Painting the Test Model

I haven't updated the blog in a little while, I have been busy doing some concepts and bits'n'bobs and haven't had much progress to update with.

So far I'm keeping up with my schedule, just about. I was planning on having all my concepts done by today and be moving onto actively modelling my first figure. As it stands I have done some concepting, not as much as I'd like, but I have stuff to work from while making my models. I'm on track with starting my first model, which I actually began making a day or so ago and I now have 2 weeks to get that done and sent for print.

I'll be updating the blog soon with some of my concepts and progress pics of the modelling as I continue to do it.

Today is also the delivery day of my 2nd test print. I was initially unhappy with the printing quality of my previous chosen material so I got the head of the model reprinted in something else, something vastly more expensive but hopefully more suitable. It should be arriving here today any time, so I'll looking forward to seeing what it looks like and posting up some pictures of it.

So a little while back I was considering ways to paint my models. I was concerned that the previous material wouldn't take painting very well as it had an almost 'sandy' texture that felt like it would just absorb paint. But there is a real possibility I will have to print in this material, even though it isn't ideal, due to costs of printing in anything preferable.

Using the Games Workshop paints I have (these will be the ones I paint my finished models in) I tested out painting my model and was surprised at the overall effect it had.

As you can (hopefully) see from the pictures, painting the model grey actually made some of the details I thought were missing show up. So after putting a basic coat of paint on the model looked surprisingly better.

There are still some issues with it however, it still has a sandy texture and I'm not sure how layering up the paint (as is needed when properly painting the models) will work. Also painting the model showed up all the little holes in the surface of the model, resulting no doubt from the type of material and the manufacturing process.

I thought this may happen, so before painting the whole model grey I covered a small section of the model in something called 'Purity Seal' which is basically a weak pva solution sold by Games Workshop. Its a thin clear liquid normally used for sealing a model once it has been painted to protect it. The area I covered with it can be seen in the first picture, highlighted by the red box. Covering the model in this effectively sealed the model, filling in the little dips and changing the texture of the surface in that area.

Hopefully you can see from the pictures that doing this made the paint take much better in that section and just looked better overall than not doing it everywhere else. This test paint has been a great way for me to see how the material takes paint and what procedure I may need to follow should I get any future models printed in this material.

I'm not going to paint this model any further than this. I think I have gone as far as I need to in order to understand what painting on the material will be like and painting it any further would just waste time.