Iron Painter Round 4 - Wednesday is Paused for 01 Jun 2016

I managed to do a little more work on the Monstrosity since my last blog post. It's not finished, but I am done with it for now.

Round four of Iron Painter has come and gone. The theme this round was "Armed and Dangerous". The submitted entries can be found here.


I failed to submit a model this round. I am now out of the competition. In spite of this, I thought it might still be worthwhile to talk about what I failed to do.

To start, I finally got myself a light box. Well, a homemade light box. I feel the image is pretty self-explanatory, but just in case it is not I cut the top off of a distilled water bottle. I did not do it in the pictures here, but the plan is to be able to put a slip of paper to line the back and curve to the bottom for use as a backdrop. I am trying to be productive by testing it out on the unfinished projects from the last two weeks.

The first entry idea I worked on was to have somebody being dragged into the ground by a multitude of arms. I selected Wrath from Wyrd Miniatures along with a bunch of arms from their male and female multi-part kit since Wyrd is the company running the contest. While working on the project I realized I would need to resculpt large parts of Wrath to get his body right and would likely have to sculpt some arms to ensure I could get them all to flow in an overall pattern to direct the eye where I wanted it to go. I tried to go for a more stressful pose, but realized I would need to redo most of his torso to pull it off As an aside, he is way too symmetrical. I think even if I were to use the default pose I would want to do something to his abs. I started to rework the idea to have the same model standing on a stage inciting a riot. The overall pose was not straining enough for the original idea which was going to be a lot of work. I started preparing to use different arms that already had weapons in their hands where before the only weapons were a few blades I was thinking about clipping.

I came up with the idea a couple of days into the round of having a child finding a locked box in their parent's bedroom. The original idea was to use a bed. Reaper makes one. I planned to pick one up from my local shop as I had seen a couple there. Going through my own bits I found a cabinet. I decided to use that instead. The child on the ground is a Reaper model. The wireframe is supposed to be another child between the size of the one standing on the ground and an adolescent. He was meant to be handing a box down to the smaller child. The cabinet doors are some plasticard that I took a knife to for wood grain for the frames and some clear plastic blister sandwiched between the two frames of the doors.

I did not get time to work on this idea which was going to take me a while. I worked on alternatives. The one was a fairy that looked to me like she was running away from something. I removed the wings and trimmed some bits. The model chasing her is a teddy bear with yarn for hair and a giant knife.

Again, I did not have much time. So, I went with a model where the only prep work was to clean some mold lines. I did not even take the time to prime her. This is the only model out of the bunch to have any paint on her right now. I want to work on my lighting, so I went to work with black and white to try and get that right. I was not concerned with blends. The plan was to glaze over this then refine everything. I never got back to her.

The pile of partially worked projects

It would be a lie to say I am not a little disappointed. I feel I peaked in round one and have been in a decline since then. I am happy I decided to participate. I produced a couple of pieces I never would have attempted and feel a certain amount of pride with those accomplishments. I plan to work on something for round five if I am able even though I am completely out of the competition at this point. it has been a positive experience for me overall.