Bigfoot: A Weekend Bust

I had gotten behind on things, and the most recent post of the busts really happened a the end of last week. 
So over the weekend I started working on the Bigfoot Bust by John Dennett. It got it's soapy wash and then a looks see about any mould lines. There was one very well hidden along the back of his head and a little on his shoulders. But I figure since I saw it others might (if I take it to a show).  So I got out my sanding pads, my xacto knife, and MicroMark's Scriber.  This little tool is fantastic for digging out the little mold lines that I can see between the tufts of hair. 

A Few New Busts

Lurking around I came across a few smaller sized busts - perfect for a weekend paint up.
The first was from Cadwallon Miniatures. She's named Little Miss Smily (sic). The bust is a little under 3 inches tall as there is no plinth, so you have to get your own. She comes in 5 pieces - the bust itself and then 4 parts that make up her hair. 

Here she is, obviously without any hair just yet. The hair in spots sits a little proud of the skin. So I wanted to get the skin painted and then add on the hair. 

Back to the F5-D

Okay, enough is enough.  I have to get this model off my desk already.  ;)

It was just a fair kit and I need to get it finished.  

The first step was to mask off all the white parts in prep for the "red" paint. I have read" because in all photographs of the jet in front of the Armstrong air and space Museum it is distinctly orange. Going to NASA's own website and looking up the plane, they mention a couple of times, and have images of the plane and it is distinctly red. So I decided to split the difference. Vallejo paint- Scarlet color looks like a happy medium of red and orange (a little to the red side).

MFTW Dracula Finished

Moving right along, I'm calling my Monster from the Woods Dracula finished. It was a fairly easy kit to do. I'm still getting used to doing faces, and facial features. I didn't do any kind of mottling - just a base coat, and two highlights. I also added in wash and pastel shadows. Eyes are always the most difficult for me. But I did learn at this small scale not to try to do the streaks in the iris', just do dots. Unless you're nose to nose it looks the same (to me anyway). 

The stone base was easy, just a base coat and then a few highlights. I also added in a green wash and touched the wash with a little gloss varnish to make it look wet. Like that moldy wet look I sprayed the entire stairs with a light satin varnish.  

Twisty Meets Twisty

Last weekend I attended the Monster Mania Convention in Cherry Hill, NJ. There were quite a few vendors selling all sorts of horror goodies, but I was there to see the stars, well, one in particular.  John Lynch aka Twisty from AHS:F was scheduled to be there with a few of his co-stars. 

The Bride Part 1

I had the Bride kit sitting next to my desk since JerseyFest. It was cleaned and primed and on a whim I decided to throw some paint on it.

Being The Bride was recently dead, I decided that the skin would be a very pale almost gray color. Because the movie was in B&W many paint up her hair black. Research turned up that The Bride actress, Elsa Manchester, was a redhead. In an interviewed she said the hair you saw was all hers.  The sfx people put a wire frame on her head and teased her hair up over the frame. Then the fake part - the lightning bolts- were added. 

The plan was to give the hair a base coat of brown and then redden it as I add the highlights.  

But once I started to base coat her face I notice a little seam that I hadn't noticed before.  But I continued on.  When I base coated the eyes and considerable eyelashes, the seam was worse than I thought. I followed it down her arm all the way to the base.  How did I miss it??

I put the paints away, washed my brushes, and got out my sanding pads. For the rest of the evening I worked to make the seams disappear.  When I put some gray primer on her, she looked more like a half beaten up Terminator than The Bride of Frankenstein --

But a big lesson was learned- double and triple check for seams!! ;)

Thanks for looking.  

F5-D One Step Back, One Ahead

Since I have Drac drying, I turned my attention back to the F5-D once again. I took a look at the mask and ... NO! It never dried. It was like the tacky glue that holds on an address label to a magazine. If you're like me and *have* to peel those labels off, you know. ;)

So now I have to invent a Plan B. I decided Plan B would be that I remove the masking goop (naturally), but leave the *template* tape. I then took another piece of Tamiya tape, put it over the exposed glass and burnished it down. Then I cut around the newly placed tape and removed the original layer of tape -- 

MFTW Dracula Bust

Bela has been on the table behind where my computer is for a few months now... just staring...  The bust which IIRC  s a 1:4 scale bust produced by John Deary. The only seam line was a small one across the back of his head. That was quickly cleaned up with the back of an Xacto knife, a file and some Vallejo Plastic Putty.  
When I first got him for some reason I just had to paint the staircase - to see how it looked I thought. But otherwise the rest of him remained unpainted, until tonight.

Twisty Base

Someone was asking about the base for Twisty from AHS:F,  so here it is. Note the little kernels of popcorn are really skulls...

Thanks for looking.

F5-D Masking and a Memory from my Childhood

Well, I made it to my LHS today and in addition to buying some Vallejo equivalents to the RLM colors - Yep I have a two WW2 German "x-planes" (Luft '46?) and a soviet  plane that's pretty weird. More on them as I get to them. Anyway, I picked up Vallejo's Liquid Mask in addition to the aforementioned colors. Not knowing how to work with the stuff didn't stop me. After a good mixing and removing a big blob of semi congealed rubber, I applied a layer of the masking to the exposed windows of the F5-D.  One thing I did notice was that as it dried it went from opaque to semitransparent. I'll have to check a You Tube video to see if that's whats supposed to happen and when I'm able to cut away the tape to leave just the windows covered. 

Kreature Kid's Ghost Bust

With the Ion Cannon done and the F5-D moving along, I uncovered this little gem in my To Do pile. It's Kreature Kid's Ghost Bust. A fantastic little kit in 4 parts - The head/body, 2 arms and a base that's made up of a tombstone with some groundwork around it. It is cast in a translucent green color. I wanted to keep most of the translucency, but it didn't work out that way. ;) 
The kit is made to look like this half rotten ghoul has thrown a sheet over his head as he comes around the gravestone to scare you.  I didn't think to take any before shots. Here are a few WIPs -