Cosplay shield and a few figures

So for the last few months I have had a side project to make a cosplay style shield for the wife with an Elder Scrolls theme.  She worked out the design (slightly organically) that she wanted and I got to make and paint it.

Warbla and craft foam, light areas the wood putty

I used warbla as the base material for this.  Previously for the kids I had made shields out of foam (ie garage floor mats) as they were going to be beat up a bit.  This shield would be handled a bit more gently.  Also I wanted a large project to learn how to use warbla.  There are 2-3 layers of warbla over most of the shield.  The was a main backing layer, a top layer so that the centre could be appear recessed and then a another backing layer as I found just one layer of warbla was too thin and bent a bit in places.  On heating one layer of warbla tends to wrinkle.  I found that with multilayered areas sometimes the warbla would de-laminate.

Gesso coat

Craft foam was then glued on top to form the petal pattern and the stylised hand in the centre of the shield.  Unfortunately I had a seam line (due to the size of the pieces of warbla I had) across the centre of the shield which despite filling with wood putty and sanding still showed through.  I was thinking it would be blended in pretty well but that was not the case.  The petal design was a late change to the design and if I had known about that in advance I would have hidden the seams under the layer of craft foam.  So more planning in advance would have helped like always.

Undercoat

After everything was glued/puttied/sanded I coated everything in three coats of gesso.  The pro builders use spray on plastic-dip and I can see why.  However it is rather expensive.  Following on from the gesso I undercoated everything black.

Done

The red sections were airbrushed on after I masked off (so much masking) the rest of the shield.  I used JS paints for this.  The gold was from the AK wax metallic range and painted on.  Very much like Rub-and-buff but it paints on much easier.  Almost like painting with soft butter.

Following on from the paint I did two clear coats (spray can) before the weathering with oils.  I thin the oils down with white spirit to do basically pin washes along the edges and some highlights.  However despite the clear cost some paint was still lifted by the white spirit.  I think next time I'll just stick with 100% acrylics.  I highlight blended up the red areas (to more plum red) and the black (to light purple/grey).  Totally monotone areas look very odd so variation is needed.  The gold got a raw sienna wash to tone it down slightly.  On the areas that the paint lifted I went back and padded/finger stamped on some black/grey to redo those areas.  I find this blends better than just straight painting.  More of a stipple than painting.  The petals and the hand were repainted in flat black to make them pop a bit.

Again once that was dried out (I left the oils 3-4 days to dry) some more semi-gloss clear coats.

Witch

Eureka samurai

Old school is the best school

Away from the shed I painted up a few old figures.  A witch from Warlord Games (I think), a samurai from Eureka Miniatures and an old Grenadier figure.  Just something to keep the brush going.  Still very much stuck in a rut on painting.  I cast up a new copy of my alien bust I did last year as another thing to paint and experiment on.  Still haven't gotten going on my 54mm knight with maybe a horse added.  This didn't stop me however going to a scale model show and buying some new 1/32 figures.  They were cheap however.  I've always wanted to do some American civil war project so the box of figures from Master Box seemed like a good idea at the time :)

Next knight costume time and some violinist work

I did quite a lot of painting this week, just not on the miniature front.  It’s almost time for book week at school and my son wants to go as Axl from Lego Nexo Knights.  So I was in full cosplay armour manufacture and painting.  All of the armour pieces are made from foam garage mats and painted with either rattle can sprays (for the undercoat and metal colour) or airbrushed with enamel paints with my trusty Paasche model H.  Just need to add the straps and it’s all done.

Axl Shield

Axl armour chest piece

Axe time - wood handle and foam axe head

Leg and arm pieces

For the few hours that I did get to do figure painting I tried a new technique of sketching the light patterns on an area first before doing the neat paint work.  I tried this on the violinist cloak.  The paint sketch took 2-3 minutes and was really fun.  Painting without too much worry about neatness.  I did get a bit too wet and some paint lifted off on the lower cloak.  However I then used this sketch to start the neat work.  I’m also really happy with the colour hue (a mixture of VMC Violet Red and VMC German Cam. Medium Brown) and the tonal range I’ve gotten so far.

Sketch work

Need to keep working on it and clean it up some more.  The front left shoulder I got ok, then messed it up three times before finally getting back to where I wanted.  After all that I realised that most of the area will be covered up by the violin.  This issue is because my base has two colours and all my highlight and shades also have two plus colours so it’s very hard to keep getting the same results on every mix.  Sometimes too purple, sometimes too brown, etc.  But the colour is great.  Have to work out the deep creases as currently I go too dark and the result is much too stark.

Starting the neat work

I’m also surprised on how quickly the coat progressed.  With just the arms and the bag left he is getting towards finished.