Red Skull becomes the first of the core set models that I repaint. The first take on him is on the left and the second take is on the right. Throughout this project, I have constantly learned the lesson that I need to use dark blues in highlighting my blacks. I decided Red Skull was an ideal model to try this out on since he's predominately black and desperately needed a repaint anyway. The level of detail I was able to maintain on the model is so much more than I was expecting, although I think a lot of that is due to 1. not using a thick contrast paint as a base coat and 2. learning how to more carefully apply thinner coats of paint. I'm really happy with how he came out. He's a much better finished piece and I'm glad my Cabal doesn't have to have a messy paintjob for their leader whenever I play as them.
I decided to make a couple stylistic changes. One, in preparation for painting Iron Man, I want to get out of the habit of highlighting red into orange, so I went with a couple red highlights and then used white mixes for the highlights. Originally I worried it would give too much of a pink vibe, but I think I pulled it off and it looks red with highlights. I also decided his hydra symbols on his arms would make more sense as red and I also didn't care for gold for his buckle. Overall I think the changes work a lot better and the miniature just has a better presence. I think the only critique I have in comparison to the first model is the heavy use of dark blues causes the model to have less contrast that the first paint job, which is unfortunate, but ultimately I feel the new model still retains a lot of contrast while simultaneously looking a lot cleaner and a lot more detailed, so it's a trade off I am very okay with.
The only real critique I have of the paint job right now is that I never really found a good balance between the red of his skull and the blue OSL from the cube. I had to repaint his face because my attempts at OSL were just making his face purple and it didn't look right. Ultimately I went with more pronounced highlights on his face and a couple really thin coats of a blue glaze for the OSL. I think it generally turned out well, but honestly I think that's only because you don't really notice it on his face, which due to the distance of the cube, I'm fine with. Outside of that I'm really happy with everything and the only improvements I can see are just spending more time on transitions, which I'm beginning to think is one of those things that you can never stop working on, so I'm not going to beat myself up about it. All works of art are eventually abandoned, so you gotta stop somewhere.
So Red Skull is finished and I've officially started my repaints. I'll probably bounce around between doing repaints and working on models I haven't painted yet to keep things fresh, but I consider this one to be a resounding success. Makes me really look forward to what I can do with Black Widow, Doc Oc, Crossbones, Baron Zemo and especially Ultron. It should be fun. I've included some closer up pics for those interested.
