Nemo - Scuba Diver

A great little piece that I picked up while at Salute that I have had the fun of painting up the last few days. Mostly as a side piece to just work on to loosen up prior to going to the Massive Voodoo HQ for some private painting practice.

So with this piece I tried a few new techniques, and a few recently practiced techniques.

This is what it looks like out of the blister. Single piece model for the most part, and the accessories on a sprue. As you can see there is a bit of flash there... obviously some clean up was required here.

Once cleaned up ( mostly ) you can see what the piece looks like assembled.

I tried to do as much as I could with the airbrush for skin tones. But only so much as I could say that the base levels were laid down. As I was wanting to try some new styles in wet on wet while using Vallejo's Retarder Medium. Which I read in this month's Figure Painter Magazine #12 of a reborn painter who tried it for helping him with the wet on wet painting styles.

So after a bit of setting up the metals I went to town on the contrast painting on this bad boy! Though the photos are a bit all over the place at this point.

Here I began to work on the skin sections trying to go to white, and almost black in the extremes. The metals are done in the new Scale75 Metallic range. Leather sections are done with their leather range. Not the best, but getting there with many inks and washes.

From here it was the fun parts though... RUST and weathering on the metallics!

I have been posting these photos on my FB page previously though, and some comments came out that I should make the octopus orange to contrast to the metallic colors, but once the rust came into play.. I think the shiny dark blue/green model really began to show up better.

The verdigris is just GW's version from their new special effects range. It came out better than I anticipated here though in the end.

The only thing with this model that I figured it needed was a lens on the helmet. I mean, really.. why have an oxygen tank but with an open helmet frame... so silly if you ask me!

I wanted to try to achieve a lens like effects, and thought that the Vallejo Still Water effects would be the trick. So I applied some within the face section.. and waited.. and waited...

As you can see.. not the best results.. but that is the purpose of living and learning though right? At least I can see the effect, and know that this process is one that needs more investigation.

Some final photos in the light tent.. not sure I am liking them as much as the other WIP shots I took off the cuff... but will let you all decide on your own then :)

Only thing left now is to build him a base... something sandy maybe.. with some water effects... who knows.. or maybe a rocky cliff with crashing waves? Or a dock? Or the side of a ship?.... Damn so many ideas now.... oh well.. enjoy the model as I travel to Germany and get some feedback on this and other pieces from Roman and Raffa, while working on my class piece.

Enjoy and expect many photos and articles forth coming over the coming week+...