So this was a bit of an off-the-cuff model, I'd been trying to work through the Craftworld Studios tutorial for Sir Roderick and was struggling to grok the method for painting the face. After I think the 7th time priming the model I was a little frustrated, at which point my Wife reminded me, this is a hobby, it should be enjoyable first and foremost. So I looked through my library of models and came across Craig Scrapfiggs, an awesome little model from Collective Studios (unfortunately best I can tell Collective are now defunct although happy to be corrected if not). This was also a chance to try some new resins as Siraya-tech my usual has started to become a little pricey, so I grabbed some Conjure 8K Standard to see if there is any benefit to so called "8K" Resins.
First thing I did was scaled the 75mm model up 25% to give me a bit of leniency in the close spaces, re-supported the model (after one failed print where I forgot that scaling the model doesn't adjust the presupports) and printed, overall I'm happy with end result, I think I need to tweak my exposure times very slightly and may need to drop my lift speed a little as there's some delamination going on in places and a couple of the supports either failed or bent midway through. Some more experimentation needed before I declare the resin a complete success.
After printing and de-supporting the model I sprayed it with black primer from Pro-Acryl (this is one of my favourite primers, super matte finish which looks great), I then underpainted the model with a mix of primary red and blue from Scale75 Artist Colour range (all paints are from this range unless I mention otherwise), I mixed a very thin glaze (probably too thin in honesty) with roughly equal parts water and Glaze and Wash medium from Pro-acryl. I find this combo works brilliantly for airbrush glazing as the glaze medium almost helps to fix the paint in place where usually it wants to spread all over the model.
This was then sprayed over with orange from the top to denote the main light source, it was followed up with a cobalt blue spray from the back for OSL (it should've been primary blue but honestly I grabbed the first blue tube I saw). The end result is below:
I then started work on the face, I used a glaze of magenta for most of the face to push saturation, I then used a red glaze around the eyes, nose and mouth while I used blue and magenta to boost the shadows, I then mixed a skin tone from magenta, red, blue and orange using white and naples yellow to highlight with blue being used to make the shadows/base tone for the parts where the OSL hit resulting in this:
At this point I had to admit, my Wife was right. I'd made more progress with this and got it to a higher standard because I was enjoying the model and the process. To follow this success up I started to work on the NMM and Glass of the eye-piece, I mixed a blend of burnt sienna umber, blue and naples yellow along with a little white to create my gradient. I applied this in thin coats around the glasses building the highlights towards the light source. I then glazed a mix of burnt sienna umber and blue in increasing brightness over the lenses towards the top right which I basecoated with burnt sienna umber, I then mixed blue and naples yellow to make a sea green which I glazed towards the bottom of the lens, a small white dot on the top right finished them off.
To do the hair and beard I first glazed some more dark purple into the shadows, used the old favourite burnt sienna umber the base coat the majority of the hair and then started applying thin layers of burnt sienna umber and blue mixed to make a blueish grey. I added a bit of white for the highlights as well as a bit of naples yellow to make more of a greenish tone. Eventually I had to stop as my hand and arm was cramping up but this is the result so far:
This has been a really interesting model to paint so far, the different textures available along with the overall look of the sculpt is leading to some really interesting effects and overall I'm really happy with it. It's been an interesting lesson because I'm trying to reduce the number of WIPs I have at one time which was why I was so stubborn on trying to start Ser Roderick but it does show that sometimes discipline and stubborness aren't always enough to finish the job, sometimes a bit of enjoyment really helps.
I really enjoy using Pro-Acryl's primer but I've got to remember to give it more time to cure, there's several parts where I've got to go back and re-prime it as it rubs off surprisingly easy. Easy enough job to do but frustrating.
As for the 8K resin, did it make a difference? The answer is kinda? For context I had previously printed this using Siraya Tech fast but had not noticed I'd printed the hollowed version which I don't have the equipment to cure the inside of the model, the second time it was printed solid using Conjure 8K Standard. There were areas around the knees and the head which definitely seemed smoother with less layer/pixel lines visible. Not massively so but definitely enough to warrant some further investigation into the quality. Either way it was a good £15.00 cheaper than Siraya Tech for at worst the same quality and similar speeds, it's also had a couple of drops and seems less brittle (although that may be improvements in my curing process) so I'd recommend it on that ground alone.