As predicted, the cyborg I was working on is basically done. I intend to add some extra markings – squad and rank designations, that sort of thing – but those can wait until I’ve actually thought of some, otherwise they’ll just end up looking silly or out of character. I might have to look up the sorts of things used in Aliens, Starship Troopers, etc.
The skull/helmet may also need some extra work. The shading has all but disappeared in these pics, but they’ve also smoothed out what is present. I originally shaded with a mix of light grey and turquoise, add dark grey for the deeper shadows. This was a little grainy, though, which made the blend pretty rough. I balanced that out with glazes of a mix of green and purple inks, which is a colour I came across many years ago when reading Jakob Nielsen’s site (which is still up, even if he hasn’t updated for some time). The result of mixing the two inks is a sort of grey ink, which I’d always thought was neat, but had never found an application for. Its advantage here was being able to tint it towards green, which works well with the other greens on the model.
Long story short, I think I’ll crack out more of that to strengthen the shading.
I’ve also started up my next piece, which is the Roman Signifer mini-bust from Pegaso:
It’s quite the engineering project, being composed of nine parts despite also only being 1/20 scale. This also means that there are some parts that will be quite inaccessible once assembled, so I’m making sure I do those (and the parts nearby) before putting the lion’s pelt on.
It’s also a ridiculously heavy piece. I can only assume that Pegaso still uses white metal because it sells more than most manufacturers and white metal molds last longer than resin molds.
Anyway, obviously still quite a long way to go on this guy. Starting with having another go at his face. I should probably take the plates off the side of his face this time – they were pretty annoying to work around.
Fet Paints 