Collodi 3: Colors on the Puppeteer

Wyrd makes miniatures that are insanely detailed for plastic, and insanely complicated to put together. My FLGS pointed out that I should grateful I don't play Von Schill and had to assemble his Steam Trunk. I am.

But for all the details, I'm a little surprised they didn't make the wood look like wood. So I added the detail myself.  I applied little wood lines with Van Dyke Brown like I had on the straight razor and the rolling pin on Collodi's party crashers.

I searched for a color scheme I thought would be comparable to an Italian puppeteer. I eventually found one I fell in love with as it had that beautiful shade of purple that was very stylish.

For reference, that's a Venetian marionette of Mangiafuoco - the evil puppeteer who kidnaps Pinocchio in the story written by Collodi himself. If that's not a nest of intertwined references - I don't know what is.

Liking the color scheme meant more stripes to paint. My first pass was FolkArt Raspberry Wine and Olive Green.

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The back had a lot more folds. It was kind of fun trying to draw a straight line and see where the brush took me. The overall effect to me looked like he was stepping his right foot forward, and the cloak on the floor was dragging in that motion.

The topmost green stripe should have gone all the way to the edge of the overcoat. so I had a little repainting to do.  But what really bugged me was what I painted looked less a  stylish wardrobe and more a Rita's Water Ice sign. It all had to do with that FolkArt Raspberry Wine color. 

My painting buddy happened to have a Ceramcoat Grape handy which blended into this beautiful royal color. Once I re-painted the stripes with this color I knew that's what the hat and robe should be. One catch I ran into when I went home to do some touch-ups: According to a discontinued Delta color chart I found online, Delta no longer makes "Grape". Did a little testing and eventually found Anita's Violet was a decent match. But the search made real something I already suspected: most paint lines have slew's of options for tans, browns, yellows, greens, oranges and blues - but purple is much more limited.  You really have to borrow from different paint lines to get a good palette. 

FolkArt Teddy Bear Tan was the middle stripe.  For the wood, I followed the same pattern as the wood handle on his doll friend's straight razor: VanDyke Brown lines, heavy glaze of Teddy Bear Tan, but this time I used a wash of FolkArt Coffee Bean. Brushed off that last wash on places to give it more of the uneven tone that wood grain has.

Back of the robes delivered what I wanted on a first coat, though it obviously needed some shading to bring out the "swanky" velvet sheen I wanted.

Had to put him on the base just for sizing him up and make sure I'm still headed in the right direction.

With that confirmed, it's onto the finer details.