Dennett's Cosmic Corruption (aka Melting Man)

The next kit I tackled was another from John Dennett's MoonDevil Studio. It's called Cosmnic Corruption. As usual John has a backstpory to go with the sculpt --

"The effect of the radiation on the crew of the Space Station was unprecedented. The breach in the shields from within the vessel and the pulsing surge from outside the hull left no area untouched. According to the last transmission, nothing, no part of their bodies, not a cell was left unaffected by the invading poison. The idea that a human being could be exposed to such contamination and still survive is hard to fathom and yet eight people have done just that. However all communications have stopped. We cannot imagine what is happening out there. The approaching supply ship is only nine hours away from the station at this time and are detecting no unusual radiation in that sector. It will be that ship's Captain who will decide whether to approach and ultimately enter the station and risk exposing her crew to what remains on board." 

I named it The Melting Man. He went thru several incarnations as I mad up my mind on how I finally wanted it to look.  

This time I tried a new technique for starting a model. I first prime it black and then heavily drybrush the model with white. In doing so when you get that first light coat of color, you automatically start with two colors. Here I sprayed a tan and a little red color over the B&W, and it looked something like this --

 At this point the eyes and teeth  are still the drybrush white. Then I took a few colors, Brown, red, blue and purple and spattered dote over the top of what I had. No good. The color was already too dark, and the spatters didn't really show up. So I decided to light it up with a little more flesh color -- 

 Better, but a little too mono chromatic. So I added a few other colors in the form of Vallejo Game Color Inks. It was here that I needed to give him the terror look so I added they eyes.

As I was painting "Melting Man kept going thru my head  So I decided then that towards the end I would take clear 2 part epoxy, mix it with some red ink and end the model up that way. Well, the red ink was too thin and too red, so I mixed up a more of the little of the epoxy I had and used VMC Vermillion. What happened next was the addition of the paint started to set the epoxy. So I needed to rush the application. 
This is what I ended up with. I kinda like it, tho in spots the hardening epoxy is too thick in spots.
I also noticed in the pics that the inks I painted over the epoxy cracked and had to be painted over. I also noticed the black base got scratched in a few spots. Thats the bad thing about Vallejo primers - they are very stong once dry, but it take a full day or more for them to dry... 
So the these things have been fixed after these photos. I'll get around to a real final pic soon. Thanks for looking.  

 

The Croaker King part 2

Looking over the bust I felt that the dots for eyes just didn't do it for me. I didn't want to scrape them of the paint, so it took 3 or 4 coats of Scarlet paint to make them disappear. Then I tried out my Windsor & Newton Series 7 brush to add 3 lines to each eye (1 black pupil and a line of flesh each side of it). Next I felt there was too much green so I darkened down the purple I was using around the eyes and used it on his back. 

You'll also notice the base is done. In what turned out to be a semi failed experiment, I tried to use real fern leaves to make a camo pattern. The leaves were just too floppy and I didn't have enough to have it turn out the way I wanted.   Thanks for looking.