Finishing Akito seven years after I started her!

Ever since Salute in April life has been incredibly busy! Once I recovered from the inevitable post event cold there have been many trips, weekends away and even our first holiday abroad since 2019. However, I was determined to have a new project ready for the Fen Model Show (FMS) at the end of July. The obvious candidate was my next Aeldari Corsair, the Shade Runner. But who wants to be obvious?

Finishing Horticulus Slimux was an extremely positive experience and fully rekindled my enthusiasm for painting. I’m enjoying the Corsairs but, as I predicted, I fancied a change from what is a very long running project. That change came in the form of another model that’s been haunting the back of my cabinet, since January 2018. Like Horticulus Slimux, it got off to a good start but stalled and was then sidelined.

 

In truth the ‘good start’ was a part of what put me off! This model is very challenging for me as it’s unlike anything else I’ve ever painted before. Initially I was experimenting and taking a risks but, with success, came caution. I’ve noticed that if a paint job goes well the fear of messing things up increases and that can become a barrier to painting. However, I think it’s far better to take risks and get a project finished, even if it’s not 100% successful. At the least you can chalk it down to experience and learn some lessons; but an unfinished project is a far less positive experience. 

The mystery model that’s been bothering my conscience for all these years is Akito the C Girl and it felt incredibly good to get her out of the cabinet and back onto the desk! Both the subject and scale are things with which I have limited experience and she is no less a challenging project now than she was in 2018. But its a challenge I was up for.

Before starting on the second phase of my Akito project I needed to study the model closely and come up with a plan of action. I’d achieved more on Akito than I thought. The bulk of the flesh tones were painted, the leather jacket was all but done and I’d made a good start on the hair. What remained to paint were the arms, sword and hood. This didn’t sound like a lot of work but I felt that there were also many parts of the earlier work that would benefit from some finessing and refinement.

For clarity I’ve broken my progress down into the following stages. But, as ever, the work is much more a matter of going back and forth than this would suggest. Progress is almost never linear with the earlier work needing subtle adjustments as the overall scheme develops.

The Overall Colour Palette

I wouldn’t usually start a project without a firm idea of my color palette but in Akito’s case the palette developed organically as I progressed. With the exception of the pink spot colour the palette consists mostly of blue grey, browns and the flesh tones. All are relatively desaturated and veer towards being neutral. I don’t think this is a palette I would have cooked up in advance of painting as it only came together in the later half of the project.

Flesh tones

When I’d put Akito to one side I felt that the skin on the face and torso was finished. I’d come up with and implemented a palette of colours that helped me to create the pale soft looking flesh I intended. On reviewing the work seven years later, that remains mostly true but I felt there was room for some improvement. I pushed a few of the highlights just a little further but the biggest change was on the face. I added some extremely subtle red glazes around the eyes, nose and cheeks. The paint was little more than tinted water but the addition of the red brings a bit of warmth and the feeling of life to the face. I used Fiery Vermilion from Army Painter for this. It’s an intense colour I look forward to further experimenting with.

 

Even with the face and torso finished I still had to paint the visible flesh on Akito’s arms. This was a daunting prospect as the final flesh tone is the result of glazing, layering and stippling a variety of flesh tones from several paint ranges; however, I was able to refer back to my own articles and blog posts to refresh my memory. Broadly speaking, I worked from pink hues in the shadows to gold hues in the highlights. Once I implemented this principle the flesh tones came together surprisingly quickly.  A key factor was the use of Rakarth Flesh both as a base colour and an element of my colour mixes. It’s a warm grey that helped to calm down the saturation of the overall pallet and unite the different hues.

Jacket & Hood

My first thoughts on Akito’s clothing was to create a very sci-fi look. I intended to use blacks and shiny textures. I began by painting the bikini top this way and was pleased with the result but changed my mind about her jacket. I decided that a more eclectic style would suite her character and it would be more interesting to paint. I painted the leather jacket brown and added lots of texture to make it look old and worn.

