Light Fury Transformation

Post #7: Painting and Details

Hi Everyone!
This week I worked on getting as much I could painted. Painting is one of the most transformative aspects of the entire costume--it really helps you envision the entire costume as a whole. With that being said, it takes quite a while to hand-paint all of the details on the armor pieces. And it’s too cold where I live to spray paint anything, so I even had to hand paint three layers of white primer. Anyway, let me show you how I paint my armor!

Once the primer is on, I paint a background color for the parts of the armor I want to be shaded. In this case, I am using a blue to try and match the blue stripes on the sewn portion of the costume.

Then, with a small-medium brush, I start to dry-brush white all over these areas. I try to fade the white out once I get near any type of detailing or edging. This creates a gradient and puts dimension into your armor. I let this dry and will go over it again 1-2 more times to make sure everything is blended and smooth.

Some people use this type of painting style to show weathering on their armor pieces - especially when painting golds and silvers. However, I don’t believe that Light Fury has much weathering and/or age on her character, so I just use this technique to create dimension to the armor so it is not so flat.

Here, I repeated my previous step of shading 2 more times in order to get into all the crevices and make sure it was  a nice gradient. Make sure you use a small, dense brush for the tight areas. This will really help with control and a smoother outcome.

This next step is pretty easy - I just painted the rest of the edging/details with either silver or white. Make sure you use a steady hand to get those crisp, sharp edges!

After the entire piece is painted, I typically will spray 2 layers of clear coat to protect the paint. Then once they are dry, I use a small white paint pen and add little details here and there. Unfortunately, I can’t spray the clear coat yet due to the weather, but as soon as a warmer day hits, I will be spraying ALL of my armor! Luckily, the clear coat is just about the final step for the armor and could be done a couple days before the convention, so i'm telling myself I have time…..

Something extra I have been adding are these small little chains with scale maille on them. In one of my previous blogs, I talked about how I was using small dog collar key chains to connect parts of my costume together. Well, I found another use for them! I’m able to hang small little scale maille chains on different parts of my armor. I really wanted to add these because it brings in that “dragon” aspect to the armor and will hopefully help it translate more “dragon”-like in the final design.

Here is what this week’s painting progress looks like!

Also, this week, the rest of the materials to complete the armor come in, so I will be able to finish the missing hip and shin armor and get those painted as well.

I hope everyone else’s costume progress is going well! I’m curious, does anyone else take a really long time to paint? I feel like I paint too slow sometimes!