Ramses 99% done

It has been a project that took longer than I anticipated due to my travelling to the UK for some work. Finally I attached the cobra and I have yet to paint in the black lines to accentuate the details on the head dress cobra, but as it is, I am quite happy the way it turned out. As the original sculpt did not have too many details on the face, this has been a very difficult project for me to paint mostly due to the head dress, which needed some shading which was done right after these pictures were taken.

There was some white fumes powder showing after the CA glue dried, this is also corrected after the photos were taken.

A very young friend of mine is a Warhammer enthusiast and I promised him to work on one of his heroes....which is the one next to the bust that was just primed.

Not being an avid model maker, I can understand the work laid up for me just to clear up the sprue flashes, but I cannot do anything to the figure standing on his heels because its stuck! Carving a completely assembled figure is a daunting task indeed!

Ramses Body Attached

This should be the final leg of the project before we complete it. After the tedious head dress struggle, which still needed some work, the head is compared to the body work and the disparity in skin tones needed to be brought closer, even though I think the face normally is slightly brighter for royalties with bodies exposed to the sun, the faces are sometimes sheltered. However, the disparity is great and once I finalised the muscle tones on the body and is happy, I now have to bring the tone closer to the face.

The photographing of the tones are difficult to get it right due to the use of overhead ring lamps and flash and ISO 1200 due to darkness on my desk.....so, the picture below is what we finally was able to get close to what I see. With 7 to 8 layers of careful light skin toning and dark wash back and forth to prevent the powdery look with is due to pigment breakup during glazing. I added some glazing medium to hold the pigments together otherwise, it will look patchy.

As you can see, with the toning, the body work is now closer to the face tones, and I am happy with it. Next, to fill in the rubies on the crown, I painted the balls on the resin with black, then crown them with red, then gloss varnish each ball to get the depth look like the ones on the cape.

Finally the nipples were painted in purple mixed with German Chocolate Brown leaving the tits lightly exposing the flesh colours below and glazed over with thinned down paint to give it some highlights. My wife told me that the nipples are way too purplish, so, I added more brown and glazed over it....now she is happy, at 5am in the morning, with gastric pain in my stomach, I wasn't in the best shape to pick a fight with her.

The fit, unfortunately was quite bad and I did not notice earlier. The head was tilting too much downwards and the whole neck was 90% floating on air. After 3 weeks of painting, the last thing I need is to carve it again. So, I blade it slowly, cutting out the inner side of the head dress, levelling the top portion of the cape and adding a sheet of styrene at the back of the neck, cutting off some materials from the front portion...and finally, we get the head brushed with CA and attached it to the body. And I bend the sprue below the bust which I attached to assist in handling the job to angle it back about 10 degrees for the shot....looks ok. I glossed the dung beetles on the arms and we are set for waiting the crowning glory, the cobra.

One good look at it I find the neck ornament and bit glary even though I toned it down with some glazes of flesh...I will see if I can achieve the pearly look but before I do that I went through numerous photos I have taken at the Parisian Louvre and find that the red and blue looks quite authentic and decided to keep it.

Ramses Head

The head is almost done, now left with shading of the head dress and putting in the jewels on the crow.

On the body, the neck line adornment is now painted in the basic colours. With some modulation needed to make it look stone like. Then its time to dot in the nipples and trim out the smudges on the arms shadows of the rings.... Few days more to go, then the crowning cobra ornament on the head and we are pretty much done.

Black lines in today

There was immense problem of painting since I came back from UK. It must be all that moving of stuff in the exhibition that I pulled a muscle or something. Whenever I handle a small thing such as a paint brush, it seemed that I cannot hold it properly without feeling losing control and something is stretching in my forearm causing me to lose grip on the fingers.....
This is very evident in my painting of straight lines today....I found that I cannot paint a straight line. I can only paint the lines, then fill it back up with red and purple later to make it straight again.

It is most apparent if you looked at this part of the cape. My wife told me to have it checked with the Chinese Sin Seh at our neighbourhood as it may mean the end of my hobby for good, much to her celebrating of throwing away my 500 model kits still left undone in the closet!

I was very afraid to go to such professors in the local chinese medication hospital to have this done, it only spells one thing that is almost an inevitable characteristics of such visits, intense pain and lots of bitter medication to take.....man...its the pain or the end of 500 model boxes worth 40,000 bucks in the closet.....pains on both ends...no win situation....bad man, bad.

Ramses Update on body and Cape

Its been a hectic time for us at this period. So, have to lay off for a one week after the body works. Finally, I am back in action again. Collected some dust, so, I brushed the model lightly with a number 5 brush. Then I continued to work on the head dress, while the decal is drying, I worked on the body by increasing the contrast slightly and then shading it back. Back and forth a few times.

Finally, the decals, chopped into 1.5mm X 12mm strips are joined to form the various curves in the head gear. When that is done, the thing was set aside to dry for 3 days to make sure the thing cures properly. The whole decalling process took me 4 nights of 1 hour each. While waiting, I tone the cape on the back a little bit more with primary green to bring out the rich turquoise colour.

The I added in the gold trims by drybrushing the previous black portion with a little bit more white but every so gently to make sure that it does not get into the black portion which I needed for the shadows. Gold without shadows looks fake, Gold without the base of white to bring out the glitter also looked fake....so that is why the white needed to be on the highlights. So when I paint in the Vallejo gold undiluted with a semi dry brush with Number 0, I l will get a 3 tone finish from the super bright, the dull and the near black, then there is the shadow of black. This gives the thing a more 3D look. I left the gold to cure for a few days, same period with the decals.