 

The first step was to find some reference pictures and they proved to be very useful. It took a lot of dots, dashes, stipples and strokes to build up the texture in a variety of browns. The hues I chose were also affected by the texture. Smoother shinier areas have a cooler hue as they are reflecting more of the sky than the rougher areas. Where the jacket was especially worn I used an orange/brown to show where the darker surface was wearing off. Overall the jacket was one of the most enjoyable parts of the model to paint!

 

I decided to paint the hood grey. This decision was made fairly late in the process as my overall color palette began to come together. The hood was stippled to create a soft looking fabric texture. The hood’s lining was painted in a desaturated pale blue/grey to add interest and variation to the range of greys used. To make it look as if it was a silkier material than the outer hood, I painted brighter highlights and subtle pink reflections from the adjacent hair. The hood was the last element of Akito’s clothing to be painted but the jacket required one last touch.

 

There is a rectangular back panel on the jacket that cries out for some sort of embellishment. My first thought was to create the graphics for the panel in my illustration software then print it and glue it onto the jacket as if it were a patch that was sewn on. This would be executed in the same way as I create the labels for my plinths. Then I had second thoughts as, although I would have created the graphics myself, it felt like an easy option and not in the spirit of a project intended for a painting competition. This called for a freehand design. I decided to paint Akito’s name on the back panel in a graffiti style as though she had painted it herself and the prospect was daunting. However, I was forgetting my own roots! I am, after all, a fully trained Graphic Designer with 30 years of industry experience and this task took me right back to my college days. I came up with a letter style in my Illustrator software so that I had something to refer to but then painted it onto the jacket freehand. This enabled me to tweak the design to better fit the scale and area I was working in. Once I started doing this I loved the process! I had to take some risks on this project to make some progress.

Hair

I’d made a start on painting the hair during the first stage of the project. I’d mixed up a base colour, highlighted it with the addition of ivory and shaded it with Screamer Pink. This pink colour looked alright to me but also a bit lifeless. What I now needed to do was to bring some dimension and interest to the hair.  The addition of Blanched Berry deepened the shadows and the use of Bering Blue added a reflective quality to these areas. I painted further highlights but felt they looked a little washed out and desaturated. To counter this I glazed dilute yellow ink onto them. This warmed up the colour which had been a little too cold and it also brought some saturation back into the mid-tones and highlights. I think the hair now has some subtle variations of hue that make it more visually interesting than the initial flat looking pink.  

 

Metallics

Both of the arms needed to be painted in the second phase of this project. Because the arms would feature the largest metallic components of the bust they made up the most significant elements of the new work. I’d decided to use true metallic back in the first phase of this project. I prefer to paint non-metalic metals rather than true metallic metals as the final look is more in my control. However, I think true metallics can look great on larger scale models and this is something I wanted to explore more. It’s a choice I would regret at times as the metals proved to be a struggle!

I’ts been some years since I’ve used metallic paints and it took a lot of trial and error to decide which paints to use. I experimented with different combinations of metallic paint, ordinary paint and inks. My final choices were all from Scale Colour as they gave me the result I liked best with my preferred method of application.

 

I built up successive layers of metallic paint and ink glazes. This enables me to create deep rich shadows with a soft sheen that helps to sell the illusion of a patina. The mid-tones and highlights are built up with metallic paint to create texture and shine. I used varying combinations of black, blue and chestnut ink. The combination of these three colors gave me a great range of hues including blue/greys, browns and dull greens. The combination of these hues brought a lot of variation and interest to the metals

 

I didn’t want a dirty or corroded finish but neither did I want the metals to look pristine. I think a patinated look gives the metals some character and definition without being too grungy.

