This was a bust of Jon Snow I painted for a friend of mine as a Christmas Present. It was my first bust, I learned a lot but I I was pretty happy with it.
Sculpture : Jun-sik Ahn
Manufacturer: Nuts Planet
Its been over a year sense I painted this, so I am a little rusty. This was also my first bust so I did a lot of learning.
The picture is over-exposed. I have gotten better at the photography of it all. The sculpture has a lot of detail on it, even the beard hair is there. One of my mistakes was that I did not use a picture for reference when I painted his facial hair, I just tried to use what the sculpture showed me.
I use to do a lot of camping. I remember the worst feeling in the world is that cold wet feeling, where you are soaked to the bone and half of that is frozen. So I wanted to make him look like he was heavy with water, like he would be if he lived at the wall.
It took me a while to find a good color balance with the face, I don't remember it being super thick. I think / hope a lot of it is the photography. Like I can't figure out where that "scar" came from under his eye and forehead.
I seem to recall that I used a P3 black for most of the model. I thinned it down so I had to use multiple layers but it always looks smoother and heavier than other paints. He basically have 5 layers of clothes on and the two straps. I did some slight highlighting in different colors to try and separate them. Like the shirt that you can only see around his neck has some purple in it, the cloak has some blue, etc. I wanted it all to look more or less grey, but to have some differences the eye could pick up. The only actual grey is in the fur.
Then I used several layers of GW wash to kind of normalize the color back to a consistent feel of blacks. I think that is what makes it look thick. But I was going for a heavy, wet feel. Maybe it works against me. I don't know.
I did just paint the Tyrion version of this. After I washed and primed it, he say for about a week before I got to painting him. I did notice that on the bottom of the bust it looked like oils had surfaced under the primer and it roughed up the surface. Knowing that I wonder if it happened here. I wish I access to the mini to look at it again.
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