Shake it off...

It's been a little longer than hoped since the last post, but to be honest, I've been having a small block with regards to painting. I'm sure that all painters get them from time to time, and most either take a break until the urge came back, or push through until it feels more fun again - obviously full time pros have to do the pushing through bit!
Fortunately for me, I don't have to do this as a job right now, so I could "afford" to take a little time away from the table.
The reason for my block? I don't know, but I've been struggling with inspiration for my next piece and the piece after in terms of colour scheme for the current piece, and a setting for the next one.

Lets deal with the first one, Seb Archer's M'Dusa...
There's only a couple finished versions out there that I am aware of, the first is painted by the Twisted peeps - likely Seb himself, I'm guessing - and the other is a lovely colourful version by Marike Reimer. Both can be seen on the Twisted Games Facebook album.
I wanted to do something different. Initially I was thinking of how to apply snakeskin texture to the model, but she is so small that I just don't have the skills/inclination/patience (*delete where appropriate) to carry it off, nor do I have the vision in this instance as to where to apply said texture.
So, I spent at least a week procrastinating/researching what to do. Then last night I was having a little flick around and a Giger image popped up. Bingo! The kind of colours used in much of Giger's work was just what I wanted to try out, plus the details of the sculpt leant itself ideally to a Giger-esque scheme.
So, brush in hand, I set about her with renewed enthusiasm, and moved along quite quickly...

 
There's obviously a lot of tidying up to do, and also a lot of picking the details out before adding some more subtle tones - it is also rather glossy at the moment - but I'm quite pleased with progress so far.

After M'Dusa, I shall be moving onto Clio et Erato.

I've been looking at the comic strip that relates to this - spending quite a long time translating Italian into English! - and I think that I have an idea of the scenery that I want to do for them. Need to do a little bit of image searching, then I'll likely show my plans in the next instalment or so.

In other news, I received a rather wonderful, and unexpected, parcel last week from the gang at Kingdom Death, with a nice note attached too. Inside were some samples of the plastic pinups that will come with the expansions on Monster - which now appears to be moving towards its later stages of production at last - I shall be putting these together very soon and doing a new series of articles to accompany them. This may mean another quiet period, but not for a few weeks at least, as I have plenty to keep me occupied.
Yay for Kingdom Death! ^_^

In a slight aside to my usual flagrant self promotion (lol), I would like to point you, dear reader to a few places that I visit (perhaps not as often as I ought to...!)

David Zabrocki's site - www.davidzabrocki.com - an inordinately talented chap, who I believe paints almost entirely with enamels(!!). A top guy who I have been able to get to know a little over the last few years while attending Euro Militaire, where he is also a judge. Really inspiring painted works indeed!

Damien Pedley's blog - http://deespaintfilledhellhole.blogspot.co.uk/ - Another rather talented chap, who tends to do Games Workshop stuff, but with his own twist.

Rafael Garcia Marin's blog - http://volomir.blogspot.com - Won just about everything to do with paint, so why wouldn't you look!? ^_^
Plus he was gracious enough to pick out my Lion God as a model to watch out for recently too, so one good deed deserves another ;)

His blog is actually already on my Shiny Blogs list, the link to which is on the right side of the page ------->>
So, be sure to check out the links on there.

That's about it for today, so, erm... Bye! ^_^