agree that the eye looks sloppy in the closeup... I think my biggest problem here is that I didn't really have a plan going on, so I basically was just winging it as I was painting, and it shows. The outline around the iris is actually purple, but really it's too dark and doesn't do anything for the eye. I think if I went into this guy with a little more plan, I could have done more selective work with the scales, and planned a much more cohesive and clean eye. It was a fun little distraction, but there's definitely stuff to think about for next time.

As for the thread title, I know they aren't really that similar, but I thought it was funny that two drybrushed mini Zags went up one right after the other. Case in point, midnight's has a cohesive theme and much cleaner execution, and is loads better for it

What kind of paint did you use? For the most part I use V-color but for brush work I use Citadel/Gamesworkshop paints (used for Warhammer/40k models). Great for drybrush techniques.

I use Citadel, Valeijo, and Cel-Vinyl. Along with a couple of Privater Press Paints when and cheap craft paints when the situation arises.