Exorcist Regan

 I have had the busts of the two priests from The Exorcist on my shelf now for some time- Fr. Karras, and Fr. Merrin .   To finish off the trilogy Regan was also offered, but the sculpt was too good and it was just too creepy for me.  Move time fwd and Artist/producer Saul Alvarez of Silver Screen Icons has come up with another Regan. This time a little less creepy (IMHO). :D

 

 

The kit comes in 5 3D printed parts - the head, the body, the base, and then a head and base of the idol Pazuzu.  There is also a copy of the movie poster that fits into the base frame. Excellent idea for future movie models. 

 The kit looked pretty benign, so I epoxied the 3 main parts together, in what turned out to an early mistake. Turns out there are spots the way the hair is done that reveals openings to the dress/nightgown that can be seen and it was rather difficult to get primer in there. But with a little effort the job got done. 

Next, as usual for me was to add color to the face. This too was a little tricky as looking at screen grabs there are seemingly always  color filters over the lights. Do I paint it normally or do I give it that creep blue color? I decided to do it normally. Normal is a loaded word with her under possession, she was painted with pale sickly colors. Thankfully I bought a few triads of flesh color schemes. ;) 

 Her hair was brown and the nightgown was a pale blue so that was completed easily. Thinking back to the movie, when Fr. Merrin was excavating the dig site, and finding the little Pazuzu head it was a sort of dirty brown. So I decided to make the base a simple dulled down brown color. The base also has some imagery of Pazuzu, so I highlighted them.  To make the portrait a little more gross, I mixed some florescent green with UV resin and added a few drops to her mouth and gown.

The movie poster needed a little trim, and then easily glued into the frame and I was done. 

One thing I would have done differently is since the base was 3D printed hollow, it's very light. I'm so used to the bases being big chunks of solid resin. So I think I would add some weight to the base.  Thanks for looking. 

 

 

 

Fr. Karras

 Staying with the horror theme a little longer, Fr. Damien Karras the troubled priest from the 1973 Exorcist film went on the hobby table. The character was played by Jason Miller who sadly passed away in 2001.  As a sidebar his son is Jason Patrick of Lost Boys fame!

The kit is in 2 simple parts - the bust and the base. Looking it over there was only the slightest flash line in the hair, which was easily removed. The sculpt IMO is a freeze frame of when the demon enters the priest, saving Regan. I was surprised that looking for a screen grab of that part of the scene was harder to find than I thought. 

 

With the black priest garb this is going to be an easy paint up. I start as usual with my "pinkle" and red base coat to the skin. While that was drying, my plan was to make the  name plate a tarnished bronze. I saw a tutorial where the tarnish is painting in first and then the metallic is dry brushed on later. So lets see...

 Then the bronzing...

 Next up is  the face colors, and despite him looking very pale in that last image, I felt he needed a little coloring as the first skin application. 

 The priest garb is simply black, and then I added some black gray as a highlight for the shoulders etc... V's Pale Flesh was added to the face and then with the outline of his eyes sculpted it, I added a little Agrax Wash to the round divots and then a greenish yellow to the irises once the Wash dried. The final need was taking my stylus tool and with a dip into black made the pupils. He was finished. He can now join his partner Fr. Merrin who was previously done. Thanks for looking. 

(Apologies for the bad pic)

 

The Howling Man

Today's subject is another from MoonDevil Studio. It's the Howling Man, from a 1060 episode of the Twilight Zone.

From IMDB:

Seeking refuge from a storm, a traveler comes upon a bizarre abbey of monks, who have imprisoned a man who begs for his help. When he confronts the head monk, he is told that the man is the Devil, and he must decide whom to believe.

Just looking at the sculpt you get to see how the story ends. 

The kit comes in the usually 2 parts, the bust and the base.  The kit is typically well done and only the slightest seamline is seen across the slicked back hair.


Looking at images of the actor, Robin Hughes, the first obvious thing is that it's all in B&W (Duh, it was 1960, Kev...).

My first idea was to paint it up that way. But it was only a few days after JerseyFest (where I got the model) that someone else posted on the FB GK groups his version which was in B&W. So I decided to go with color.
Next thing to think about was what is the coloring. Looking at the  film still, it looks like the actor has no coloring makeup, and his shirt is black and his cape is alsodark with a light color stripes, and cowl.   I remembered a movie memorabilia auction where Dracula's cape was up for bid. The cape as you would expect was black, but the inside was a salmon color satin!  I decided that my devil will have the same. If it's good enuff for Bela, it's good enuff for the Howling Man... 

But first comes the primer. And then I decided to make him a red devil.

It wqas at this point I decided that I would work on my OSL.  Not show is I started by using my "red" paint set, and started at one end with a dark purple color. This will be my deepest shadow. 
I started with a flesh color which would give me the salmon color, but decided to add some pearlizing additive to make the cowl shone a bit. But the pearl flecks are in a white medium, not clear. This turned the salmon color a little beige.  Hmmm do I want the pearl, or do I want the salmon color. I chose the shine so my cowl became this beige color.

 In retrospect I should have darkened the shadows of the cowl more as I was going, which would enhance the shine. I tried after 90% of it was done, but was afraid of ruining what I had done so far, and chickened out spraying the shadows darker. The cape was black, the shirt was German Gray, and the chain was brass, which IMHO looks more like gold and the gold paint does.

The base was gray which Black Gray in the cracks, and the lettering was the same Scarlet that was the highest highlight of the face.  With that I was calling this done. Thanks for looking.