War Machine

Finished up War Machine this week. I went into this paint job thinking he was going to be a dull model to paint, particularly considering how monochromatic his paint scheme is. I couldn't have been more wrong and I think it's largely due to how detailed and well executed the sculpt is. He has so many little bits and bobs to highlight and shade that painting him just feels like playing and exploration. It reminded me of painting Daredevil. I also think it lends itself well to making the model stand out because you get to really crisply define each area and push an almost all black model all the way to white without it feeling awkward. Speaking of painting black, painting him really drove home how much more comfortable I've become with it. I can't imagine how much worse this model would look had I tried painting him two years ago when I was first tackling my core box. It makes me excited to do Black Widow, Punisher and Venom repaints.

I started with his base on the explosion and the jets. I really like my recipe for explosions and it's a very simple and easy to make recipe. I just paint the whole explosion white, paint the whole thing Inktense Yellow, then drybrush up into Mars Orange and Brown Leather. Then I go into the recesses with pure white to make the explosion look internally hot and add a few very watered down layers of white on the base itself, pooling towards the explosion, which I then color with the Yellow Inktensity. Gives a nice OSL effect and feels to me like a legit explosion. The harder part was getting the blue effect on the jets, which honestly I think is probably the sloppiest part of the model. For that I just used very thinned down Sky blue and layered it towards the boot. Overall I think it turned out well and hopefully the experience on him will make it go smoother when I attempt the same thing on Hulkbuster.

Speaking of Hulkbuster, this model is essentially one giant lesson in how to shade and highlight polished metal and flat and curved panels, so hopefully that helps as well. Painting him reminded me of what I learned with Moon Knight: that there is no logical endpoint to the highlighting, shading and blending. You can go on with it indefinitely. Overall I'm pretty happy with how War Machine turned out, but I still feel uneasy about if I'm picking the "right" stopping point. Should I have gone on more and made it have even more contrast? Should I have worked even more on transitions? I guess there is no concrete answer to those questions, which really gives me an appreciation for how deep this hobby is. I wonder if the hobby "greats" experience these same feelings as they paint models? I would imagine so.

Speaking of unending complexity, one of things I struggled with on War Machine was how much OSL and NMM reflection I should include. The jet boots could easily result in some serious OSL and when you combine this with his armor being some seriously polished metal, you could play for days on light reflections. I think I opted for the lazy way out with him, sticking with some very minor OSL on predominately the bottoms of his boots. I guess if I were trying to make him a display model I would've done sky reflections in his chrome and done major OSL coming from the blast on the base. However, I don't think he really needs it. I think he looks like a really solid model for playing games and that's really what I'm painting for.