More of that Sweet, Sweet Marvel

Not sure if she’s too blue rather than a blue-black. I’ll live with her for awhile and see if I need to make a change.
Her left arm is a bit janky as the tiny piece you need to glue on for her elbow went flying across the room, never to be found, when I was putting her together. Turns out my green stuff ability is pretty limited but…I did what I could and she’s much better with a janky arm than with no arm.

Update: in the end I did some checking and her clothes really are almost always just black. I threw a black wash over them to ramp down the blue and now I’m going to see if I even notice the blue and, if so, whether I like it better to create some variety or if I decide to go back and paint her clothes up from scratch.

I used the following for his skin and for Ebony Maw (all Vallejo):

1. base with 74.013 Forest Skin
2. wash with 74.009 Deep Forest Skin
3. highlight with 74.013 Forest Skin (Left pic)
4. highlight with74.015 Pale Skin (Middle pic)
5. final highlight with 50% 74.015 Pale Skin and 50% 74.016 White Flesh (Right pic)

A decent but not overwhelmingly exciting mini. I’m pleased with his rocket plumes. I wanted a flame/smoke mix so part way through I had to change from the deepest parts being lightest (flame) to the highest parts being lightest (smoke). They’re not perfect and I feel like flame is something I could really stand to work on more but they’re definitely serviceable.

He painted up pretty quickly—well in three hours, which is quick for me—and he may be one of my favorite things I’ve painted. you can also see how the base turned out.

That dry brush technique works really well on stone (see the rock around Thanos throne in the last post) and not quite as well on the flat concrete of thes bases but I’m still perfectly content with it.

On the last batch I tried a lot of different things—dry brushing, washes, more dry brushing. In the end I decided that this time I’d keep it simple and quick and I’m pleased with the results.

I airbrushes the bases with Vallejo Dark Grey 70.994 and then, in ever lighter dry brushes hit all the stone and concrete with Neutral Grey 70.992, Light Grey 70.990, and Deck Tan 70.986 (all Vallejo).

Overall, I think these came out at least as well as my first go round and took a lot less time.

Any of you who watch Adam Savage on the Tested YouTube channel (and you all should as it has much content that is perfect viewing while hobbying) will have seen his “One Day Build” videos, almost all of which infamously took more than a day to film/complete. This is just like that.
Of course, for me completing one mini in two days is fast. 36 was amazing. It was an exercise in compromise—I don’t mean this to be a humble brag but rather an example of what you can do if you are intentional about the corners you cut. I’m sure most of you are well aware of the corners but as this is my first time painting terrain I had to learn.
Some high points for me:

• The “glass” effect on the car and shop windows. I was tempted to spend a bunch of time with the airbrush but I cribbed these streaks off the rules manual pictures and I find it sells it quite nicely.
• The color shift paints worked very well and very quickly on the cars. Make sure to throw a coat of matte varnish on them after the color shift dries if you’re going to do any other painting as the next layer of paint will run all over your beautiful paint job and you’ll be starting over after trying to save it by running it under the tap (did this not once but thrice—I’m a slow learner.
• The weathering on the top of dump truck. This was a complete happy accident as i carelessly got some smears of black there and had to save it. A quick dab with a couple of different colors (brown and orange) with a sponge and I’m quite pleased with the result. That’s now something I’m not quite as intimidated by.

All told, a satisfying experience. Not going to do it most of the time as I love getting lost in the detail work and layers of highlights and washes. However, nice to know I can and really nice to have the terrain ready to go for my second game. (BTW this is much more terrain than comes in the base set. I ordered two of the additional scenery packs by mistake and figured that since they were there…)