Future Shock - Net-Junkie with Keyboard & Screen

These are the grim survivors

of a future world in chaos.

Punks, bikers and other fringers,

banding together or competing for

scarce resources and freedom

in the face of hostile conditions

and would be rulers.

- Future Shock

Hello hello! It's Friday, which means it's time for The Art of Caesura!

Today I want to show you a miniature unlike any other that I've painted before; it is one that I picked up from Prince August (which we looked up last week). This is a model from the mid-nineties, from a range called "Future Shock", appropriately called Net-Junkie with Keyboard and Screen.

Just today, I finished a book called Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, and while I will leave a more complete write-up about this book until later in the year, I will remark on the similarities of this book and today's model. Both are from the early-mid nineties and seem to have similar settings. A main theme in the book is people plugging themselves into the metaverse (like the Matrix) via their computers, much like this duder is.

Some of the first models that I painted were pewter / white metal, but it's been many years since I worked in this medium so there was a huge sense of nostalgia involved.

The model came together nicely. I scored the surfaces to provide a bit more texture for the super glue to grab onto, and it feels hard as a rock.

This was actually the first miniature that I painted after Marco's workshop and I was inspired by the environmental OSL effect that I had learned, and wanted to do some more. I also wanted to give the airbrush another go!

My plan for the painting was a relatively simple but hopefully striking use of Object Source Lighting (OSL). I wanted the story to be that this hacker...excuse me, Net-Junkie...is sitting in a dark room, only illuminated by the bright, cold white light of the computer screen.

Sylvia Plath has a quote in The Bell Jar about the narrator observing people sitting in a movie theatre with their faces illuminated and the backs of their heads in shadow, and the shadow is so pervasive that she wonders if there is anything going on behind their eyes. That was the tone that I was going for with this piece.

After priming the whole model black, I masked off all the areas that the light from the screen wouldn't hit (the person's lower body, the bottom of the desk etc.) I then hit it with a few "controlled" sprays of white from my airbrush.

Because I haven't fully invested in airbrushing yet, I just used what I had, which was my Wish airbrush with micro-compressor (which actually works really well for my purposes. The main drawback that I am finding is that it's max psi (pressure of spray) is 8 - where Marco Frisoni - (a master of the airbrush) uses psi closer to 40, which (dependent on needle size) can give greater control and avoids the speckling affect that is present with my low pressure system.

I also haven't bought any specific airbrush paints or flow-aide or airbrush thinner yet so I just used White Scar, thinned with water.

The main focus with this OSL effect was the directionality of the light. My whole artistic vision for this piece is that it is a study in light and shadow, in OSL and value sketching and practice for me to use the airbrush.

While I do not envision a light source behind this guy, I gave his back a light puff to show the bounce light rebounding off the wall behind him, and to add a bit more visual interest to the model rather than just having his back be pitch black.

With the airbrush stage complete, I removed the masking blue-tack and was pretty happy with how the shadows were looking already.

As you can see above, the white had dripped down onto the front surface of the keyboard, and I realized that the screen would not illuminate the whole desk area as I had portrayed. So I simply cleaned these areas up with a brush and black paint. I also painted white on with a brush on to the screen and areas near it that would be in the brightest light.

In cleaning up the over-sprayed areas, I realize that the light on the desk would not form such a straight line, but I kind of liked the stylized "Sin City" look and felt it was in keeping with the tone of the model, so I kept it. I also blackened the disk drives, which would be in shadow.

Then it was time to add colour! I kept my tints diluted and desaturated to show the effect that the strong white (light-blue) light was having on them.

I used contrast paints for much of the model over the black and white value sketch.

If I do say so myself, I think the effect worked pretty well! Especially in my moody dark lighting. I think it really does look like he is being illuminated by the screen.

Oh yeah, and get this, I didn't want to spend ages on a base, so I just gave one white puff with the airbrush before the model was assembled and then coated it in Snakebite Leather for an instant brown shag rug! Grooovy baby, Yeah!

Now don't get me wrong, I know this guy isn't going to win any Golden Demons, but it was a fun and effective exercise. And we must remember that there are other reasons to paint than only ever trying to push each element to 100% (I have a recent post about that very topic here.)