Hey, Hey Dr. D fans. Dr. D here with a recent favorite on the color wheel.
You could say that I was green with envy when it came to needing to earn a best painted prize from a local tournament. Mysterio has sat unpainted for a very long time in my display cabinet, and I needed him for my roster. Decided it was time to roll out a real banger of a model. If only I knew that this model was going to drive me to madness more that once. If you see the model looking different between the pictures; you are in fact not seeing things. I wanted to share this green since it is so very pretty and I knew at least one person locally that wanted some guidance on this type of green due to the recent hydra releases.
As always, in order to do a painting tutorial, you need a model to paint. I used Mysterio for this guide, but it would be perfect for characters like Enchantress or the Hydra-affiliated characters. And, unless you are a big dumb dumb, you should order from Bearded Dragon Games since they offer you a super nifty discount to your preorders or by using the code PCME10 at checkout. Make sure you tell him that Dr. D sent you so that I can eventually achieve inevitable victory and take the business over myself in a sweet highlander-type duel on a local hilltop.
I think that is how transfer of business works in America anyway.
Lets get to business!
So, we got a model, now we need some paints. I have used alot of greens in my long painting career and it is no contest on which greens are my favorite. Since I am a simple man with a simple brain, I love my colors bright. Monument Hobbies (MH) make the best greens in the game. I know that Monument Hobbies have been getting their paint racks all over the place recently so these amazing products may be alot easier to find than you think.
I get nothing in return from Monument Hobbies, as much as I wish I did, so just know that my paint recommendations are always very honest and well tested.
Here are the paints I used for the guide.
I highly recommend MH paints, especially while painting greens, due to the consistency of their paints. It’s already thinned to a certain level that makes it easy to blend with. Saying that, the following comment may seem very strange considering the praise I will later heape on to it, but…..
…….that Bright Green Yellow is kinda hideous
However; lots of people call me ugly and I manage to make it work. I assure you that this color is amazing for making your greens sing like never before. Anyone who knows me will know I love contrast, and this color makes getting contrast out of your greens ridiculously easy. Who doesn’t like easy AND effective. I know I do.
So, when I first thought about doing this article I was hoping to achieve some kind o smoky, wispy green look for the smoke, but quickly scrapped it due to just not being able to get what I wanted. So, my first step was just a watered down MH Black Green all over the model since the primary color was going to be green. I knew I would have to go in and hand paint the cape, but I went into this model knowing that the dimensions were going to be strange.
I started with just 2-3 drops of MH Black Green with a single drop of airbrush thinner with some water to try and tint the entire model green. This model is also going to be a philosophical take on trying new things and failing, since I failed multiple times with this guy. Its like the late, great Colonel Sanders always said; always keep trying new stuff. When I finish a model and am not totally happy with it, I just sell it to someone who may think its the greatest creation on the earth and buy a new model. Since art is interpreted by other people, you can always find someone who loves what you make even if you don’t. Figured I would show you that no matter how many models you paint, you should always try out new things to keep this stuff interesting. The worst thing that could possibly happen when painting your models is a feeling of boredom. That is how you know the magic is gone……and this is a magic based household.
SO, while I am working on the smoke just remember nothing is set in smoke and this is an an article on playing around to try and get different types of textures. When I go over the suit itself it will be more of a typical painting guide article.
I knew that I would need to do the smoke first since it was touching every other part of the model. Thankfully, I knew I was going to be stippling the smoke strands to get a blended look. I flirted with the idea of trying to make the smoke more muted to let the suit be more of a opaque green, but you will see how it went. The next paint I used would be MH Green, and I would stipple the paint on with a loaded up round dry brush. This will quickly ruin the brush for actual drybrushing, but I really look the kinds of blend you can get while doing this. Since I have an idea for blending later on, I am not worried about seamless transitions. All the paint is straight from the pot, baby!
Its very easy, you take the brush, put some paint on the “tip” and wipe away any gross excess. We want the brush to be loaded, but we don’t want to make it unwieldy to use if that makes sense. I would recommend washing the brush before you do this technique. This is actually not drybrushing so you want the brush to be damp enough to smooth out the paint when you apply it to where you want it.
Now its time to get in the right mindset. You are 10 again, and your parental figure has blamed you for something your sibling did, and now you are not allowed to have a birthday party this year. You are mad……real mad…..so you are gonna have to get that mad out or you will do something you will regret, like start another army.
Take that brush and you quickly STAB and POKE the color where you want it, and you GET ALL THAT EMOTION OUT. Its ok to cry while you do this as it’s very therapeutic and you even get a collectable at the end of your therapy session in the form of your model. Just stab all the spots you want to lighten up and you will notice it a surprisingly smooth transition if you did it right. If the highlight seems too harsh, make sure your brush is damp. .
After you mess around with you a little bit, you will notice that it actually highlights surprisingly smooth if you work at it enough. My goal is to give it a little more of a motley look so that if I add another color into the smoke it will look more like blotchy like smoke particles. The level of smoothness is going to depend on how damp the brush is since that water is going to be what creates smoother transitions with the paint underneath your coat. If you want more starkness, less water, and if you want smoother transitions, you want more water.
I was probably as lost as you feel trying to understand what I am trying to say when I first tried this. Just STICK WITH ME!
Next, pulling out the MH Bright Yellow Green to give it some more highlights. Again, not so worried about transitions so this is just paint straight from the pot and put on the “tip” of my stabby drybrush. While you are doing this, stick more with the higher points and be less violent with your stabs since you want that delicious color transition.
