Captain America (Sam Wilson)

Due to my experience with Domino, War Machine, Quicksilver, Amazing Spider-Man, etc. I've become very comfortable with explosions, so that part of Sam was really routine at this point and not worth getting into. If you want to read up on my process with those, I would recommend checking out my comments on one of those models.

Also with Sam, I had the benefit of just finishing my Iron Man repaint and that taught me a lot about how I can use white when highlighting red without turning the whole thing pink. I'm pretty happy with how his red turned out. It feels red and still has depth, light and shadow. In retrospect I think I should've gone darker with it in places, but I think it works well enough.

However, painting Sam was kind of a capstone experience for me for one pretty big reason: I've been holding up my Core Captain America mini as a beacon of pride for the past couple of years because the work I did on his shield was so far above and beyond what I had ever painted before. he kind of encapsulated what this project has come to mean to me. Thus, I knew going into it that the shield was going to be more important than most things I could paint, on a personal level. 

With the recent work I did on my Iron Man repaint, I approached the shield from a much different perspective than I did with Steve's. For one, I knew how to do NMM white, which wasn't even on my radar when I painted Steve. Two, I knew how to do white highlights on red without making it pink, which I specifically avoided on Steve, opting for orange/yellow highlights instead.

I think the end result puts Steve's shield to shame and puts me in a weird place as now when I look at Steve I see what could be instead of what was a giant leap forward in my painting skill. I'm still proud of the work I did on him, but it makes me very excited to get his repaint done and I might have to move up his model on my repaint list so I can play with a nice, new and improved paint job when I rock Avengers, which I will be jumping at the bit to do once I finish Hulkbuster.