A little while ago, I passed a garden gnome on my way to breakfast, after our Saturday morning Taichi class and stopped in my tracks. This gnome stood in the grassy space across from an eclectic antiques store and seemed to call out to me, in his frozen grayness, among disparate lawn ornaments laid out for sale. An idea germinated in my mind: ‘What would happen if I were to paint this two foot gnome as it were a 28mm miniature ?’ With Spring coming, I saw it as a good opportunity to add to our backyard oasis appeal.
I used a combination of craft paints for this project as hobby paint would have been prohibitively expensive. I will show the colors used for each of the parts along with the targeted areas.
Initial gnome after a gray primerZenital prime light gray and white.I started with the shoes (mat black) with medium grey highlights.For the jacket, I used the following colors which I blended on the surface itself.The belt was painted in leather tones and weathered as a 28mm miniature belt would, with scratches and use marks.The belt was painted using a mix of gold paint and brown.I wanted to hair and beard grayish and created a series of drybrushing layers, finished with a few straight highlights in white.The hat was painted using colors progressively from dark read top yellow.The flesh color was a challenge from scratch and I started with these three colors, then blended up to lighter by adding white.I painted the eyes using the same approach I use for miniatures, adding more details to the pupils given the ample size.The mushroom was next, adding white dots over the gradient red color.Stem was painted beige with dark brown recesses and I added slightly darker red circles around the white dots.Last but not least, the hat decorations were painted using metallic craft colors.
