"I am Iron Man!" - Iron Man - Part 1

Don't let someone who has done nothing

tell you how to do anything.

- Iron Man

Welcome back, once again, to The Art of Caesura!

Did you get my cryptic clue from last week about who the topic of today's post would be? I have fun writing those "Next Week" sneak peeks at the bottom of each post but I do sometimes struggle to get the level of vaguery right. 

Anyway, yes, today we have IRON MAN! Well, his zombie version anyway.  

 

Iron Man is awesome. He's not quite as awesome as my favourite superhero, but he's still pretty awesome!

The Iron Man movie from 2008 was what launched the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe; and what a great start they got off to! Certainly, in my opinion (and that of many others I talk to), they totally jumped the shark and way oversaturated the market over the next decade, but it must be said that they did a lot to bring nerd culture to the fore. 

It's hard to teleport oneself (mentally, and even harder physically) back to what things were like for superhero nerd culture prior to the MCU - I'm certainly not saying things were worse prior to the MCU, but it was a world where you couldn't just ask anyone who there favourite superhero is. 

Anyway, so Iron Man, who as we have established, launched things off for the MCU was really fun to paint. I almost never get to use my Leadbelcher spray, but I did for him! I sprayed the whole model Leadbelcher which would give a nice, lustrous base layer for the metallics to come, namely AK's Old Gold.

I painted this gold over all of the areas that would be gold (shocker!) and those areas that would be metallic red. The warmth of the gold provides a nicer undercoat to red. 

Speaking of red, I carefully applied Contrast Flesh Tearers Red, being careful to avoid the adjoining gold areas.

Bearing in mind that this is the zombie version of Tony Stark, I weathered things a little with Seraphim Sepia. I look forward to the hero version of this guy when I'll get to unleash a real bright cherry red!

With his armour complete, I moved on to the necrotic skin. 

It took a few thinned layers of Cadian Fleshtone mixed with Wraithbone to cover the Leadbelcher on his face, arms and left shoulder. 

Once I did, it was still nice and patchy and muted, but not quite zombified...

So I glazed on The Fang mixed with more and more Grey Seer and then gave a very light wash of Drakenhof Nightshade diluted with Lahmian Medium to tie it all together. 

After all that, I felt I had made his skin a little too grey, so I re-introduced a tiny bit of warmth with a very diluted layer of Contrast Guilliman Flesh on all skin areas. 

Before moving onto his eyes, I tinted Tony Stark's hair (both facial and headal) to his natural black.

I want my zombie heroes to have glowy red eyes, so I dropped some white into the eyes, and then coated it with Contrast Baal Red.

Off to a good start, but not intense enough, so I gave a dot of Kimera's Cold Yellow, which finished the eyes off nicely. 

Things were coming together nicely. I gave some gentle grey highlights to the hair, stippled on some weathered metal edges onto his suit and then prepared to power him up. 

I went a little heavy handed with the glow coming from his chest and hand (airbrushed white and then Aethermatic Blue), I was able to clean it up a little as you shall seen next week...

Thanks for joining me for another week on The Art of Caesura!

Reading: Soldier Sailor - Claire Kilroy

Watching: Andor (Season 2)

Next Week:

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