Nickelodeon Best Friends [WIP - SpongeBob Skin Tone]

Having to continuously paint miniatures with many small details can be mentally exhausting at times. That's one reason why I always try to vary the type of miniatures in my project pipeline. It can be very liberating to not worry about incorporating freehand designs into your work, or about bringing out the details on a miniature through fine detail painting. Sometimes I just want to apply layer after boring layer of paint (of a single hue) with minor considerations towards shadows and highlights. There is something to be said for the repetitive nature of applying stroke after stroke of thin (and diluted) layers of acrylic paint onto a miniature which has both a calming and de-stressing effect.

SpongeBob SquarePants, work-in-progress on his skin tone

Baaa Baaa Baaaaa ... a laugh to end all laughs

One of the best models I have for this purpose is the Nickelodeon Best Friends kit comprising SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star, of which the latter has been completed thus far. After a lengthy seven months in cold storage, this mini-diorama was pulled out and dusted off for work to continue, starting with SpongeBob's skin tone. At first glance, it does seem as if not much work has been done. Nothing could be further from the truth. Believe you me, many hours were spent patiently applying ever lighter hues of yellow to create a smooth texture on his skin. Yellow is a notoriously difficult colour to work with especially when armed with only a normal brush of the 'non-air' variety. 

Light yellow highlights on all edges of the sponge

Olive green shadows inside the sponge holes

After obtaining a fairly smooth semi-flat yellow on the body, both shadows and highlights were subtly applied to create more depth while maintaining the flat cartoon look of the TV show in the Nickelodeon channel. Bright yellow was mixed with white to form the highlight colour which was then applied to all edges found on SpongeBob. Meanwhile, a short gradation of olive green was used as shadows in the sponge holes. Olive green was preferable to brown because it looked less dull.  

Nickelodeon Best Friends Diorama, work-in-progress with Patrick completed ...

... and SpongeBob with only his skin tone done so far

Sadly, I don't have many figures of this ilk in my collection. Don't  get me wrong. I still love painting miniatures with wonderfully sculpted details. But there are times when one needs to enjoy the simpler forms of the hobby and the Nickelodeon mini-diorama was the perfect go-to piece in this case. I'm loving how this piece is coming together and hopefully will be able to finish it before the year-end. Now if only someone could get SpongeBob's high pitched laugh out of my head. Baaaaaaaaaaa ...