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"Knowledge is a Weapon, Jon... Arm Yourself Well Before You Ride Forth to Battle..."
Welcome back, Westerosi! Today we're continuing our dive into A Song of Ice & Fire's Night's Watch faction by tackling probably the most commonly used NCU of a faction since early launch Lannister players auto-included Cersei. Today we're talking about Maester Aemon.
Aemon's a fairly easy figure to paint, but like all of our Night's Watch paint jobs, the monochromatic palette can be a little boring, so we're going to be focusing a lot on highlights to help make the figure look interesting. Let's jump in!
1. Gameplan, Prep, and Prime
So, most of you know that I try to base my paint jobs off of the appearance of the characters from the HBO series, however, there's not that much difference between the awesome card art and the awesome Peter Vaughan who brought him to life on HBO.
We are going to be using mostly black and white, mixing various tones of grey with it, but there are a few different colors you'll want to collect as well, so I've assembled the following paints:
Let's break this down:
Vallejo
Light Flesh, Dark Sand, Field Blue, and Hull Red
Army Painter
Plate Mail Metal
Ceramcoat
Black and White
I've chosen to prime him white with Army Painter's spray on Matt White primer instead of black because I really want the skin to be light in order to sell the look of it being aged and not much blood flowing to it.
Now, we're ready for basecoats!
I've chosen to prime him white with Army Painter's spray on Matt White primer instead of black because I really want the skin to be light in order to sell the look of it being aged and not much blood flowing to it.
Now, we're ready for basecoats!
2. Basecoats
Another quick reminder to thin your paints. I usually thin all my basecoat paints with about a 50/50 water to paint ratio.
The first thing you'll want to paint will be the robes. You never really want to use pure black, so we'll be mixing together a 50/50 mix of black and white paint, thinned with equal parts water, and painting the robes.
Be careful not to paint the chains or the trim of where it goes over the chest and shoulders.
Next, you'll use your hull red to paint the cover of the book he's carrying. I do this at this stage so that we can easily cover up any booboos of getting the hull red on the hand when we paint the skin. Nothing too fancy, just try to get an even coat.
Then you'll use your field blue to paint the trim around the shoulder and chest. This is completely optional and you could paint the trim the same color as the rest of the robe, but I feel this helps give it a little pop.
After that, we'll use our dark sand to paint the staff and the pages of the book before using our light flesh to paint the face, neck, and hands.
Don't worry too much if the light flesh is REALLY light (it will be). We're choosing this color to help give the illusion of translucency that elderly flesh can sometimes get.
The last part of our basecoat will be using the plate mail metal to paint Aemon's maester's chains and the binding of the book. For metallics, you don't have to thin the paints, as it can sometimes cause issues with the consistency, especially when you're dealing with fine detail like the book binding.
Once that's all finished drying we can move onto shading!
3. Shading
Even though Aemon's a fairly simple color palette, we'll be using a variety of washes to create depth.
Flesh Wash, Dark Tone, Soft Tone, and Strong Tone, all by The Army Painter.
Start off by applying the soft tone to the staff. Just a thin layer should bring out all the wonderful woodgrain detail. Try not to get any on Aemon's hands, but if you do, it's not that big of a deal.
Next, apply some strong tone to the bandages wrapping Aemon's arm. Not too much, just enough to give it a dirty coloring and depth.
Then take your dark tone and apply it to the book, the chains, and the robe. It may seem a little redundant to put black wash on almost black grey, but the wash will deepen the colors of the robe, leaving us the opportunity to add highlights to make the robe pop.
The last thing you'll be shading will be the face and hands, and you'll be using the flesh wash. Just give the skin a light wash with it, and don't let it pool too much around the face. There are a LOT of little wrinkles sculpted in and you don't want to obscure them with too much wash.
Once that's all dry we can move onto the highlights!
4. Highlights and Finishing Touches
I always start my highlighting process with the skin. Using your light flesh and your detail brush, you'll paint the cheekbones, the chin and jawline of his face, along with the forehead and top of the head in order to give Aemon's head a nice light highlight.
For his hands, simply paint a highlight on the top of the index and middle fingers on each hands and Aemon's elderly skin should be nice and highlighted.
For the staff, take your dark sand and paint a THIN line down the front of it along with painting the center of the nub at the top of it.
Now we're going to start on the robe. Take your 50/50 black/white mix and we're going to simply paint all of the folds in the robe. This will give the robe a VERY subtle highlight, but we're not going to stop there.
Add another drop of white to your mix, lightening up the color, and paint over the folds AGAIN, but only about the top 70% of what you already highlighted, leaving the folds darker as they get closer to Aemon's feet.
We're going to do that once again, adding another drop of white for an even lighter color, and painting ANOTHER highlight, only this time only about 50% of what you just painted. Above is an up close picture of the technique, and you can see the layering of the various shades of grey on Aemon's sleeve.
5. Kill the Boy!
That's it, guys! Spray him with some matt varnish and call it a day. Hopefully you found this tutorial helpful, and if you're looking for any more help with painting, you can always check out my other tutorials here, the most comprehensive collection of A Song of Ice & Fire painting tutorials on the web!
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