Adokul the monk and some old school 25mm Ral Partha and Grenadier

Adokul the Monk by Andrea

I did a lot of prep work on Adokul this week.  First up was drilling and gluing in pins in all the parts to hold him together.  I always pin my metal figures together and then use two part epoxy to glue them together.  The fact that the two part epoxy have some bulk helps filling the gaps as most metal figures don’t have that good a join between parts (compared to plastic figures).  I glued the legs and body together and then filled in the gaps with some Milliput.

Adokul wooden base underway

For the object under the left foot I played around with a number of options and in the end went for a dwarf stone statue head.  Makes him more fantasy based but that is ok.

I had to wait until the weekend to undercoat him as it’s a bit cold at night in the shed.  I did the usual two stage undercoat of all over black, and the white on the highlights.

Ral Partha thief

While waiting for undercoats to dry I wanted to try doing some armour and do some colour/enamel like effects.  So into the stash of old school Ral Partha/Grenider figures.  I found a nice plate mail figure and a thief to do while I waited for the plate mail to dry.  I ended up doing the thief first, she was a bit hard as the face was obscured by her hood.  Also my eyes needed to be trained back to doing 25mm again.  After all the broad brush work on the Anonymous bust hard to go back to super small work.  Plus the eyes aren’t what they were 15 years ago when I was painting these more often.  Kept her pretty dark as that fitted with the thief idea.  Thieves don’t want to stand out too much.

Grenadier fighter underway

For the plate mail guy, I decided to go for a dragon skin cloak and practice on getting my reds better.  Wanting coloured armour I mixed some Jo Sonja’s Phthalo blue with the AP Plate mail.  I bit more subtle than the standard metallic blue.  I do like the AP metallic range, I find them very smooth and the mica is really ground fine (so no silver flakes).  I need to do the armour highlights/shades still and more on the red.  His face was a pain as it is quite recessed and the left arm of the figure gets in the way when trying to get a brush in there.  I think I did the eyes at least 6 times.  Definitely lost the touch there.

Banshee Anonymous bust finished, the next project and a Dungeon Saga troll

Anonymous bust

Just tidied up the bust some more with various little bits here and there.  I redid the rear left shoulder and then decided to continue on the open wound look and made a patch of raw flesh/meat in the hollow area.

To add to the depth I highlighted a mid point area and put a very dark shade below it to try and reinforce the depth perception of the area.

I’m pretty happy with the overall result.  This was my first bust I purchased and intimated me for over a year.  Seeing all the amazing versions online didn’t help.  Really happy I attempted it as it pushed me way outside my comfort zone and I’m not likely to paint this much flesh again in one figure.  Really like how I did the orange hair.  Go complementary colour shading!

I’m now totally converted over to making my own flesh mixes for larger scale figures (for 28mm quick and dirty figures maybe not).  I’m also in awe of people like Ben Komets who paint flesh with only four colours and make it work.  I was getting up to eight base colours in some stages and thinking that I was making it too complex.

Dungeon Saga troll shaman

After the bust I finished the last Dungeon Saga troll.  Now just the orcs/goblins from the second expansion to do.  Think I’ll have a long break before them.  I have the Terminator figures and some LotR figures I want to do as my background/in between painting tasks first.

Adokul the monk

A few years ago I got a subscription to the new defunct Figure International magazine by Andrea.  Part of the subscription was the figure ‘Adokul the monk (RS-013)’.  A very Warhammer (40k) inspired figure.  Lots of big armour bits and skulls.  He will just be on a small base, no big diorama.  I think I will modify him a bit and have his hammer with the head at the top of the figure (rather than under his foot) and have his left foot on something else.  Doing some dry fittings to try out options.  I’ll leave off the arms for painting for now.

Lastly started helping my son (his is 6) work on his first entry to the Crystal Dragon painting competition.  A strange diorama (20x14cm) with four small areas with a high brick wall separating the areas with a mix of skeletons (Reaper Bones), scorpions (Reaper Bones) and eagles (Eureka) in each area.  He has a very strong story idea, I’m still getting there.  Of course when my daughter saw that we were doing it, she started working out what she wanted to do.  All about the next generation :)

Banshee Anonymous bust part 2

Pretty much more of the same this week.  I continued to work on the Anonymous bust, working my way around the model and fixing areas up.

Banshee Anonymous bust

First area that needed some work was the back.  The left shoulder blade needed to be made closer to the right shoulder.  Also the lower back area needed the contrast pushed a bit more.

The left side of the neck proved to be the hardest area.  My original attempt had resulted in a very purple skin finish.  Also the hollow areas were much too stark and continued too far up the neck to the head.  I had a very big inverted V on the side of his neck.  This got repainted at least half a dozen times as I just couldn’t get the colour where I wanted it.  Always too purple or too brown, loosing all the orange tones.    In the end I found using VMC Dark Sea blue instead of VMA Armour brown as the shade colour seemed to work.  I think I’m almost there now.

Under the scar area on the left side of the head I put some normal flesh colour at the base of the neck.  This helped define the area and stopped the shading in the hollows of the neck from continuing all the way up the head to the scar area.  The scars were worked on and I added some more dark red/purple shadows next to the flesh lines to make them pop a bit more.

The wife mentioned that the hair stubble didn’t look different enough from the flesh.  So I took the contrast a bit further.  I used very small dots of colour (both the shadow and highlight) over the stubble area and then with a wet brush sumped the dots out much like you would with oil paints.  You have to be quick as the small dots dry very fast.  I used the same technique on the beard.  I probably should have used the flow medium I have to help out there on second thoughts.  The main hair got some more highlights.

Lastly I glued the figure into the base before the final finish up tasks.

This week more touch up work and trying not to ruin things by over fiddling them.