Verlinden 1/5 Gladiator Bust

[Guest]

Morning Steve

Working on the skin tones today, though I've had to strip it down twice as the paint keeps lifting. Nothing for it but to put a sealed primer coat on and start again.

Good that you're driving again and able to yourself and Anna about - public transport can be challenging.

[Steve Brodie]

looking very good

[Guest]

Cheers Mr Brodie.

The torso is now done:



This was completely horrendous. I first had a problem with the paint lifting, so I had to resort to giving it a priming coat of flat flesh then a layer of matt varnish. I also realised that, as I'd made the facial tones quite light, I would have to paint the torso to match, or at least put some very light highlights around the shoulders, which was going to be quite difficult.

Problems fixed, it was then on to attempting to blend the flesh tones over wide areas, and I had real trouble. It wasn't until I resorted to one of my daughter's make-up brushes, which had flat and soft bristles, that the paint started to go on reasonably well. As you can see, there was not much muscle definition to the sculpt, so it was hard to do any exciting shading - I did try to shade under the left pectoral more, but it looked too much like a pancaked breast so I had to flatten it out somewhat.

Finally, I decided to tone down some of the white highlights on the face to get some consistency on the thing overall.

[Dave Ward]

Peter,
I assume that the difficulties are due to the large size?
Dave

[Guest]

Yes Dave. There are such large areas to try and blend the tones over, and because it is large, bad painting shows up more. It's also pretty heavy, so the left hand starts to ache after a while. I think this will be my last 1/5 for some time.

[SteveH]

Morning Peter

Looks just as you said, very little definition!

With the right arm raised in a Roman salute, unless he was Arnold he really wouldn't have much pectoral definition!
I believe the gladiators were vegan and ate mostly spelt porridge, that was the history channel and HBO's Blood and Sand series.

Yet another wild night up't North, with wheelie bins escaping down the driveway and across the road.

I then spent the early morning trying to get back to sleep, but gave up eventually!

Been watching Good Omens, very cheeky and disrespectful, so Pratchett.

Have a good day with the arm and sword, lots more metal painting

Regards

Steve H

[adt70hk]

Peter

Loving what you've done so far. The helmet of particular has come out really well and thanks for the tip about applying vallejo metals over a black primer.

How big is the actual bust? 1/5 strikes me as very large.

ATB

Andrew

[Guest]

You are doing great work Peter :smiling3:.

[Strenko J]

Like the others have said, that helmet metallic painting is great..not sure why you were so nervous about it..your skills are superb

[Guest]

Hi Steve

The lack of definition on the torso kept me awake at night trying to think of a solution. Came up with something, (see below).

[Guest]

Andrew - Many thanks. Here he is with a 1/35 figure:

[ATTACH alt="100_6354.JPG"]371713[/ATTACH]

Pretty big, as you can see.

Ralph - Glad you approve. This one's tough going.

Joe - Thanks also. It was the size of the thing that worried me.


So, I had a think about what to do with the bland torso and thought Celtic body painting:

[ATTACH alt="100_6349.JPG"]371720[/ATTACH][ATTACH alt="100_6355.JPG"]371719[/ATTACH]

Very hard to photograph clearly, so apologies.

I took the designs from some research done by some re-enactors, and have tried to make it look like it's been painted in woade. Patterns are definitely not my forte, and I found this immensely difficult to do - several times I reached the point where the bin looked like the only viable option. At one point the pattern went wrong on the right shoulder, so I had to strip the whole thing back and sand it down, trying not to damage the rest of the paintwork. I'm not at all happy with it, but I'll leave it now and come back to it with a fresh eye tomorrow.

[Guest]

OK then, some initial photos:

[ATTACH alt="100_6358.JPG"]371847[/ATTACH][ATTACH alt="100_6359.JPG"]371848[/ATTACH][ATTACH alt="100_6360.JPG"]371849[/ATTACH][ATTACH alt="100_6361.JPG"]371852[/ATTACH]

Thankfully, this looks a lot better in the photos than in real life. I'm still not sure about the body painting, but I'll try to live with it for a while before deciding whether to re-paint it or not.

With the visor:

[ATTACH alt="100_6364.JPG"]371854[/ATTACH]

The damned thing doesn't fit! Good job there was the open face option.

[Guest]

Great painting Peter :smiling3:.

[Richard48]

Excellent Peter.Love the metal and tats.Superb my friend.
Rich.

[Tim Marlow]

Great job on this Peter, looks spot on. Love the woad skin drawings....I chickened out of doing that on my little Gauls.....