Where greed and the occult walk hand in hand,
where mobsters and monsters prowl the streets,
none escape the justice of Lobster Johnson!
Welcome Hellboys (and girls) to another Friday on The Art of Caesura!
I promise this isn't exclusively a Hellboy blog, but I sure have painted a lot of it this year! Today is a special one: Lobster Johnson!
I honestly don't know what I find so cool about Lobster Johnson, but I just think he's awesome. I mean, look at him in that iconic "Doom 1" pose above! The few stories that I have read with him in them, he is a bit of a side character, but this just adds to his mystique.
I think his model is really cool especially when he's not in a classic super hero pose.
From a zenithal undercoat, I started with Black Templar, before painting his icon and scarf Talassar Blue...
...and his pouches Snakebite Leather.
The 0.5cm of flesh on his lower face received a quick wash of Guilliman Flesh (which I forgot to come back to, so that's his finished skin!)
Given that most of his outfit is black, I wanted to add diversity of materials. I gave his boots and gloves another coat of Black Templars to separated them from the fabric of his pants, and painted his helmet, buttons, and smoke grenades silver - the helmet will later receive a coat Black Templars too for that metallic black look.
I shaded the blue areas with Drakenhof Nightshade, and began to highlight his suit with Scavenblight Dinge...
...and then with Sombre Grey on the prominant areas of his collar, upper surfaces of arms, and big ol' thighs.
In anticipation of giving his gun the same treatment as his helmet (i.e. metalic black) I painted it silver.
As I approached the eye-busting task of painting the fine details, I armed myself with my secret tool to really hone my brush control - my 6-month old bouncing baby Isla!
Regular readers will have seen Isla a few times now, usually assisting me with photography, but at times lending her sagacious presence to my painting
So Isla and I painted the helmet and gun with Black Templar and then we moved on to some nice saturated high-lighting of the lobster claw logo on his chest.
We used some nice Vallejo paints that I acquired from a friend: Magic Blue and then Electric Blue, they gave a nice pop to the logo.
We highlighted the pouches with XV-88 - another new colour for me, which highlighted the Snakebite Leather perfectly.
Finally, Isla, unhappy with the orientation that I was trying to free-hand on the Lobster Claw icon that Lobster Johnson burns onto his enemies foreheads, (she felt it should be facing upwards despite my showing her that this was indeed the orientation in the comics); she chose this moment to commence her "flinging herself backwards" technique which added to the excitement of painting this minuscule detail, first in white then with Iyanden Yellow.
We used these techniques for the eyes as well.
Below you can see that yes, we did also paint the back of the model!
That's Lobster Johnson complete! What a cool guy.
Anyway I'll see you back again next week for more on The Art of Caesura!
Watching: Under Paris (2024) - Xavier Gens
Reading: Rules of Civility - Amor Towles
Next Week:
The burning hand...
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