Heresy & Heroes

It’s actually starting to come together. The duel is getting closer and closer to being done, and it’s getting rather exciting. I’ve not had too much time to work on it recently, and I’ve got a bit of artistic block going at the moment, but it won’t be long before this project reaches its finale.

Let’s start with the base, and as you can see here, it’s done:

All of it is now painted up, and I put more care into this one than I have with any base before. Those edges aren’t dry-brushed – I painted the highlight on each lip of that rock. It took a while to do, but it was worth it. I was very conservative with the grass, and I even added some cascading shells made from clipped bits of paperclip. It’s hard to pick it out in the above image, but eventually you’ll see a picture where one of those bullets looks like it’s still tumbling.

And with the base completed, it was time put the terminator together, and add some weathering…

I didn’t go heavy on the weathering at all. There are a few small patches of grime here and there, and a few small patches of blood (obvs not his) dotted around, as well as a very light dusting of his feet with grey – the iPhone camera doesn’t really pick it up in the above shot but it does help to dull the lower regions down.

I placed him on the base to mark out where he’s going to stand upon that rock formation, and he promptly dived for cover. I had to get out some super glue and redo an arm after that.

You can see in the above image the wound in his torso (to the right hand side of the first spike if you go right from the ring in the cen… the big hole in his middle with the blood coming out). I wanted to have some blood spurting from this as the monofilament is extracting itself. Well, here’s my solution:

They’re hard to see in this image, but those are two strands of my own hair, that have had Blood For The Blood God painted onto them. The glossy paint naturally beads up on the hair, and I”l be cutting off small sections of this to use as spurting blood. And spurting blood isn’t nearly as gross as blue tack with hair stuck in it, and no-one can say I don’t put my all into these projects!

Speaking of thin strands, this is what I’m using for the monofilament wire, and for all intents and purposes, this pretty much is monofilament wire. I was going to use fly tying wire from the fishing industry, but instead, I got this stuff. They use it to make really fine mesh for vapes. How fine? Well, if you look at the image above, look at where it says ’30’ on the right hand side – that’s the 30mm spot obviously. Now the thick line that runs up to the top corner, next to the ’30’ – there’s a tiny break in that line just there near the ’30’. You see it? That’s the wire. ‘Thin’ isn’t the word.

After a long time spent painstakingly converting my solitaire, and worrying about how I’m going to paint him, I’m now ready to paint him, though I don’t quite know how to do his jacket which I want to be a bit of a freehand piece. There’s not a huge amount of room, but I should be able to get some sort of pattern in there. At the moment I’m still weighing up paisley, Chinese embroidery, William Morris print, peacock feathers… So although I’m ready to paint it up, I still have that choice to make. Hopefully I’ll make a decision soon.

It’s all getting very close now. It’s really exciting and I have sort of been able to mock up the final pose once, and I likes it. If I can find some time this weekend, I may actually get this done! We’ll see though. No promises – I’m taking my time with this guy. I hope you’re having plenty of fun with your painting too. Onwards!