Now that is some delicious green! I don’t think you can get more comic booky than that type of green. Now that we have an amazing base to work off of, lets start adding some other colors to make it more visually appealing. If you wanted to stop here and just be happy with that smoke I would not blame you, but I know the suit is going to be a similar color, and I wanted to try and add in a different texture to make the model interesting to look at. Taking a look at the ol’ color wheel would indicate that purple/maroon is a contrasting color to our green.
Contrasting colors are great ways to get more contrast, who would have thought, out of your paint schemes. If you are ever wondering how to spice up a model, the color wheel is the best place to look for complimenting and contrasting colors.
I take some MH Dark Purple and do exactly the same as I did with the greens. I load it up on my stabbin’ brush and get to town on areas that I know will NOT be touching the cape. I know the cape is going to be some kind of purple or pink at this point, so I want to make sure my placement is going to get the most bang for my buck by creating more contrast on color placement. Gotta work smarter, not harder. Looking back now I should have added some more water to help transition it into the green, but overall I was still seeing my vision coming together.
I was liking the contrast after I finished, but it was very dark. Gonna need to do some highlighting. I pulled out MH Plum and did it all over again. Straight paint, straight poky motions. Just make sure some of the darker color is visible.
I decided it needed a little bit more contrast so I started mixing in some Citadel Phalanx Yellow since I knew I was using this color later to the MH Purple and got back to stabbing.
I got a little more contrast out of it and was hoping that the next step would bring it all together. I admit I could have been pretty happy with this look, but I wanted to see if I could add a subtle tint to the entire smoke effect while also helping blending all the colors together even with them looking a little more spolotchy.
I was asking for alot I know.
Ok, so now its time for an entirely different type of technique. I can go into more detail on something like this in another article in the future, but let me give you a quick description. I took Citadel Shyish Purple Contrast and watered it down with a 50:50 ratio of Shyish Purple Contrast with Citadel Contrast Medium. I then just slopped it all over the smoke and made it really messy.
Now that it’s all gooped onto the model, clean your brush off and start sucking away most of the excess contrast paint. A brush with no paint works as a siphon that you can use to start pulling off the excess contrast paint. If done properly this should stop any awful coffee ringing or paint job tarnishing. Just make sure you don’t let any big pools of paint stay on areas that you are trying to smooth out. It should help remove the transitions lines and bring the colors together.
My hope was that this would blend all the colors together and give it a purple ethereal hint that would make it look different than the green armor that was coming.
I let it dry, and I hated it so much that I decided I wasn’t going to do this painting guide. I repainted it exactly the same way I am am going to describe the armor with the brush stabbing method and switched the colors to red. I didn’t take pictures of it since I wasn’t going to finish the article. So if it looks different that is why.
Ok, so lets do it again on a different type of texture.
I repainted all of the armor parts with MH Black Green to clean up all the messing around I was doing while painting the smoke, cape, and helmet.
Don’t even get me started on how many times I had to paint that helmet.
Then I just took some MH Green and mixed it to about 75:25 MH Green to MH Black Green and increased the amount of water to make it blend easier. Time to think about light and where to put the highlights. A good rule of thumb will always be up, towards the center, and towards the face. Mysterio is especially odd since he doesn’t have a face, or even a conventional helmet. This is good and bad since it leaves alot of room for doing cool things with the helmet, but that can take a whole lot of work.
Thankfully, Mysterio has never missed a single day of going to the gym, so all of his muscle lines are very well defined. This makes highlighting and shading very easy. You will notice that my highlight spots are riding directly on the top and inner aspects of muscles. I am lucky that I have a medical background (hence the Dr. thing) so I know how the muscle fibers are laid out in a human body. The eye will respond better to anatomical correctness surprisingly, so if you are every curious about these kinds of things you should look up a muscle chart.
Next we take that Bright Yellow Green. Put a droplet of it down and I just mix it with the previous MH Green until I notice that it’s a different color and then spice it to taste. If you want to push the highlights, add even more Bright Yellow Green, but I warn you that this color is powerful. It will quickly overpower your shading if you are not careful. So take your new creation and just start hitting the tip tops of where you want to color. The inner corners of the abs, tops of biceps and quadriceps, and the knuckles on the fingers. I also touched up the smoke in certain areas to give it a little more definition since I wasn’t able to get the smoky look I was going for. I just went full comic book at this point.
So, this next direction comes with the usual Dr. D warning. You can very easily be very happy and successful with that previous step……but now its time to bring it up to ultimate contrast. Honestly this one isn’t that big a jump since the Bright Yellow Green is already so amazingly vibrant. I just took some Citadel Phalanx Yellow and mixed it with the previous paint mixture. I hit the very tips and edges of each of the painted areas, but it is very important to keep it very subtle. I would make sure this is well water so that it blends right in.
Then I just took some MH Black Green and really watered it down to about 75:25 water to Black Green. Then I just tried to smooth some of the transitions if I saw any lines and reinforced the darkest areas. A very easy step that remains no less important if you want your model to look clean.
Wham and a bam, that’s another model for the history books. Thanks again for everyone who sends me random messages and randomly starts talking to me about painting stuff. I have to say that I love talking to you guys.
Honestly I am not sure what is next. I will just have to take a look through my pile of grey stuff and see what inspires me. The best part of MCP is that all of the models can effectively be their own thing due to the long history of comics.
If anyone has any suggestions, please give me a heads up on discord at Dr. D #4340 or email me at Furypainting@gmail.com.
Until next time hobby heads!
Thanks Dr. D, I wish I had read this before working on my She Hulk.
To your credit. I wish I had made this article before I had painted mine!