Surt, Scale 75, Finished

Well, I ended up having a fair amount of time over the last few days, thanks to a big New Years Eve party, and my partner spending most of the day after relaxing around the house.  I was not really planning on powering through Surt, I wanted to take my time and try to do a good job.  But I just found everything working exactly as I wanted it to, and my brush control and layering really just being on point for no good reason at all, just practice I guess.

So the last update showed off a base I made, planned for Surt himself.  I ended up deciding against using it, for a few reasons. I think the base is really good and will make for a quality product when I use it, I just think the detail in it would have detracted from the model itself.  I like the subtle bases and when I get my plinths from Dark Messiah hopefully soon, I am still considering just adding some really subtle touches to the base, like some seaweed or whatever to tie it together.

First, here is a fun little step by step that shows how the face evolved!

Anyway, back to painting. I just really found everything I tried worked a treat.  The tricky stuff was mostly done though, it was just going onto the metallics and making sure they all worked.  They were the intricate and difficult stage of the model, and I probably spent as much time on them as I did the entire rest of the model!  I also tweaked the grey hair a little, adding a few more strands to soften the effect of it.

Just worked up from Royal Purple for the gold areas, and Dark Sea Blue for the metallic areas.  I decided to add a bone coloured element as well, as all metallic I felt like might not quite work as well.  I wanted something matt to break up the surface area.

I reached this stage and was really really happy with the mode, but I felt like it was just a little bit lacking on his torso.  It wasn't that it wasn't nicely blended or had enough contrast, just that was a large surface and I thought it needed breaking up.

My beautiful fiance suggested barnacles which opened up a whole swathe of ideas, including seaweed, rust stains, and algae.  In the end, I didn't trust my sculpting skills enough to go for barnacles, so I opted for stuff I could do a little easier.

I mixed Matt Varnish, Inktense Chestnut and Inktense Green, fine flock, bicarb soda and a splash of water/pva into a mixture that I applied to lower torso areas of the model.  Once it dried, I put some Gloss varnish on there to make it look  a little wet.

The seaweed was done with thin strands of grass, from Secret Weapon I think, which I pulled a few strands through some pva, then twisted a little so they would look a little more natural. I then let them dry, attached with superglue, and then painted a bit of the algae mixture over them.

The rust stains were done with a pigment, and also with some of the GW Rust effect and Inktense Chestnut again, which finished him up:

You can find more pictures of the finished guy here: http://www.puttyandpaint.com/projects/11471

Overall, for a model I painted in a few days, it has just come together so well.  Fantastic sculpt and the detail of the model is just incredible, a real joy to paint.  I am super inspired now to paint more, that has reenergised me for painting (as has my New Years painting resolutions, which I'll detail in the next blog post).  I will definitely enter this guy into Crystal Dragon, taking my tally up to six entries (with probably like three or four more I could chuck in that are done, but not as good as I'd like) and three weeks away, leaving me time for probably two more entries, or one big one.


Thanks for following the blog and the comments!  Remember if you want to buy any of the models I paint, most are up for sale on my Models For Sale page.

Cheers
Trent