Adokul the Monk part 5 - bases and books

So this week was more work on the arms of the figures.  I now have both arms pretty much sorted so the figure is starting to come together now.  The sword needs some love next.

Right arm done

For the base I did some samples on some parquet flooring plastic card sheet I had.  I tried three colours of wood - tan, red/brown and dark brown.  Some of them were starting to look ok but none of the colours were really working with the figure.  Then the wife mentioned porphyry marble which is a rich red/purple with white flecks.  The red/purple I think will look quite good with the figure so some experiments with that are next.  Also I will use flow aid medium to get the marble effects like I did with the Violinist marble fountain.

Start of one of the large books

Most of my time this week was spent sculpting books.  Another one of those moments when I catch myself and think “I am really doing this?”  The plan is that the figure’s foot will be on a pile of books and the sword will be driven into the books (maybe with the tentacles as well).  The whole “evil heresy books” theme which fits with the look of the figure.

Sorry, no macro lens shot

I started the books with a core of balsa wood with two pieces of plain plastic card for the covers superglued on.  Then I used my standard Milliput/green stuff mix (70/30) to put a layer of putty around the book that I then sculpted in some pages.  On the covers I added various details made from plastic card, some sections of fence I had and hardened green stuff rolled out flat.  I found the hardened green stuff was the worst to work with as even though very thin it wanted to got back to being flat so was hard to glue.  The plastic card strips were the easiest as I put some glue on the area I wanted to bend, let the glue soften the plastic, then shaped it.  I made up a number of books so i have a selection to choose from.  I might also put a chain around one for some more flair.

Adokul the Monk part 4

Well a bit of two steps forward, one step back this week.  A bit of rework on a couple of bits so not much progress forward.

Head and arms attached

I started on the both arms.  I got the leather gloves, tassels and linen cloth done before gluing the arms in place.  All of these areas are on the underside of the figure so pretty hard to work on once they are on the figure.

For the leather gloves I used the same base as the leather tassels (VMC Leather Brown/VMC Medium Flesh) but I highlighted with more JS Yellow Oxide so they would be a bit different.

Pre-shading started on trim

The arms glued on without issue (pinning the figure before painting always a good idea).  However there were some small gaps on the rear of the figure.  Nothing major so I used some green stuff to fill them in (I didn’t want to use milliput as it can stain).  However while I was moving the putty around I managed to lift off a large chunk of paint on the back.  Sigh.  So a quarter of the back had to be repainted.

Repaired back

I then started work on the left arm shading up the blue and then starting the pre-shading of the gold with some orange/yellow oxide mix.  Lots of tiny details needing to be edge painted so very slow going.

Book all done

Finally I painted up the chain that the book is attached to.  I used some VMA Rust and Gold together to make a weathered looking chain section.  I didn’t want it gold as I’m reserving that for the trim sections.

Looking at the figure on the base the wife bought up the point that the base was a bit big for the figure.  Originally I had made the larger base because of the weight of the figure and all that metal making it quite top heavy.  I did a trial on a smaller base where I had stained the wood a red/brown (Jarrah wood stain) and the blue really worked well with it.  So a made a new smaller base and drilled out the bottom of it.  Then I melted some lead (from old bases, etc) and poured it into the hole to add some weight to the bottom of the base.  Then I used two part epoxy to fill in the rest and to seal in the lead.  I’m going back to an earlier idea of having the figure standing on a stack of books.  So I need to make up some books in milliput.

New sword for figure

Last week I was thinking of not going with the warhammer.  Going through the figure stash I found a large claymore sword that fits with the figure.  I’ll go with the stance of the weapon end being in the ground.  The sword was quite old and made of lead.  While working on it, it broke in two places.  Rather than drill it (parts too small) I used Zap-a-Gap super glue.  Normally I use the cheap and nasty super glue.  Well Zap-a-Gap is worth the extra money.  Works really well and using the kicker helped a lot.  Despite being a very small join area it’s pretty strong.  I then covered the blade in diluted milliput to fill in all the cracks and gaps from the poor casting.

