I have spent some time on the arena over the last few days. Tonight, I spent most of my time prepping Khepros, below, who will be my August figure (I should be able to finish Natasha within a month, except she wants to fight so she's been going real slow.) But I did want to get a little work in on Natasha, so I softened the color transition in her hair. Still needs work, but it's better now.
And this is Khepros.
OK, she still looks terrible, but things are heading more in the direction I want now. I repainted the hair with lighter colors, adjusted the eyebrows, and cleaned up some of the paint that got slopped around when I was doing the hair. That does mean I need to redo some of the shading on her skin, but that's not the end of the world. I needed to fix up the shading anyway.
I'm probably going to go back to working on her skin next.
I got back to Natasha today. Sigh. Some figures go real smooth. Others fight you at every step. I think she's going to be the second kind.
I didn't feel like dealing with her skin, so I worked on getting a base coat on her hair. I had some trouble finding the kinds of colors I really wanted; it's darker than I want it to be. I'm not too concerned about that; I can leave this base color as a shadow and work up from there, and it'll be OK. I'm not sure about the two tone hair, but I'll probably stick with it. I need to soften the transition between the colors, though. I'm also going to have to spend some time on the eyebrows; I'm not sure why one is a delicate arch and the other is quite chonky. Also not sure I am happy with having them dyed. I might have a better answer to that once her face is done. Oh, and the hair colors got slopped onto her skin in a number of places.
It's always amazing to me how much a difference finishing off the last few small bits makes on a figure. Today I got the gold done (mostly) and base coated the iron blades. There's a little bit of gold I need to finish, shading and highlights on the blades, and then on to the base. I'm pretty happy with her.
I finished (mostly) and glued on the separate bits for the front of Tiet-Khebi's skirt. After that I wanted to let the glue set, so I worked on arena stuff.
Not a ton of obvious progress in the pictures tonight because I spent time working on one of the pieces that hasn't been attached yet. I was doing bits of cloth I missed before, and also started on her collar. I'm going to try to get the belt/skirt pieces attached next time, I think they're close enough to done.
I worked on the cloth on Tiet-Khebi - the linen, and the hair piece. Also one of the front pieces that goes on her linen skirt; there are two pieces that go there. Once both are painted I'll get them glued on. Anyway, decent progress, I think. I might do another round of highlights on her headpiece.
The last couple days I've been doing a fair bit of prep work. The rest of the arena pieces are put together as much as they're going to be before I do the wash on the stone, and they're all primed. I still have a lot of work to do on them, but they're closer.
I've also done some more work on Tiet-Khebi. Finished her skin and face. So far, so good.
I started Natasha last week but haven't really been feeling it for the past few days. So, I spent some time working on arena pieces, I'll get pictures of that soon. I also started another Arena Rex gladiator. This is Tiet-Khebi. I'll probably switch between her and Natasha as the mood takes me. I also have some time off this weekend, but I'm currently thinking I'll use it for arena stuff.
