Behemoth WIP - The Writing on the Rock

Work continued on the Behemoth. I finished up the metals without messing up which was a huge relief after all the cleanup I was having to do last night. After that I went over all the metals with a careful application of black wash [and forgot to take a photo, apparently].

"Careful application" is something people usually don't say with washes, but I think there's a certain amount of artistry you can shoot for even with smothering a model with brown or black wash. One thing I've been really working on is to apply the wash in a single, upward stroke on each area. This lets the brush catch on the raised areas and create a shadow right beneath it. It's certainly not an exact science, and it's also why I want to start learning oil washes (which have a very long working time), but a little mindfulness when applying it can go a long way.

I decided to make the Khador symbols bronze. If this were a run-of-the-mill warjack I might keep it brown, but since Behemoth is arguably the best warjack in the entire game I wanted to give him the appropriate amount of flair [again with no photos - I'm terrible at this].

From there he was basically done for the day. I still need to paint his eyes, but I wasn't feeling confident in doing that much small detail, so I moved on to figuring out his base. I cut a few pieces of foam and started carving potential words in to them, but I kept going back to writing out Battle for Hope. That was unfortunate, because the amount of area I had to work with was not friendly to three lines of text!

I did a few test pieces, trying to figure out just how big I could make the rock before things started looking out of place. I settled on a cut that let me fit "battle" and "hope" in larger letters, and just shaped it into a wedge that matched the slope of Behemoth's foot.

Carving the letters was way too stressful. I kept struggling to get HOPE to look right at the end of my test pieces, so this time I decided to start with it, making sure I got it decently centered with the letters looking even, but chiseled. I then worked my way up, trying to keep things centered. I started by doing a very soft indent with a mechanical pencil, which was good because the O in HOPE took a few tries before it looked right. I then went at it with a razor blade to get some depth, followed by the full pencil lead to stretch out the letters and make room for my paintbrush.




After a "test fit" I took out bits of the foam to better simulate a rock, trying not to go too overboard since I really didn't want to try writing that out again! My angles seemed a bit too sharp, so I had the idea to take the side of my pencil and smooth out the sharp angles, which is something I'm going to do on all future foam cuts. Satisfied, I then painted the letters Enchanted Blue (to match colors used by Autism Speaks and AFSP) and painted the rock black. When that dried I did a heavy drybrush of grey followed by a light drybrush of lighter grey. I did a test fit to make sure everything would look okay...

And I have 0 complaints. I would prefer to have his foot centered on the rock, but I want to keep the rock toward the center of the base to protect it from damage. Speaking of which, I need to throw on a coat of thinned Elmer's glue to make a light shell. The foam isn't bulletproof, but the glue should protect it from normal damage. Spraying it with my sealer would have been ideal, but even with several layers of paint I don't trust the aerosol propellants not to eat away at the foam.

Screw it, I was sealing this guy tonight! After about 15 minutes I finally got the eyes right, and he was ready to be sealed. I still need to add some dirt and grass after sealing, but here's the overall effect. Again, that ink is crazy shiny so it loses a lot of my shadows, but after I hit it with some Dulcote I should be able to get a much better picture.




This model put me in such a good mood today. Back pain gets me feeling tense and grumbly, so having the painting go well and the rock turn out great just put me in good spirits.


See you tomorrow, hopefully with a look at the finished project!



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