What a Way to Start the Summer

So, I'm done with teaching for the summer and resumed painting with Bob as of today.  Most people think of summer vacation as the beach.  I think of it as miniature painting.  Not a bad way to spend one's summer vacation but perhaps not what I was hoping for.
Today started with a few loads of laundry that I've been putting off and a hodgepodge of miniatures that Bob has been setting aside for me to paint; dinosaurs and monsters.  I was jamming-out to some U2, The Church, and Pete Yorn.  Hodgepodge of miniatures, hodgepodge of music.
Well, let me show you what I've accomplished so far...

 Hard to tell what these babies are with their black primer.  We've got a Brontosaurus, T-Rex, a giant octopus, two dinofelis and a Nano T-Rex.  There is also some other kind of weird dinosaur but I'm not sure yet what it is.  I'll figure it out later.

Oh, NO!  A giant octopus!

 This is a primed box of sea dragons and a fantasy sea monster (kinda looks like a prehistoric dolphin with plates).  I really enjoy the casting on the sea dragon.  I plan on painting one sea dragon deep sea blue with hints of green and the other one will probably be more magical, like perhaps emerald green or a majestic blue with a bit of metallic shimmer.

I started off by base-coating the figures.  This time around I photoed the bottle of paint I used.  This is just a straight base-coat, there is no diluting with water. 

50/50 mix of these two colors.

Yep, he's dead.  It's a brontosaurus being eaten by the T-Rex from above.  Really cool set if you ask me.

 Then, I got side-tracked by the octopus.  I couldn't help myself.  I really like octopus and was obsessing over what type I would like to paint.  Compulsion took over from there.  I decided to go with a blue-ringed octopus.

Dry brush on the ocher 11 and then lightly dry brush on the tan 6.  I hit the suction cup part of his tentacles harder with the tan 6.

To get his rings I painted on rings in black.  Then, I went over the rings and around them with Badab Black wash.

Next, I used Cel-Vinyl Blue and painted within the black rings so it looks as if my blue rings have black outlines.

Then, I used Blue 11 to highlight the Blue rings.  May seem like overkill but it gets worse.  <<grin>>

You can see it better from this view, I highlighted the blue/blue 11 rings with Sky Blue from Vallejo.  I needed the rings to look electric.  They need to glow; and they do, more so in person than on film.

Lastly, I painted the water with deep sea blue and highlighted it by altering the color with white a little at a time until finally the tops of the waves are foam in white.  I altered the color probably three times to achieve this effect.

No, you're right.  My blue-ringed octopus doesn't look exactly like the one in the photo at the beginning.  The one in the photo is a little more orangy brown.  I left mine a little more yellow ocher.  I just felt like I enjoyed the yellow and the blue more.  Perhaps I'll change my  mind tomorrow; in that case I'll just wash with ogryn flesh a little in the spaces between the black spots and leave very little yellow.  <<shrug>>  Don't know.

 My octopus is a little more like this one, but I didn't get so neon.  If I had neon paint, I might be able to do it.  Now that I think of it I might go back over some of the yellow ocher with lemon yellow or golden yellow to pump up the neon.  We'll see what I do tomorrow.

Well, that's all.  I had grocery shopping to do and dinner to cook.  Tomorrow will mean finishing out all the other figures that I base-coated this morning.