Showcase - Black Widow

It turns out that I don't have to spend weeks on a project to get something finished! Started and finished in about 12 hours over a couple of Sundays, I got the Black Widow from Knight Models painted up.

This is a model that shouldn't have been able to make it onto my table, let alone get painted. I wanted to stick to my plan of keeping a random project on the go (currently ArcWorlde Halflings) and one "other" project - currently Keysha from Purgatory, as the deadline for the competition for painting her is coming up rather fast.

However, the temptation of painting up a quick model as a change to spending weeks on something led to me getting her out of the case and priming her. I started off just working on her suit, using the same method and scheme as I used on my Commissar's black clothes a little while back. Once that was done, I added a few layers of S75 Inktense Blue over the top to give it a more comic book highlight finish.

Once I had the suit done, I moved on to her face and hair. The sculpt for her face is quite stern and almost cold, which is fitting, seeing as she is Russian. I used this and went with quite a pale tone, which also gives a nice contrast against the dark suit and bright hair. 

The hair itself was a bit of a pain. I've painted red hair before, but this time around I tried out a few different colours and didn't quite get it right first time. On top of this I managed to make the highlights a little thicker than I'd have liked. I toned it town a little with some Inktense Chestnut, but that has left it a little more shiny than I'd like. Since taking the pictures though, she's had a layer of Vallejo Matt Varnish so she's completely un-shiny. 

I felt that despite being a quick paint job using techniques in my comfort zone, I wanted to push myself. So I got out my new Scale Color NMM sets (Silver and Gold/Copper) to see what trouble I could get up to with them. 

This was my first crack at playing with NMM, and it shows. The blends and tones aren't fully there and the light is too evenly bounced off the surfaces, particularly the stingers on her wrists. Still, as a first step on the path, I'm happy with how it turned out, as it keeps the comic feel that the suit started.

Widow joins Iron Man (who was finished right at the start of this blog!) as finished Avengers for the Marvel Universe Miniatures Game, with plenty more to come in the future. Not only that, I managed to get the timing right, seeing as Captain America: Civil War is released in the UK on Friday!