Paint: Wanna call me Cheater again?

 From Exercise to ... Redo

Back in 2024 I was at Roman Lappats studio for a workshop about skintones. I bought this beauty from his flea market and shortly after the workshop I planned to paint her as a further skin tone exercise. Cabaret dancer from Scale75 Historix range.

All started quite relaxed. Some colour choices, skin, clothes and I started thinking about what type of girl she is. A saloon singer with a gun? Some story happened here.

Maybe some card game that escalated? Why not, so I glued her two pieces of plastic card as game guards above the suspenders.

A nice gimmick but she deserved even more story.

The more I painted her, the more the idea developed. I imagined her having a hard fight in the saloon and finally she dragged her gun to stop the fight. But if she had a fight, there should be some signs? Messy hair, ripped clothes etc.
And all that needed some modification on the sculpt. Too bad that I did paint her already...

What has to be sculpted has to be sculpted

Ok - there were just a few hours invested and I'd be quite annoyed once finished if I'd missed that opportunity. I scratched on her clothes added scraps, removed knobs and added a hair strain.

As you can see in the image, the paint was scratched off partially in bigger chunks as you can see on her left belly. Similar things happened with the green stuff. Because the greenstuff was only sticking on the paint - the paint rippend off from the underlying model.

Fresh restart

At that moment it was clear that a reset was the only option. I threw in Isopropanol alcohol, sculpted the greenstuff part again and primed.

And that's were the painting started again. Same procedure.

When the base colors and a set of highlights was done, the detail work could start. The cards were painted and a detail I still like alot: one finger of her right hand got painted as if there was no glove anymore.

Other fingers received the sam nail polish and for the gun I deceided to use true metallics - I still find it way more convincing when seen live.

Quite nice, but eveything was still quite clean. It missed - I'd say life and action! Signs of a fight, that's clear - so she got treatment with blood for the blood god but also some freckles. Not an easy task because it's the never ending attemp to create controlled chaos. Irregular patterns, variations in size and coulor. But that created quite a checky look.

I liked the look so much, that I increased the freckle count and treated her shoulders and whole upper body with varying brown stipples. The blood makrs in the face were good but she needed a bit more fightmarks on the body. The shoulder got a light bruise and the hip a strong one, made by slight stippled glazes of blues greens and browns.

That was a good time to pause and think about the backdrop.

Digital Backdrop scribbling 

The first idea was to create a saloon, with thrown tables cards and dim light. So I started the tablet and scribbled a saloon scene digitally.

These early sketches looks quite rough, and I missed the saloon feeling. But what makes a saloon? Maybe a saloon door?

Either it's the rough execution or the colour choices with the sunset beeing similar to the hair, but that doesn't work either. I thought: "Maybe the saloon is a level above my skills? Let's try a bit more abstract with just game cards.

That was kinda cool - do you see the wrong mix of colors / and icons to put emphasis on cheating? And also colour wise it Put the mini way more in focus.
But the saloon context was so important for my story, I couldn't drop that. So one more try.

Let's get Physical

I found that this digital sketch was worth to give a try with a brush. So I took the backdrop and painted.

Some lines are not really straight - just see the saloon door, but with it, the skull and cards, the atmosphere was there. I placed the elements more on the side so that they are visible even with the mini attached.

Lastly she was integrated in the environment. The light from behind was slightly added and more yellow mixed in the light colour overall. More dirt and blood on clothes and skin and most important: Smoke made of cotton on the gun.

That was a very joyful project, started as exercise and became one of my most favorite busts.
I got quite some feedback from Roman, and without that it wouldn't turn out that cool. It was often kind of: "Hey, look at those cool freckles, what do you think?", "Yeah Mike, good, but give her more... Way more!"
Thanks for the pushes in n the right direction.

Finished Figure