Hey Jungle People and Voodoo People,

this week's tutorial voting was close in bringing us the garbage tutorial once again, but just close and it was not enough. The winner with 29 votes out of 50 was the Abalam Step by Step. Next time garbage maybe to really, really get rid of it? We'll see :D



Oh my god now we bring you HELL!!

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Allright, Roman will take over with the article now.
We hope you enjoy!


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FOREWORD
Allright, you all might have seen my uncommon version of this bust and you will see it again now. The following article will give an insight into my thoughts of painting this bust by Hera Models.


Well I can not explain to you why I came up with this idea. I was unpacking the model for the MV's Miniatures Unpacked, put the bust on a plinth and decided to dive right into my vision. No thoughts about maybe or so, just right into a hell of a paintjob without having a proper idea what I am doing there.

THE PAINTWORK
I primed the model white, no idea why as the next step was spraying a little bit of red/magenta from below, followed by black from above to catch the initial idea. Now all looked like this - you can see pretty good what I did there on the plinth, mostly all white primer was gone:

 
I put him back in the cabinet for this day as I was a little unsure if the my decision to start like this was right. While in the cabinet I took a lighter and put it front of him to understand my vision better. I loved how that looked and took a photo of it:



When home again I took the inspirational photos and printed them for next days work. For me it did not matter if they were blurry or not.

Back at my table it looked like this and while looking at my inspirational prints I saw how far I still got to go with the bust itself. A little magenta and black won't do. As you can see I also printed a black and white version of this to understand the situation of contrast from dark to bright much better:


Ok, these days I am always suggesting to my students: Look at your model close, if you see something that you do not like in the actual situation, think about what it is, find it, name it, change it. I was in need of more reds, magentas, oranges and power of color to see my vision take shape.

I went in with Magenta once again, but put a dark magenta red to it too. Using just the Aero Color would not do it for me as it is rather thin and I wanted to have my powerful reds opaque in the end.
On the tissue you can see what I sprayed via Airbrush:


Some use their Airbrush for detail work on Miniatures, I lovely call mine my color catapult - Harder & Steenbeck would hunt me with forks for this, but I am fast I can promise:

Well, I told you I needed more reds. I slowly added more red and more red to my mix and stopped on the mix of the upper right - photo follows soon:

I also went for the metals. In my vision I had darkness and cold colors hitting the model from the top in good contrast to the lower fire area. I used black metal by Scale75, added a big amount of Dark Sea Blue VMC to it and some black to make my start really, really dark and not to shiny:


While painting the metal parts I slowly went brighter and more shiny by adding more black metal to the mix:

I did not really blend the metal parts, I rather stibbled it with care and joy and I massaged my metal pigments into the surface. Sounds weird, but works. Push it were you want it. Let it dry, go again, make it stronger, more and more. Massage.

I was aiming to have a good look on the metal parts from the right angle. Done:

With the technique of stibbling with a weird brush tip I enjoy recieving weird patterns and texture in my metal:

I told you from the right angle, that means if I would look into the bust from below where I only want to have reds so far I should not see metal color. Test:

Cool, eh?
Ok, I wanted to give his face and body more color. From, below with adding a gentle drop of orange to my reds to intensify the glowing areas. From the top with adding a cold grey, which means a drop of grey and a drop of blue to black. Slowly highlighting it.

I also kept some areas really black to see were shadows might fall if light comes from below. I still would call this a sketch, even my good friend Alfonso Giraldes said in this stage it is done. I know what he meant: it already works and that is most important, now it was just about spending more time on it to push the vision far.


More orange to the mix of reds, more detail work going on. Focusing on stronger light surfaces, edge highlights that would be hit by the light from hell from below. Using glazes of black to bring back shadow contrast once again.


Always checking back with my inspirational prints and my table neighbour, Raffa across.

More orange, adding Dayglow pigments to my mix to recieve more power. MOAR POWA! This is the rythm of my life. Increasing brightness in the areas I prepared before by pushing stronger, but smaller. No addition of whites here, that would kill it all. I go only with powerful color.


Finding more and more volumes, scratches and edges that would be hit by light from below. Once you dig in you find more and more spots you have missed thus far. Pushing! Pushing! Painting Joy!

For the final steps I even worked with pure dayglow pigments and VMC Flou colors, orange and red. Just color to make it as powerful as it turned out in the end.


Cold from the top, warm, nah ok, hot from below. 




In fact my vision worked really well on this bust. I was really happy. This is how it looked in my hand, a quick photo in front of my desk at home:


AFTERMATH
Well, what really helped me through the process was my inspirational print. I was able to check back with areas that will stay in shadow and to see which areas will hit by most of the hot light.#

I do not think painting something up like this is a truely hard thing to achieve. It was just never done so far by anyone in miniature painting. I can recommend that you train your visuals and your eyes and your brain in understanding how to paint a light source first to different shaped volumes. I recommend zenithal light for this. If you are so far that you do not have to think about this anymore you can change the angle of light influance on your project and do crazy, uncommon stuff.

I am looking forward to show you the model on different shows I might attend this year (Duke of Bavaria, Nova Open, maybe Scale Model Challenge and Monte San Savino). The bust is already sold to a private collector and I want to thank this person for his support in my passion, work and art. We both agreed on terms that I am able to bring the models to shows and sent it to him after Monte. My gratitude is yours, Sir!

I hope you enjoyed the article.
Stay focused and paint like hell is following you!

Keep on happy painting!
Best Wishes
Roman

PS: Do not fear new things or you will stand still.