Le Grand Pandemique (Studio Junger)

(2010)

This is a bust I ordered from Studio Junger and I must say that it truly was a joy to paint. Overall, it was cast very well, with minimal cleaning up (some mould lines here and there, but nothing major). Fortunately there were also not any issues with air bubbles or deformations in the resin, which meant I could get down to the business of painting this pretty quickly.

I decided on a yellow/green/blue based skin tone, to give an idea that the figure was very sickly in a jaundiced sort of way (having suffered from minor jaundice when I was very ill a number of years ago, I had some personal experience with this). So my colour palette was working with Vallejo Model Color German Yellow, VMC Flat Green, VMC Dark Blue Grey and VMC Oxford Blue for the skin tones, with GW Rotting Flesh and GW Skull White added to the VMC german yellow for highlights.

I actually working in the german yellow base colour, and highlighted that up, before applying thinned down juices and glazes of various mixes of Flat Green, Dark Blue Grey and Oxford Blue for the shading, and carefully applied those to the areas to be shaded.

Most of the open sores were painted in with Tamiya Clear Red, mixed with a little bit of black and gloss varnish (GW 'ardcoat), put I did paint a few in to look like weeping sores, so used a GW 'ardcoat and yellow ink mix for those.

The mask was based off many of the face masks that people wear throughout Asia when one has a cold or flu, and I thought i'd try to make it cute, to contrast with the more morbid nature of the figure itself, so painted a cartoon rainbow on the front.

Finally, I finished off the piece by printing a sign on my computer and freehanding over it, before applying some Jo Sonja crackle medium over the top (to obtain the cracked weathered effect), and then applied some washes of yellow and brown ink, before further applying some ground up artists pastels which sunk into the cracked areas moer and enhanced the cracked weathered effect.