Painting a bottle

Hey! I am currently painting a Dwarf Slayer Pirate, the one with a bottle in his hand. I'd love to paint it as if it was a half-empty rum bottle, but I don't have any clue at all how to do this. Does anyone have any experince with bottles and glass? Help would be very much appreciated.

The best advice I can give it to look at oil paintings of wine bottles, rather than photos. Oil-painters really know how to make glass glow. Treat the 3D model as a 2D surface and make the bottle look good from a suface point-of-view. Try not to worry about the "insides"!

It really depends on the usage in the model. If the bottle is viewable from 360 degrees, you wont be able to shade it very realistically since the light from such an item is dependent on the location of the observer. In such a case, it might be best to just make the bottle opaque if you're going for realism.

If you're set on making it half-full (which I think is a great idea), I'd try to narrow the angle from which the bottle is viewable. If the model cradles the bottle against himself, narrowing the angle to 60 degrees or so, you should be able to realistically paint a "translucent" item, since it wont be viewable from the sides from which it would look odd.

Thanks for the tips!

The model is holding the bottle in his hand, so there is only one side it can be completely seen from. Now, I'm off to find an oil painting of a half emtied bottle and try my luck