January 2023 Round-up
The mornings are gradually getting brighter, the nights are a wee bit shorter, and here we are, already into February.
January ended up being a much less productive month painting-wise than I had originally hoped, largely because I ended up being busy with other stuff. I was able to get to the monthly Marvel Crisis Protocol meet at Common Ground Games in Stirling which I really enjoyed. I do want to make more of an effort to get to events this coming year and that was a good start. (I managed a respectable 2 wins and 2 losses, too, which wasn’t bad at all.) But on to the painting.
Ultron.
I still have a few bits and pieces to tie up from last year that are nagging at the back of my mind, but I was pleased to at least get Ultron for Marvel Crisis Protocol finished. Looking back over my social media when I was writing up the posts about him I was surprised to see that I started him back in February 2022.
This model was humbling reminder to practice what I preach; namely, that finished is better than perfect. I was trying out a different approach to doing metallics with him and I’m still not overly keen on the result, but I forced myself to finish the model. It’s very easy to get caught up with everything being perfect in miniature painting and it’s actually quite counter-productive. At best being a perfectionist means you’ll never be happy with anything you paint, and at worst you’ll never actually get anything done.
Finished is better than perfect.
The process I used for painting Ultron was actually similar to how I painted Ghost Rider’s bike. I airbrushed a chrome acrylic paint called Tin Star from Turbo Dork onto the model and painted in shadows, highlights and contours using thinned down metallics and inks. I’ve seen quite a few painters use similar approaches to true metallic metals and it works great – I think it’s just a process that doesn’t really agree with me. But I’ve at least tried it. I might give it ago again in the future because the metals for Ghost Rider turned out rather nicely.
Truthfully, I found Ultron quite a chore to paint in general. Really, he’s a big hunk of metal with some orange-red lights on him which doesn’t make for a particularly interesting thing to paint. He’s shown in some of the comics artwork wearing a cloak or with cables attached to (or coming out of) him, and in hindsight I think I perhaps should have converted him a bit to add a level of interest to the model. But he’s not a character I’m particularly excited about and I was determined to get all the Core Set models finished.
Once I finished his base – which I painted in my usual Crisis Protocol city base style with a bit more time and attention – I felt a lot better about how he was looking. Sometimes introducing a bit more contrast to a piece is what’s needed to get a better idea of how all the previous work looks together, which further feeds into the “finished is better than perfect” philosophy. I’ve often had those unexpected “eureka!” moments with a model that I thought I had finished, but when I’m able to see everything come together I can make small, incremental steps towards improvement. That’s something that happened with Venom but with Ultron I was just glad to have him done. Sometimes it's better to just chalk a model up to a few lessons learned and move onto the next thing than it is to spend a long time trying to tweak and improve.
Valkyire.
Valkyrie was the first model I painted entirely in 2023. I bought the Thor and Valkyrie character pack not long after I was gifted the Core Set for my birthday in 2021 so she’s been sat on the shelf built and primed for a while. My wife has been enjoying playing Marvel Crisis Protocol and wants to play as the Asgard affiliation so Thor and friends are very much a current project for me.
With the benefit of hindsight I think I might have been better painting her in sub-assemblies – or at least not fixing her to her base right away – since I found some parts of the model a bit tricky to access during the process. Whilst doing this write-up I actually noticed a couple of bits that I missed, so that in itself is perhaps testament to the need for sub-assemblies.
Given that she is one of the older models in the range I think she still looks great – the face is one of the better female sculpts in the range. She also compliments Thor brilliantly, holding her swords aloft with her cape billowing out behind her, and she’s got a lot of different textures that keep her busy without her looking overcrowded.
I’ve seen quite a few people paint her in the style of Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie from the MCU but I decided to base her on the OG Valkyrie from the comics, which is the character the Crisis Protocol model is based on (there have been a few superheroes that have used the name over the years). I didn’t change much from the colour scheme as it is in the comics; I added some gold edging to her cloak and gave her gold/bronze bracers to make her look a bit more resplendent, and I also painted some blue gemstones onto her swords. Small touches with slightly stronger echoes of the divine.
Overall, I’m very happy with how she turned out and she’s got me interested in painting more Asgard models. I’ve always really liked the aesthetic but I’ve been distracted with Web Warriors and the Core Set for quite a while. They’re definitely a great affiliation if you’re a keen painter as they offer a bit of a challenge but look very striking if you can pull them off.
Pyke Syndicate Footsoldier Tester.
I’ve been recently playing quite a bit of Star Wars Legion with some friends and have been quite enjoying it. Whilst my friend has been quite happy to let me use his Galactic Empire, I’ve been enjoying the game enough that I decided to pick up some models of my own. When I discovered that the Shadow Collective army allows you to field Darth Maul alongside Mandalorians I knew very well what my faction of choice was going to be.
Whenever I’m painting a group of models as part of a larger project – like an army – I prioritise the models that I’m least looking forward to painting. I know that there’s certain models that I would keeping putting off if I didn’t force myself to work on so they become the first item on the list. Then, I’ll reward myself by painting a model that I’m looking forward to working on, which is usually a fancy character or a creature of some kind.
Some people will do all of the rank-and-file or grunts in a project first and then do the characters and other fun stuff, but I find that approach can also be a bit overwhelming. Unit, character, unit, character, unit, character makes big projects much more digestible since you’re only really thinking about the unit you’re working on and the character immediately after that.
For painting the Pyke itself I decided to stick to the classic Clone Wars colour scheme. I wanted the colour palette to feel very in keeping with the Star Wars aesthetic so I stuck largely to using earth tones. Fortunately, all the paints I opted to use were paints I was quite familiar with.
In many ways the opposite to the Ultron project, the Pyke tester is a prime example of how effective good planning is for successful painting. I find myself almost saying that it was good fortune that my first tester worked but that wouldn’t be accurate. I knew exactly how I wanted him to look, planned it, and it worked. I’ll talk about the Pykes a bit more in my February round-up as I’ve since painted enough to field a full, game-legal unit of them, but I imagine at some point I’ll point out a tutorial of some description as quite a lot of people have asked me how I put them together.
Ant-Man.
Another model that’s sat patiently awaiting the brush on my shelf for a while, I was actually gifted the Ant-Man and the Wasp character pack by a friend for Christmas 2021. Around the same time I had to paint those two characters for a commission and didn’t really want to paint them again back -to-back. Then time ran away from me and here we are.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ve probably seen that the Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania film is releasing soon. I’m really excited to see it and it was after watching one of the more recent trailers that I felt inspired and decided to get Ant-Man (in both of his forms) painted.
I just love the simplicity of these models. The models surfing on top of waves of magic or leaping out of explosions are great and all, but there’s really something to be said for a simple fighting stance or a superhero landing. I didn’t change much from when I painted them the first time – just refined things a bit more. Red and black are two of my favourite colours so I always enjoy painting them.
Lots to say but not so much to show for this month. I’ve got plenty of irons in the fire and lots of ideas I’m keen to bring to life so I won’t be short of things to write about going forward. I’ll have another round-up out in early March covering what I worked on through February and will hopefully have some more thought pieces and tutorials to show you in the future. Until then, happy painting!