Saturday, November 09, 2013

Miss Terious

I finally called it quits on Miss Terious. I suppose one of the reasons that I was so unwilling to call it done was due to it being a limited edition sculpt and I would be unlikely to ever get my hands on another one. Or, more likely, that I just didn't feel like it matched up in quality to the other Death Marshals that I'd painted before. In either case, she's done and I'm happy with the work as it stands.

What went well:
* This is one of the better plastic sculpts I've worked with. Not perfect, but still quite good. There were a number of mold lines that I didn't discover until after starting painting, but I was able to disguise them pretty easily.
* Spending extra time, setting it aside, and generally being just a bit more patient really helped this model turn out better.
* Despite the sculpted detail not being as good as for the metal versions, the coffin worked out pretty well. I had to paint in additional wood grain to really make it come alive more, but it was worth the effort.
* Keeping the palette relatively simple, but using deeper variations of color within each surface really helped keep the piece fairly tight from an overall composition point of view.
* Being frustrated, ironically, helped rekindle my joy. As mentioned in another post, I think this model in particular (coupled with the post I read) really got me excited to find my joy and start challenging myself more again.
* Getting feedback from my friends (Mike, Lance and Henry) was really useful in keeping me going. Thanks guys!

What could have been better:
* I hate painting NMM. I honestly could have done way better at it, but just hate painting in that style.
* More time on the leathers and skin would have paid off eventually, but I was just getting stuck. I feel like I got them to an ok point but the skin especially could have used far more work to really make it smooth and realistic.
* Always comparing it to my original Death Marshals kept me constantly "looking in the rearview mirror". I think this psychologically was destructive for me.
* And finally, the scale of this model is noticeably smaller (or perhaps just thinner) than I've been used to working with and it threw me off a bit.

So that about wraps that up. I'm happy to have her done and I'm looking forward to fielding all 4 Death Marshals at once to see how they both perform and look not he battlefield.

No comments: