As some of you have seen in the Groups "Armada" section, I'm supposed to be doing a card model of a Japanese aircraft carrier. However, a backorder arrived of a 1/10 bust of a Viking 'Shieldmaiden' and I've been diverted to her for a bit while also doing preliminary work on the carrier.

The resin bust is from Korean firm Nuts Planet. As you can see the pieces are finely cast. After prepping and primer she's ready to paint. The hands with weapons will be painted separately to facilitate easy painting access to the main figure.

The shield is well-detailed. The boards are thinly coated with two or three brown/tan colours. The face of the shield will be coloured, and will include a serpent figure. The reverse remains as boards. After the wood effects, three colours of blue are added and scrubbed in for wear, the serpent is pencilled on the sheild and painted, and the whole unit is further weathered in, for wood, metal, and leather rim effects. Runes have been added as well, part-obscured by wear. Also here is the reverse shield face complete.

The eyes have it... I always begin with the eyes when painting a figure, especially important in this case when the look conveys so much of the character. The whites are painted Ivory, followed by a weak Burnt Red around the rims. The iris is added using three shades of green with flecks of gold picked out. Rather than add a black pupil I simply left a spot of the darker green showing through, and highlighted for light.

Following Josh P's comment re lighting for the eyes, I've tried to photograph them again so as not to catch too much light from either side. Hopefully the following image is less distorted. In any case, in due course the eyes will be seen in a different context as part of the face in total, rather than as they are now against a grey surround.

Leather is never 'leather'. In this case the body shield-strap is tan, orange, umber, green, red, yellow, violet, and light flesh.

I decided to carry on with the other auxillary pieces before working on the skin tones etc.

Here's the sword hilt, based in black ink, followed by Old Gold + Black, then OG for mid tones, and OG + Chainmail Silver for highlights. The surface doesn't in fact 'flash' this way. I had to put a light fairly close for the photo and the metallics caught the brighter points. I may give it a weak wash of black ink later.

Here are the 'handed' pieces. The shield grip is wood, and so it's important that its tones match those of the reverse shield boards. The axe is wood, leather, and metal, so demands attention to these details. The reverse of the axe is virtually the same in appearance.

Moving on a little with the skin tones, here's the figure with a base coat of Beige Red, followed firstly by initial highlights and shadows (To achieve absolute uniformity you'd need to airbrush basic tones, but I'm trying to improve my actual painting techniques, so it's brushwork for me, using thin veils of colour to build the transitions.), then after a little more work a coat of Artists Matte Varnish. I find this varnish useful for skin tones because it contains beeswax.

The varnish bottle is set in a cup of hot water for a few minutes, and the cloudy effect clears as it heats through. When applied to the finished areas, It seems to soften and unify the paint layers. The photo here was taken not long after application - it dries more matte than this.

At this point, I've also applied a base coat to the hair.

Here are the handed items, completed.

More work on the hair - difficult, in that a head of hair is not one shade, especially blonde hair, which is a mix of auburn, brown, yellow-white, gold, with other highlights and lowlights. Not sure if I could do this any better than you see here, and this after much trial and error.

You can see also that the face has 'calmed down' a little after the application of matte varnish 24 hours earlier. The bodice has now had a base coat as well.

Having studied the hair a bit more, I decided that Artists Oils would offer that extra something I'd not quite managed with the acryilics. I used Naples Yellow, Cadmium Yellow and Titanium White, with a little Lamp Black for lowlights, and I think the result is much more lifelike.

I've also spent more time bringing forward the leather finishes.

Here are a few more photos of the completed leather work. I think that now I've reached this stage, I'll call an end to the WIP thread. The bust comes with a small pedastal but it would benefit from having this in turn placed on a timber plinth, which I'll see to in due course.

Thanks for looking!

Hi Josh. The blue is scrubbed with a damp toothbrush to move the layers. Other colours are washed in after, for contrast.

The serpent image is common in Viking lore, but search for shield images and you'll see dozens, some with images and some with geometric patterns. I think I found this particular image used on a red shield and adapted it.

The face photos were taken near a window so the light was stronger on one side. Naturally in due course when finished the photo lighting will be more controlled; these WIP images are just to give an idea of the process.

NOTE: I since went back and rephotographed the eyes, and that image is at the end of the original sequence, with reference to your comment, for clarity.

Thanks Rob. The last photo with the axe and shield handles looks great as well. With your ability to simulate aged and used natural materials like wood and leather, you'd do justice to a Wingnuts plane!

Cheers Josh. One benefit of the eyes rephotographed is that I've added a dot of emerald green to her left eye where I think the strike of light was a little too much, but I won't repost another image now.

Wingnutwings? Ah yes I've heard of them somewhere...

Rob, marvelous work!
The casting sure looks like that actress on "Vikings", sort of a spliting image, if you catch my drift...
I wouldn't want her angry with me!

Your painting skill are really impressive. The shild looks like the real thing !
Great work so far, Rob

Greetings :
I enjoyed very much this work, your skills are very much well developed, it is a pleasure too see such work, thanks for sharing.