Mutated Kim Jong-un Bust...

Or at the very least a Bloater from the video game Last of Us!

I saw this on Facebook in December, and also saw that there was a pre-order for it from the artist, John Schuster in the USA. I thought it looked interesting and not your everyday bust that people paint up. And figured why the heck not right!

Of course I had no idea what a Bloater was, or anything to do with that game, but it was still pretty cool to paint up.

I have to state up front though that the casting was pretty poor. I had to do much more than normal amounts of clean up including removing resin bubbles, excess resin blobs, removing what could be seen as a tear in the molds where the resin built up ( or paint them into the skin like they are warts or something ). And the mold line along the back of the head was pretty severe that I could only shave it down so far before it began to take away some of the details.

Oh and the sides and back sections are really rough. I really should have spent more time with a sander on it, but the resin cloud that was growing from cleaning was already quite large.

So although I went forward with mass painting speed on it ( cause I was still super interested in the design ) I didn't go as far with it as I might have due to the cast unfortunately.

My idea for it as soon as I saw it though was that the leaves were lettuce or cabbage leaves. And that he had a massive growth happening that was taking him over ( this was before I knew it was an actual enemy in a video game ) and turned him into a vegatable zombie! And that is why I went with the green leafy bits, and the paler purplish tones for the skin. Something more dead like..

I think my plan for it came out well enough, more so considering that I painted it over a couple of hours last week or so..

There were 2 main things I wanted to test while painting this piece up though, and that was firstly the varnishes to create different textures.

Such as on the skin I kept it matte and flat, whereas on the leaves I made it a bit more shiny, and wet looking. And for the mouth and inner sections of the leaves I made it high gloss to give a really big shine. Not sure if it turned out completely like I would have liked, but for the tests it worked nice enough.

The other big thing that I wanted to test out with the saliva or drool sections on the bust. I have seen this done a lot with other pieces, and Massive Voodoo has a great tutorial on it on their blog.

This was something that I have always wanted to give a try to, and had all the components at home already, but just never found the right moment to give it a shot! So with not much to lose here, I figured now is as good of a time as any!

I liked how it worked out, and now looking at the photos, it pooled a bit with the still water below his bottom teeth to give an interesting effect. Dunno if I could ever replicate it, but it was cool all the same here.

In the end, it was a cheaper bust to purchase and obtain. Something that I would recommend to others if you are a fan of the genre, or like strange and weird busts like this one. And have some time and patience for the clean up of the pieces ( something that I just don't have these days apparently! ).

The bust is up for voting on Putty&Paint, and surprisingly is doing fairly well! I think it is more friends giving friendly votes more so than anything else.. as some of my closer painter buddies are looking at it and going WTF?!?!?! Or saying that I could do better. Which maybe I could, if motivation rears it's ugly head once more :)

Hope you enjoyed it, and now back to something like a Dwarf or perhaps Portal paint off madness!