Drake McBain

There comes a point at which working more on a particular model becomes an exercise in self torture. McBain here had definitely reached that point for me. I'm quite happy with what I've ended up with (even if the photos are sub-par). I spent a lot of time working on him, and re-working... and re-working some more. The end result is a model that I'm pretty happy with and plan to enter in the KublaCon painting competition. This post is going to end up as a mash-up of a gallery posting and an RtC post all together. So, in that spirit, I'm going to settle in with a beverage to write out the rest of this post and I suggest you find your favorite beverage if you plan to read the whole thing.

The final tweaks that I made to this model were pretty straightforward. I cleaned up the undersides of surfaces that I had previously missed. I added static grass and the razor wire (both from Army Painter). The razor wire got a number of wash treatments to make it look older. I also did some additional cleanup on the metals. I'm still not 100% happy with them, but more on that later.

As a competition piece, I think it's ok. I was comparing it to last year's entry (the WarHog) and have to say I'm satisfied enough. I feel like this model is slightly above the WarHog, but not necessarily award worthy. The one thing I am happy about is how the overall scheme comes together. It's sort of a slightly-narrowed triadic scheme of green/blue/red-orange. As I continue to refine my own painting style, doing higher-end paint jobs like this start to really bring out my personal preferences and characteristics. One such characteristic is that when I build up base coats, I tend to use thinner coats and a wider variety of hues. This creates much more variation in the color, and I personally like that complexity. On the downside, that technique can easily create challenges when trying to shade, and I need more refinement on making that process better.

Do I think this is going to earn me an award at Kubla? Honestly I doubt it. However I'm not really feeling like more time is going to take it to the next level. There's a point at which I have to acknowledge that further painting is likely to make things worse by obscuring detail, ruining good points, and just getting frustrating. So I'm calling it good and moving on to a second entry for the competition.

What went well:
* Basing - Really happy with this. Spending the time to make my own spent casings and paint cross-hatching on the sandbags to create that bit more of realism was worth the time.
* Feedback - Getting lots of feedback, and over multiple iterations, was very helpful. Particularly for helping me course correct as I went along.
* Triadic scheme - The color scheme works pretty well overall I think. I used a little blue in shading the green armor. I used some purple to shade the flesh. Overall I tried to get some blue into most everything, and I felt it helped tie the whole thing together.
* Face - Honestly, I don't think I've painted such a good face ever before. Totally happy with the results for my current skill level.

What could have been better:
* Metals - Just kinda frustrated with these. I can see why some people prefer NMM. It's just easier to force the lighting effects that way. Still though, I'm a true real-metal fan at heart, so I'll keep doing my thing and trying to get better.
* Arms - The flesh of his arms could definitely been a little smoother.
* Sealing - Ok seriously, he's a bit too glossy. But I'm not taking any chances to hit him with an additional coat of dullcoat.

And that wraps up McBain, my first Kubla entry, and my last outstanding unpainted merc! Whew! Time to refill my drink and start looking at my next project.