Urban Sasquatch
This figure was painted for round 4 of the Iron Painter Season Two challenge in late November 2006, hosted by Wyrd Games. In Iron Painter, entrants are paired off against a single opponent, and their piece must showcase a theme effect or mood. For this round the theme was anger/rage. The judges made it clear they were expecting to see more than just an angry sculpt, so I tried to find a sculpt that inspired me to place the emotion in a larger context. I had noticed this guy when he came out, as he reminded me of the cover of a comic book out around the same time, so I decided to paint him as a more modern character. I mostly paint fantasy figures, so it was a fun change of pace to do a more urban scene. Since the scene I had in mind would make it hard for a viewer to see the figure's face, I created the wall as an L shaped piece the base rests on, so the figure can be removed for a closer look. For some reason, the skin on this figure is really hard to photograph. I did a ton of shading and highlighting, and I don't think all of it comes across in the photo. I painted the base to look like a grungy back alley with stains and pools of dubious liquids. The garbage cans are from an O scale model train scenery pack. They came painted, but with mould lines, so I repainted them. The pieces of trash are pieces of tissue paper that I crumpled and frayed, dipped in muddy looking paint and smudged with pastel dust. The brick wall was actually the most challenging part of the piece. Its a textured piece of styrene/plasticard, but I did a lot of weathering and scratching on it before I even primed. Each brick had to be painted individually, and that took forever. I think it took me six hours just to base coat the wall. Then I used darker and lighter glazes to give some variety to the bricks, and highlighted them. The final step was to grind a black pastel into dust and brush that on to areas of the bricks. The picture I used as a reference had some bricks stained this way. The fallen bricks are made from a papier mache clay. The mortar dust is the same clay, I took leftover bricks I didn't need and ground them down for the dust.
Posted: 12 Jan 2007
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