Urban Sasquatch by Wren

Description	:	More views are available at http://wyrd-games.net/gallery/showimage.php?i=1182&c=55. I had to choose between four minis completed in the eligible time period, which is pretty much unheard of for me. This one is not the most complex in terms of pure painting, but offered new challenges for me in terms of creating a setting and making scenery. Like Lavron, I painted this for Round 4 of the Iron Painter challenge over at www.wyrd-games.net. The theme was rage/anger, and the judges assured us that merely presenting a well-painted enraged sculpt would not cut the mustard, so I worked to come up with an idea that would reflect the theme throughout a base/scene, and came up with this. I was thinking of a superhero/villain vibe, but I think the general scene also works for stuff like World of Darkness or Shadowrun. Since the figure would be facing a wall, I decided to construct the wall and base as two elements that could be staged together or individually, to facilitate photography. The wall was constructed from a styrene brick texture sheet glued to a thicker styrene sheet. I haven't worked a lot with styrene, and I'm not sure why the wall ended up not being as straight as the original sheets were. I created the hole, then distressed the bricks with some chips and scratches. Then the painting of the wall began, and that was a job. After laying in the mortar colour, it took about six hours just to base coat the bricks. After that, I glazed some of the bricks a bit darker, and some a bit brighter, then did a bit of drybrushing to bring out the texture, and painted the scratches. The sample brick picture I had showed some dark stains on the bricks, so I got an artist's pastel and ground it up and brushed it on to create some staining. The garbage cans are a scale O railroad product. They came painted, but had mould lines, so I filed those off and painted them, which I took a fair bit of time over. I like how they look in the photographs, but in the hand I think they're a bit too dark. I posed them to look as if the figure had just shoved out his hand and knocked them over. The asphalt base was built up around the figure using a product called Paperclay. I also used it to make the broken bricks. The powdered mortar on the ground and sides of the broken bricks was made by grinding up a few of the left over bricks and sprinkling the powder over some matte medium. The trash was made from thin pieces of paper crumpled, soaked in a wash and dusted with pastel powder. I tried to create some streaks and pools of dirty water or wet waste on the asphalt to contribute to the dirty alley look. Since the figure itself is fairly simple, I tried to create a little more visual interest by varying the tone of the fur on the back of the arms and legs, and in the center of the back. I had some trouble with photography, there's a ton more shading on the skin than is apparent some places in the photograph.

Poll results:
Number 5 overall.
First Choice: 2 votes
Second Choice: one vote
Third Choice: one vote

From:	Dave Wright (orkydave)	(Sun 26 Nov 2006 05:05:26 PM CST)
Hiya, this is a great mini, and one I have never seen before. The concept is cool too, having him bashing through a wall! a nice colour scheme and smoothly painted too, well done. Orkydave

From:	Michael Stubbs` (LavronYor)	(Thu 30 Nov 2006 09:13:28 AM CST)
Beautiful smooth blending on the skin. The brick wall also looks really well done.