My masters program is finally wrapping up so you can expect a future post to highlight my project for this year. As a result of that, though, I have been falling behind on side projects. Today I am bringing you something I did a couple of weeks back but never posted. This is the Nexu figure in my Imperial Assault game (from the arena scene in Star Wars II). I knew it would be a challenge because of its stripes and fur but I decided it was a challenge worth taking. I started with a base coat of khaki, similar to the color pattern in the movie. Plowing ahead with the details, I mixed red and white to get the meaty color for his tail and mouth, mixing in some gloss red for a wet saliva look on his tongue. Then I mixed a sick cream color for the claws and teeth and finished with dark red for the eyes (all four). Using what was called flat tan (much too green in reality) I began mixing the different fur tones. A darker shade was used for the long spine tufts which was then low lighted and high lighted with various tones. The striped pattern was accomplished with a bit of experimentation. Holding a detail brush and a short bristle blending brush like chopsticks I alternated between painting a solid stripe and smudging it with the surrounding color to fade it with the other fur. I continued like this until there were several non-distinct stripes, I then went back and repeated the process with smaller stripes inside the original stripes followed by less blending to make s stripe that fades out from dark to light. The result was better than I would have thought and I am very pleased with it, definitely a centerpiece to my figure collection so far. I have painted several more figures since this one but haven't documented any of them. Look for more figures coming soon