Next, I needed to paint over the head gear with the correct red before I add the black trimmings. This is harder than I expected. I hand painted the whole head of the bust with a Number 6 brush with Future polish, two thin coats and let it dry for 3 more days to make sure it is cured to a hard finish. Then I mixed the colour with Flat Red and Orange Fluid to match the colour on the decals and painted in the joints and to pick up the curves not achievable by the decals. It took about 5 coats in order for the colour to solidify enough to have the correct hue as the decal. This I am setting aside to dry for another few more days before I work on the black trim and bringing later the thing back with some Vallejo Glaze medium mixed with Matt Medium diluted to about 20% and do it ever so little to get the correct texture with a slight glint to the skin tones and also to leave the eyes to be glossy so that there is a glint in it permanently.

Ramses Bodyworks

I watched the movie again and found that my vest is a little too dark for Captain Lucky Jack Aubrey, so, I repainted the whole vest and also darkened the blue coat with some more matt black glazing.

I visited the Royal Navy Museum in Plymouth and found the hats did not have the golden sashes but black ones. However, in the movie, the ones found in the hats were gold. So, I wiped out the good old 4X0 brush and etched it slowly the gold thread and followed by a black wash and dry brush again with gold.

Finally, I am happy. This is the final look.

I finally finished the skin tones for Ramses. 1 hour after midnight I am done. Decals in sections are looking ok on the head dress. The rest has to be painted in by hand. Next up, the nipples, the veins, further highlights for the muscle tones. Then we are next gonna go back to the head dress to allow a few days for the body to cure.

Ramses Correction and head gear

I have some problems making sure that if I painted the cape on the head dress and keeping it even. So, I had a little idea. I went round scouting for line decals. I found none. I did however found a sheet with large US flags. Brainwave......haha...I cut it up, have the stripes...and walla....

I have a problem with the eyes. The right eye is a little bit off balance.

There was a need to adjust it, so, I did dabbed in some light skin tones to make sure that its balanced.

Corrected the top of the lips to be in line with the nose, didn't noticed it earlier.

Caping Ramses

Having done the eyes the last time, I wasn't too satisfied as the eyes seemed a little bit more larger than life, the gripe that I spoke off the last time.

I downplayed the eyes by introducing the double eyelids. As above, but wasn't sure if the eyes are too big and I compared it with the photos and found that they are. So, I highlighted the lower lids to increase the squint....and finally I got what I wanted.

Next I turned to paint up the silk cape head dress, I mixed some Vallejo Air Silver with Purple Rose and Vermillion and Basic Skin Tone to get the silky look and gave the head dress area a good 5 coats of it over 2 hours. I diluted the paint and gave it another 4 glazes to get the smooth finish that is glossy and even. It will take 2 to 3 weeks to cure properly before the STICKINESS goes away, so I turned my attention to the body.

From the above picture, you see the black dry brushed with white. I dried brushed this over with light blue to cover the whites and to some degrees, the blue. After I am done, I used the purple mixed up with some sunny skin tones to get in the shadows. I added 1:1 light skin tone to the blue to drybrush in the highlights and painted in the top part of folds to get the 3D effect. Then I added another part of light skin tone to this colour and with a 4X0 brush, the tips of the folds were highlighted.

Then I glaze it with diluted base coat light blue for about 5 coats to get the basic hues in place evenly. Next, to turn it turquoise, I used primary green, diluted to 20% and dry glazed over the cape evenly for about 7 coats to get to this point.

Finally, the cape is done.

Ramses Yul Bryner Part 5

Woke up this morning and I was really not happy with the eyes, even though the glancing look shows some resemblance, but I find that the eyes did have apertures that are a little larger than life and really needed attention.

1. I painted the underside of the eyebrows with basic skin tones darken with slight German Camouflage Black (actually super dark brown) to get somewhat sepia ink texture tone. I do not like the Vallejo Sepia Ink as it needed constant stirring otherwise it shows a glossy sheen
2. Then the eyes were filled with glazing medium to protect the paint in case there are some hiccups, we can still rescue it by deep washing with water
3. The eye edges were given a light wash of Vermillion mixed with 5% of sunny skin tone to get the edges defined like innards of an eye
4. Draw in the lashes for the eyes, going back and forth with skin tones till it settles in nicely without being too overt
5. Top and bottom eye sockets were pin glazed with Vermillion mixed with German Chocolate Brown 50:50 dilute to less than 20% with water
6. The upper eyelid and lower eyebags are highlighted with Sunny Skin Tone and Light Skin Tone 20:70 diluted with water to about 40%. Reason for water is to make sure its not too opague and it gives me about 1 minute to decide to wash it off or not.
7. Dot in the whites at the edges to scale down on the pupil sizes
8. Glaze the eyes again to give the glossy look
9. Glaze light skin tones of upper cheek bones
10. Glaze the cheeks with Vermillion, Black, Glaze medium and Sunny Skin Tone 3:1:5:1 diluted with 50% water. Reason for Glaze medium is to prevent the powdery look of paint pigment breakup.Bust head with face and eyes corrected below.....

Finally, it looked much better after 1 hour. Happy with that. Note that the head gear has recieved 5 coats of white mixed with Dark Prussian Blue 1:1 to get the foundation for it to be painted later with the dark violet colour.

Although I said earlier, to know when to stop, however, I never regret this morning's work as in comparing the 2, you get more life out of the new set of eyes when compared to the former.