Sword

If the metals were tricky to paint the sword proved to be a nightmare from start to finish! Akito’s original resin sword had warped slightly and had a definite kink in it. It was easy to straighten the blade with a little heat but over time the kink would return. This was another reason I’d put the project on hold as I needed to find a replacement. I took my time and considered multiple options. I could carve a new blade from plasticard or source a new blade from another kit. I began an exhaustive search and although there were other kits with swords of an appropriate size nothing seemed quite right. However while searching online I came across an interesting possibility. Listed on Amazon as ‘Vintage Metal Bookmarks, Charm Pendants Mini Sword Knife’ was a set of metal alloy swords in what looked to be the perfect scale. They were priced at an affordable £8.99 so I decided to purchase a set and see if they were of any use.

What arrived was a set of seven surprisingly sturdy metal swords of an almost perfect size. The greatest advantage I saw in these blades was that there was really no way they would bend or warp. What was less perfect was that, for obvious reasons, the blades were not only blunt but had somewhat thick edges. It was time for me to purchase a new set of files and get to work on the metal blades.

The metal was surprisingly hard but this meant that the work of refining the blade would be easier to control than if it were made of a soft metal. The job was straightforward and after a couple of hours of careful filling I had a suitably sharp looking sword. I cut the (rather too long) sword to length and then drilled and pinned it in place. I wanted a big bold sword but I’ve had feedback that it’s too long and, in retrospect, I agree as it unbalances the composition. However, I will chalk that down to experience rather than going back in and trying to change it.

I thought my troubles with the sword were all solved but I was very wrong! My first intention was to paint the sword metallic using a very bright silver. I experimented with Molotow Liquid chrome and it certainly delivered as promised. One heavy coat applied carefully but confidently with a brush gave a mirror like chrome finish, however, when I tried to apply some shading with my inks they just beaded on the surface and wouldn’t lay smoothly. On further consideration the chrome was probably too bright for the model anyway, so I applied a coat of regular silver paint to the sword and started shading with my inks. Everything behaved as expected but I hated the look of it! The silver looked too dull and too similar to the silver on the arms. I decided that if I couldn’t get a shiny silver I should go the other way and paint the sword in NMM finish with some true metallic chipping for a bit of wear and tear along the edges. The idea being that the sword has a coating of some sort over the metal finish.

I painted the sword with the grey and blue hues from my colour palette and included the black, blue and chestnut ink I’d used earlier in the mix. This gave me an interesting range of hues and also tied the look of the sword in with the metallic areas. Everything was going very well! The sword had blue/grey/green hues that were very pleasing to me. I’d highlighted the sword with an ivory colour but it looked a bit yellow, so I worked on lightening the highlights a little more. All to no effect because the highlights continued to get more and more yellow. All of the ink had been mixed in with the paint but I realised that yellow pigment from the chestnut ink was leeching out into the top layers. This continued well after all the paint was dry.

It was looking like I would have to strip the sword and start again but before that I had one last thing to try. Much of the work on the sword still looked good and I wanted to try and save it. So I applied a layer of matt varnish to see if I could seal the yellow stains beneath it. This was an even worse disaster as the varnish drew the yellow out more than ever!

In an effort to get the still wet varnish off I took a clean dry brush and quickly removed the varnish wiping it from the brush onto a paper towel. This worked and I was shocked at how much yellow had leeched into the varnish. The varnish was literally drawing the yellow out of the paint which gave me an idea. I repeated the process several times applying a heavy layer of varnish and then removing it until there was no more yellow staining the varnish. In effect I washed the sword with varnish. I then let the sword dry completely.

I repainted those areas that needed it and this time the yellow stain did not return. I will keep an eye on the model as the stain might return in time but so far, so good. I also threw my chestnut ink in the bin! I’ve never had this problem before but I certainly don’t intend to risk a repeat!

 

With the sword finally done Akito was finished. I’m still relatively inexperienced at painting larger scale models and I definitely have a lot to learn. But I enjoyed the process and I feel that this is something I can explore in the future. In the meantime, I’m very happy with how Akito turned out and it’s extremely rewarding to finish a project that’s been sitting around for so long. Seven years is a very long time to wait to finish a model (even for me) but it’s been well worth the effort!