This week more gold arm trim…

Adokul the Monk part 3

Continuing on from last week I decided to paint all the trim gold.  I first pre-shaded this in a brown/orange before painting over with a mixture of Vallejo Metal Air Gold, VMC Gold and some VMC Dark Sea Blue.  Then some highlights were picked up by using just the VMC Gold and some AP Silver.

I did the same for the chest eagle as well.  Once it was done I redid the blue around the eagle to fix up some over painted areas and shaded around the eagle in a dark violet to make the yellow gold pop some more and enforce the 3D aspect of the eagle being on top of the armour.  I also shaded the gold eagle with some VMA Armour Brown and Dark Sea Blue.

I then saw that I had forgotten the detail work on the feet, so I went back and did that.  Rather than the bright gold I used VMA Rust with the gold mix to tone everything down.

Then there was lots of detail shading to bring out some of the details around the gold armour and the blue armour.  I also added some scratches to the armour.  To do this I painted a dark line with Armour Brown/Rust and then underneath that (i.e. catching the light) a line in light blue.

I started the base coats of the various components on both arms.  I think I will paint the white cloth, gloves and leather tassel's to completion before gluing the arms on.  Then I will finish the blue armour and trim with the arms on the figure.

The book

I painted up the small book and glued that onto the figure with two part epoxy.  Luckily I remember to check that the chains fitted and realised I had let the book sag a little.  So the book was moved and tilted up so the chains fitted (just).  Getting the plastic rods through the mounting holes and the chain was painful.  One was easy but the second was right on the limit of the chain.  That took the better part of 10 minutes of trying and failing before finally getting the rod through.  Along the way I chipped off a little paint as well.  The rods were then glued with PVA (I was afraid super glue to fog the paint).  They aren’t structural, they just have to not move.

Book attached

I also painted up three more terminators and three terminator crawlers.  Only two walking and two crawling terminators to go.

Terminator Genisys figures

So next week will hopefully be the arms and getting them on.  I haven’t considered the warhammer yet.  I’m thinking of replacing it with something (a mace?) else.  But I want to get the arms in place before deciding on that.

Adokul the Monk part 2

Creases redone

So last week I wasn’t that happy with the skirt, especially around the left knee.  I later worked out I had the shadows wrong which is why it looked off.  I had shadows uniformly in the creases (like the old days of army painting) instead of just having shadows under the ridges of cloth.  So I had a few attempts at redoing that but the colour was just off.  I couldn’t get a shadow colour that looked right as I was using various browns but the shadows were getting too purple.  So I did some experiments and found that VMC Smoke worked best as the shade colour for the warm white.  In times past I have vague memories of using the old Citadel brown ink which is a very similar colour.  So happier now with the skirt.

Before I started the blue armour I did some tests on an old 28mm Grenadier figure.  That took on a bit of a life of it’s own and I took a bit more time on him than expected.  I also started experimenting with using inks in the colour mixes.  I used some red ink on his hat to add some vibrancy.  For his sash I used red and yellow inks to make an intense orange and then darkened it with some blue.  This ended up with a super rich brown that I really like.  I also discovered once some paint was on the figure his wasn’t wearing boots, instead he has clogs and stockings.  An odd choice with plate mail, but why not.  Then I had to remember how to do 28mm faces again.

Back to Adokul I started on the blue armour.  As I was lightening the blue with white I would add in a small amount of blue ink to avoid the blue going grey (an issue on the 28mm figure).  For the shading I used some VMC Light Orange mixed with some yellow and red inks.  There weren’t many large expanses for the shading except for the back of the figure.  For all the trim on the edges of the armour  originally I was just going to use the blue highlight colour.  Now I’m thinking of gold trim after the work I did on the chest eagle and skull motif.

On the chest of the figure is a large eagle.  I pre-shaded this with JS Yellow Oxide/Light Yellow/White and then did a light glaze of the VMA Gold.  This was very nice but with the blue around it the gold was definitely looking green.  For the skull on the leather tassel I pre-shaded with Indian Yellow/Orange and then glazed with VMC Gold XX.  This gave a much more orange tint to the gold that seems to work better.  So I will probably redo the chest eagle.  Once I’m happy with that I will then work out the armour trim.  I think using a few shades of gold on various bits of the trim could be really add some pop to the figure.