Demoness
80mm white metal figure from Andrea Miniatures
Painted in 2005
This is one of the first of the Andrea "girl" figures that I've done. It's the first one that actually enthused me enough to go beyond merely cleaning the castings up.
Yes, I know, I do tend to like my girl figures, that's because ( and I know you won't believe this ) I think the female form is a heck of a lot better looking - especially when scantily clad - than a bloke.
The problem a lot of the model sculptors have is not really being able to get a grasp of the good-looking head on the "heavenly body" that they've just tried to make.
Andrea certainly have fallen into this trench with a will, making some seriously scary women ( this one is beautiful by comparison - honest ! )
The problem ( and I'll keep this short, ‘cos I don't want to bore you ) is that making the butt wider and adding bumps on the chest does not instantly make a sculpture of a man into a woman. The whole facial and body formation has to be different to make something convincingly feminine.
Anyway, that's my little rant over with. Sculptors please take note, and possibly look at Boris Vallejo, Luis Royo, July Bell and especially Hajime Sorayama art to confirm any doubts. So there !
The figure then.
This comes from a whole range of ( aforementioned ) ugly blokes with boobs, although admittedly there are one or two that are O.K.
Amazingly Andrea have persevered in the face of adversity and eventually got it right-ish with this one.
On the good side, this model is presented in a well designed box, not only to protect the model on it's way to you the buyer, but also with a colour sleeve, showing several pictures of a painted model from different angles.
The moulding of the metal bits is good too, although the thinner components like the arms and the horns do suffer from a bit of mould alignment problems, the clean-up is relatively painless, and joints are hidden in logical places where there will be a minimum need for filler ( I didn't use any at all on this model - one good thing to be gained from someone who sculpts military stuff I suppose ).
After deciding to paint the model with everything assembled barring the addition of the wings, a couple of thin coats of primer were added, and the flesh tones begun. At this point I decided to fill in the depression just above the groin so that the "stuck on effect" flap of white metal that is supposed to be part of a loincloth, isn't used. And the model looks so much the better for it.
The initial primer was white, this being covered with a further coat of Humbrol Flesh Tone acrylic.
I decided on quite a sunburnt look - all that time in flames has to have some effect, doesn't it ? - and so mixed up quite a dark shade of base colour using Windsor and Newton oils - Flesh Tint, Yellow Ochre and a dash of Titanium White.
This was then stippled on to all the applicable areas, and allowed to stand for about an hour ( I’m using a new tube of the Flesh tint, and it's a bit oily ).
I've recently purchased some "Mars" colours, which seem to be very good indeed. They tend to be strong colours that are very opaque, and you don't require too large an amount to be added to another colour for them to change the shade quite drastically.
I decided to try using the Mars Brown for shading the flesh, mainly because I've had to buy a new Burnt Sienna, and after rejecting the Windsor and Newton one as being too weak, and also trying a Rowney version to the same colour, also too weak and oily, have had to use mixed of Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber which seems to send the flesh colours a bit muddy......am I boring you here, 'cos I seem to detect snoring at the back. !
Right, the Mars Brown was a success, and so I continued with some Titanium White for the highlights.
Once this had fully dried, I beefed up some of the shadows with a little Burnt Umber.
The eyes were done with a small amount of off white for the eyeball itself, adding a black iris in the centre of which was some green. Some more black was added for the pupil, and a small catchlight of white to finish off.
The boots were painted with Games Workshop Chaos Black as an undercoat, and then Mars Black oils added over the top. Some highlights were added with some of the base mix of flesh colour that was spare.
For the white hair I used G W Skull White and over this added a thin coat of a pale grey oil mix, adding more white to create the highlights.
Now the wings. I was going to do great things with these - honest, planning on doing some really fine work with an airbrush.
I'd begun with a three shade application of a flesh colour via said airbrush, and then commenced to do a really mind bending green camouflage pattern of fine squiggles a la "tankie heaven"........But it looked....um.... well let’s keep it clean and say that it looked rather poor ( the sound effects after having three goes at painting one wing would strip paint off a door at about a hundred yards - no children or household pets were injured during the proceedings, which does seem to be rather a shame ).
Two days, several failed attempts and buckets of striper later, I ended up with some very nice "flesh" coloured wings that I could have knocked out in less than half an hour. Ho hum.....
There's definitely a lesson in here somewhere.
After that though, things seemed to go rather well, and the rather rugged base was painted using trusty oils of Burnt Umber, Mars brown ( really like this colour, can you tell ? ) and Mars Yellow.
With the addition of a wooden plinth, and a nameplate knocked up with some Lettraset, the model was complete.
I did add some gloss varnish to the wings, to make them look leathery ( it seemed ever such a good idea at the time.........well it did ! ), but as it didn't do the usual thing of drying semi gloss - like it does on eyes, it looks more like very glossy wings.....Do-h
All told though, I'm quite pleased with the model. She's only relatively small compared to the massive American offerings, but she's still good for all that. Perhaps a little bit expensive at around £25.00 but that I suppose is up to how much one likes the model.
I've got a couple more of Andrea's range of models on the shelf, awaiting paint, and having got this to look at least half-way decent, might just be tempted now to go back and give the others a lick of paint.