Another trip to Toledo, another round of updates to my work on our trophy for the upcoming Magic: The Gathering tournament. Last time, I applied a base coat of black to the overall model, making it appear to be a large lump of tar. This time, it was drybrushing the stone base with different shades of grey, to bring out the highlights. Not really sure if the pictures show the different shades, but for this first pass it turned out decent. Pictures had a significantly different amount of sunlight, so it makes the gradient much harder to see.
My next stage is to highlight the lettering itself, first in flat white (to make the color brighter), and then a coating of either bright yellow or red. That should make the text contrast much stronger and work with the theme. Then I can move on to the sword itself, my intent is a steel color for the blade and bronze for the hilt and pommel, and eventually a rusty highlight in some areas. The vines will stand out with a green color. Still undecided about the handle itself – not sure if it should be a brown leather, or just a bronze handle. The final stage will be a dark brown wash on the base, to make it less grey and cold, and then eventually the mandatory sealant on the entire piece. My timetable is just slightly over 2 months remaining, so it is time to really start making some progress on the effort.
