Step by Step: Jessica, the Zombiegirl

Good Morning Voodoo Jungle Painters,
ladies and gentleman, welcome to another article brought to you by Massive Voodoo's year of the painter. Today we put a finger on article #46 since this initiative started and MV is proud to present to you the winner of last weeks tutorial voting: Jessica, the Zombie Girl.

Beautiful Jessica, was painted by Roman in the middle of September.
The company who produces this bust is Darkworld Creations.

Okeylidokely, let's hear what Roman got to say ... we hope you enjoy!

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Halloween approaches and you voted just the right article in place for this week: A Zombie girl.

As you know I do like painting Zombies. Gaming Models by Zombicide or fancy conversions of female busts with real mice bones.

Encore it is time for another one, called Jessica and now let's see how I painted her, shall we?

1. Preparation of the model was pretty easy. She arrives in two parts: Full upper body and a piece of hair for her ponytail. (That I thought lost for the main time I worked on that model.)
A little cuts with the blades and some sandpaper work and that resin lady is ready to go under the brush. Want to know more? - Article about how to prepare resin models.

2. Priming the Model with black GW Primer only. Followed by colour, purple from Scale75 Inktensity, thinned with water to not have it that strong on top of it. On top of her means mainly from above, not in the shadows, that is very important. The black primer should still be visible in the shadows. Sadly I do not have a photo of this step.

3. Now I wanted to test something new. Airbrush colours from Mr. Paint. At Massive Voodoo we heard miracles being said about these fine colours for the airbrush gun. So we decided to give it a try with white before digging deeper in these colours. *(Please find more information on these colours below the article.)

Well, I liked the result. Indeed the white comes out of the airbrush like I never seen before. It is ultrafine and you have super-control of your intensity, if you clean your airbrush regularly.

What I found very interesting to watch was in close look on the model it still was visible to be a 3d printed sculpt. I did enjoy the effect on the fabric as I knew it could be put to great use, but did not enjoy the look on the skin thus far, but we are still at the basic work.

Gna, that photo is way to overpowered with the whiteys.

4.  Do you believe me when I tell you that Jessica was a rather quick paintjob? Next step was giving the farbric a basic tone, but already playing a shadow and light, thinking about the zenithal light theory. Just a simple sketch, done with the brush.

Also used a rather rough sketch on the hair, having some blueish black as a basetone, roughly highlighted with just adding a little white to it.

Eyes have been painted with Ivory too to prepare further work on them.

The skin recieved some more attention. I was taking the brush and some purple and grey glazes to work mainly around her face. Increasing contrast from bright to dark in it. After this I used VMC Ivory and started to work on her full body to increase the lights. I mean the airbrush work here really gave me a great start from the shadow and light aspects, but airbrush work never brings you in close with the details on the model. You won't be able to increase the contrast on small wrinkles or other delicate facial issues.

Using very water thinned tourqouise via the airbrush to spray it on top of the whites to cool them a little bit more and give them a colour temperature.

5. I used only Ivory here to work on the highlights. Right, you read it right. Only one colour. Important when working out the highlights is that you apply the tone in many layers to intense their power. I did so again and again. You can see that pretty well on the following close up. I took some more time with it to bring in little scratches and details by using the sculpts volumes and put them into zenithal light.

I started to work on the details. The teeth recieved a basic tone with Ivory, but not applied too strong, less layers than the skin. I used a purple reddish was to place it on top of the open wound on her neck and throat.

Cleaned up the eyes with a dark line around them, used VMC German Yellow for her Iris, used the same red that was used for the neck to paint a thin line around her Iris and placed a tiny black dot inside it to be recognized as the pupil. I wanted to keep that one rather small as my intention was to make her eyes look very alien compared to a living human. Some virus took on her. A final white dot was placed inside the black to show the light reflection.

The fabric recieved first edge highlights and a little stronger lights on the sketch I already did.

6. Next I did the same again with the blue and sprayed a thin layer on top of everything to get her into the cold athmosphere. This also helps me to soften the overall look of my lights, but on the other hand I lose some of their intensity. Taking the brush again to rework the white again. I also went into some details on the torn open flesh on her neck and throat and worked on some edge highlights here.

Using different tones of red on the wound before adding a big amount of gloss varnish to it. Using the read insinde her mouth and painted the teeth again. Using the some reds around her eyes too to give her a more dramatic virus infected look.

I used some more Ivory and mixed it into the last light I used on the fabrics, worked my way further into the light situation of the fabric. Used Ivory too to do a little freehand work on the shirt. A true nerdy one.

With the red glazes I used early I intensed areas on her ribcage first, before applying a fine structure with gentle dots there and at her shoulder. Even more virus infected now.

The hair recieved some more attention in cleaning up with a brighter grey/white to make it more readable for the viewers eye.

7. Next step was dirt. I wanted her a little dirty, with mud and such and I wanted to test something new again: Oil Brown and Mud Brown by Modelmates. I wanted to know how it dries before I apply it to my model and so I did some tests on paper.

I really enjoyed how it turned out in my tests and without further hesitation threw it to the model, but keep in mind: less is more sometimes. Throw it carefully ;)

Also used a little bit of blood here and there. I mean she surely is a little messy as the virus took control of her. In this particular photo you can see how the 3d print texture was used to work as real texture on the farbric. Due the stronger applyment of colour on the skin I was able to hide that away a little bit more.

8. I really liked how she turned out in the end but I am definatly not satisfied on how different she appears on the photos in this article. This ain't no good for explanation. Well, she is pretty bright compared to my usual paintworks and that is why it was hard to get decent photos during the progress on my workbench with strong lights.

Following you can see a photo of her in my cabinet with other models around. You can see how bright and rather small this bust is.


9. In total from start to finish Jessica took me about 10-12 hours I'd say, which made me really happy to see her turn out that nice. Honestly, she was a test model for mainly the new airbrush white I wanted to use and as soon as I have seen that sculpt I knew that I wanted to paint her up. Sometimes when you feel this urge just follow it. The model will paints itself.

You can find more photos of Jessica via Putty & Paint.

I hope you enjoyed the explanation through my progress on this bust.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
Happy Halloween to you!
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*Mr. Paint Colours: As mentioned we are doing some testing at the moment with these airbrush colours. They are mainly used in plane scale modelling and not well known to miniature painters thus far. Maybe this changes in the future as we did not yet encounted another airbrush colour that works that fine in your airbrush. We'll see in the future. If you are interested in starting your own tests you can get them at Uschi van der Rosten.