Five Hour Painting Challenge - Bobby B

During my ongoing hiatus from blogging, I decided to take up Necropocalypse's Five Hour Challenge. I wasn't entirely sure what model to go with to do it but after some nudging, I went for Purgatory's Bobby B, their event only model.



At first, I was quite daunted by the challenge laid down. The quickest I've painted a single model in the past couple of years is probably 8-10 hours - double what I had available to me, and all my previous Purgatory pieces had probably been given a good 20 hours each, so planning was going to have to be key.

I don't plan my miniatures when I paint them. I go into them with a rough idea of what I want to do in my head, and then muddle through finding the right tones as I get to them, which clearly wasn't going to work in a limited time frame.

Tick Tock...

The first part of the planning was to work out the dominant features of the model and what colours they should be. I picked out the main aspects of him as being his rather swish cloak and his darker skin tone. As the studio paintjob has a rather nice red for the cloak, I went with blue, which was the perfect opportunity to try out my new Scale Colour Elven paint set.

Once the dark skin and bold blue were settled on, it was easy to settle on a classic black trousers/white shirt combo to really make both of the dominant aspects pop. With colours decided and into the palette, it was time to begin. It's worth noting here that ideally the challenge is completed in a straight 5 hours. However, my time is often not my own so my 5 hours were completed over a Sunday afternoon/evening, broken up by supervising the Sprocker and a roast dinner.

As the largest area, I decided to tackle the cloak first. I usually work in layers, but to cut down time I mixed in some blending. I started off by painting in the purples in the creases and depths, before adding mid tones and highlights straight onto the primer. This allowed me to skip a few layers, before building them up further.

All in all the cloak took the best part of the first hour to get to a stage I was happy with.

I skipped a couple of timer photos while I cracked on with getting the first layers on the remainder of the model in.

The Palettes tell their own story of the 5 hours - I usually only use one a session.

By the time I was happy to call the painting stage done and the first layer of varnish on, I had 20 minutes on the clock. I stopped it at this point, as I didn't really want to mess up the model in the last phase by drilling into the wrong section and wasting a decent mini.

Time for an evaluation. The challenge itself was great fun. Knowing that I had limited time but that I was fighting myself instead of a competition deadline helped me get into it rather than freeze up. It also put a fear of not getting the model perfect to one side - there's been a little video going around the facebook painting groups for a while called "Finished, not Perfect" which I'd suggest everyone go have a little look at if they struggle with finishing stuff in order to get it exactly perfect. 

I know there are flaws on him - I can spot them a mile off - the highlight on his knee and on the shoulder pads are too heavy, as are the transitions on the drum metalwork. I expected there to be some after only having half my minimum painting time on him. The white is a little bit too gritty as well and perhaps the glow on the cigar isn't quite right. I sacrificed time on them to focus on getting his more prominent aspects as close to my best as I could get them.

The cloak may be the largest single area on the model, but for me it's the face that draws you in. Once I started painting it, it was such a simple job to bring out what I hope is the intended creepiness and menace - big thumbs up to the sculptor Lux Thantor. I went a little heavy on the lining around the eyes, thinking I'd be able to pass it off as makeup but it blended really well with the skintone and helped the overall aura.

After a while away from the brushes and having several projects on the desk, it was really refreshing to have a model onto the table on the Friday night for building, primed with the airbrush on Saturday, painted on Sunday with final completion done on the Monday. I'll definitely be taking up the Five Hour Challenge again!