Hi everyone,
Instead of priming the entire piece using my two stage priming system (silver enamel followed by acrylic flat white), after much thought, I decided to take a different approach.
Here's my rationale. The difficulty associated with this piece evolves around the fact that it does not come apart and its weight. This will increase over handling and increase the odds of damage. Removing the paint may reveal additional issues like air holes. The fact that the factory paint job was applied thinly was a plus and that the statue had the correct base color which would serve as my primer, gave me the ability to leave some things in place and enhance existing well painted factory areas like the mist!
That being said, large areas like Conan's body and the horse’s body will be completely painted!
The Horse:
My approach was to mask out the mist and use it as a handle. I then masked out Conan since I will be using his factory base colors as my base primer and did not want the colors on him blackened out. I also masked out the horse’s mask and eyes.
When painting horses keep in mind horses have an inner luminosity and warm areas. Also I should note that there is almost never an absolutely pitch black horse. In fact, most are a black brown color, and many have white markings on at least one of their hoofs, which is quite common.
The first thing I did was to paint in all my warm areas mostly under the body and where the extremities like where the legs meet the body (an example of a warm area in the human body is our arm pits).
Then I blend in with flat dark brown the tones under and in the warm areas. These tones are a little flatter and not as glossy as the top coat. The top coat is then painted on in a very localized manner. I finally accent the top coat a mixture of flat black and dark flat blue.
When this dries, I coat the horse with regular house wax. I don't use Testors or any of the glossing products out there because I prefer to gradually escalate and control the sheen in steps. Also, if I need to remove any of it, I can do so without any permanent damage to the paint job. Please look at my website. I will be posting complete details on the under painting of horses.
The Hair, Mane and Tail:
Using dark gray, I followed this up by washes of black and finally I dry stroke with light gray for highlights. Note that the hair is black and if it starts to look more gray you’re dry stroking to much with gray. I do not gloss the hair.
The Hoofs:
The hoofs are painted by Tamiya colors: flat earth, light gray, and a touch of flat green. I then lighten and darken as needed. The horse’s shoes are gun metal touched up with silver. Note, inside the hoof if it appears to have mud or dirt, paint in an earth color.
The Mask:
I like to emphasize that the mask is for the most part the horse’s face and requires an expression and character. It is important to follow the bone structure of the horse’s face when painting. The Tamiya colors I use are, light gray, and mixture of gray, black and white. The emblem was just touched up.
I know this is a lot to read, but for the statue and miniature figure painters it’s never enough!
Thanks, and stay tune for Conan next!
Alex
Frank Frazetta's “ Conan the Conqueror”
On this Close-up the background was removed with Photoshop! Note the gold strap is still not painted.
From CS Moore Studio, 1/7 scale, sculptured by Clayburn Moore,work in progress by Alex Castro ©
Frazetta - original painting--------------------- Castro's Work in progress - painted statute ----------------- Factory paint job
