time for another long overdue step by step article.
It's been a while when I painted the Monkey King by Limbo Miniatures.
I really love the model and felt honoured to paint a comission for the owner of Limbo Miniatures. He told me he wants a true Roman, just do what you like in your style.
Important for me when painting this cool sculpt up ...
... was to know much about his story.
Sun Wukong. The Monkeyking.
From the chinese tales of "Journey to the West"
As he is able to travel between worlds and has immense powers, like being faster than a comet or his enormous strength I wanted to put him in a magical setup with creating a different type of base. I was influanced by this book and this video to find my inspiration.
In my vision I saw floating parts of earth, like isles, but in my vision all is damaged after a great war and the monkey king landed on parts of it like BOOOOM!
But how to create floating parts?
Well, my students from my beginner workshops might know as I am always showing this trick there since a decade, but here it is for the readers of MV. Put superglue on a plastic surface that you can bend. If you are not strong enough use thinner plastic. Place soil on top of a big pool of superglue...
You can add more superglue and more soil as you see fit ...
let it dry or dry it faster with accelerator:
Attention: Use only dry soil. No water should be left in it or it will create an unhealthy smoke when it reacts with the glue. If that smoke appears, put it outside and do not breahte it. Wait unitl its gone.
I used a way to big metal rod pin for my monkey king base, but on purpose ... wait for it!
When my earth parts where dry I bend the thick plastic with enormous muscle powers to get them off the plastic ...
See, all gone, just little remains ...
Due the flat surface the plastic provides I now have floating earth parts ...
... that look very natural from the other side ...
I did some more for this base.
I do enjoy my soil box with tons of stones and such in it, perfect to keep it random.
Using common earth instead of sand creates a more realistic effect.
I also used some dry BeesPutty parts that I ripped apart to create big stones ...
They shall form the lower ground of my base.
Floating earth parts, ready to be used ...
Again, the beautiful monkey king waiting for his base ...
I like the random shapes that dry Beesputty creates when you rip it with pure strength ...
Let's glue all my prepared stuff together ...
Like a throne of Kaboom!
Basing Composition Introduction
A guide that takes your bases to a higher level.
But I put the monkey king aside to paint him away from the base. Primed him black and white.
I wanted to keep the base magical and strange ... I was playing around with a lot of water and white paint that I just let flow into the water ...
I imagined this magic stuff dropping out of the magical komet thingy ...
In the meantime cleaning up my vision of my basic color sketch of the monkey king. Makes him much more readable ...
He is really strong ...
Was working on details back and forth of highlights and shadows to create more contrast in all materials...
While I was thinking what I was missing I played around with other stuff ...
I was thinking to make the fluid that runs down the base in a glowing color, but somehow that thought bored me. I wanted to use it white, different than usual. Of course I could have added an OSL liquid fluid river of something, but my guts told me: no. So I did not. I worked out final touches to bring base and model together and was happy with my final vision of the Monkey King ...
Hope you enjoyed the insight into this project I did paint back in 2017. With a very unique base I know :)
Keep on happy painting!
Roman
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That is a fabulous piece of art, fabulous construction and brushwork!
Cheers
Matt
Thanks!