"Firestarter" - Liz Sherman - Part 1

In the dark I heard your voice...

- Liz Sherman, Hellboy (2004)

Hello everyone and welcome back to The Art of Caesura!

Today we continue our look at miniatures from the Hellboy boardgame with the pyrotechnic: Liz Sherman!

This is a model that I actually struggled with a bit but I pushed myself, and learned in the process. I don't paint a ton of OSL (object source lighting) and I don't use my airbrush enough to be totally confident with it but these were two things that I really wanted to employ for this model, so let's dig in!

Knowing that I wanted to make her left hand really glow, I knew that OSL would help to sell this effect. So I started by blocking in all of the base colours, with the plan of painting the glow of the fire over them. 

I used Black Templar for her shirt, glove and pants and painted her skin with Guilliman Flesh. 

I painted her hair and boots with Wyldwood, and her belt with Snakebite Leather. These are the same colours that I have used across the agents to unify them. 

I painted her coat with diluted Steel Legion Drab and gave it a wash of Agrax Earthshade.

Now, time to start on the flames...

To sell the effect, I wanted it to look hottest right at her hand (where the flames are eminating from), so I busted out my airbrush and started spraying white ink directly at her flaming hand holding the airbrush paralelle to this hand to allow for some overspray on the rest of the model which would provide a base for the OSL. 

I followed a similar process with Bad Moon Yellow and then again with Iyanden Yellow (aiming this colour further up her arm, away from the source of the flames). 

Continuing with the airbrush, I used Gryph-Hound Orange, but things were beginning to get a bit muddy at this stage. I had oversprayed onto her face and body a bit more than intended (I should have masked these areas off after the initial colours). I was also losing some of the initial heat from her hand area. 

In an attempt to fix the hand issue, I went back in with the initial white ink to re-establish the heat. 

...Now I had lost a lot of the yellow, so I tried a brighter yellow: Vallejo's fluorescent yellow. 

With all this backing and forthing, I realized that it was time to put away the airbrush and pull out the hairy brush. 

With the paintbrush, I was better able to get into the deepest crevices around her hand to paint them white, and work the yellow out from there with greater control. I also darkened some of the orange areas to heighten the contrast. It was already looking much better. 

Next, I tackled the overspray onto her face. I just painted her whole face (and all other skin areas) with a 1:1 mix of Cadian Fleshtone and Wraithbone.

There really wasn't too much more to it at this stage: I painted the details of her face, highlighting the skin with increasing amounts of Wraithbone, her hair with Doombull Brown with more and more Skrag Brown added. I re-established her coat with Steel Legion Drab with some of the flame colours added in, and then Wraithbone mixed in to highlight. I painted her eyes, trying to accentuate the glint caused by the flame and I didn't touch her lower body at all - keeping it as the contrast-painted base colours with the bit of airbrush overspray. 

I'm really happy with how she turned out. There were a few moments of "trust the process" early on, and then once these transitioned into "the process isn't working" I knew that I was no longer using the airbrush for the techniques that it excells at, and that it was time to transition to the paintbrush. 

It's just as important to document (and reflect on) our travails as it is our successes (more so, actually), thank you for joining me for mine!

See you next week on The Art of Caesura!

Reading: The Bookkeeper's Skull (Warhammer Horror) - Justin D. Hill

Watching: The Bikeriders (2023)

Next Week:

A flame in the dark...