Hot off the Desk: Shadows of Brimstone Sand Kraken

SoB Sand Kraken - attacking my patio table on a gray October morning.

One thing that was abundantly clear coming out of ReaperCon was that I need to get my painting volume up.  My pile of shame has grown to epic proportions, and some of the models I have are now getting pretty old.  So, instead of getting bogged down in the Dropfleet panel lines and detailing, I rummaged around in the closet and found a few older models that I could kick out quickly.

First up, is the Shadows of Brimstone Sand Kraken.  He's an XXL monster (meaning a "big big bad" that will show up to thwart a higher level party).  I didn't want to take the time and energy to work him up as a display model (and to be honest, his sculpt has never been my favorite).

But, there's some fun parts of him.  Assembly was super simple.  The mold lines were clean and I only did minimal filling.

I also had an opportunity to experiment:

• Oh, those big eyes, who doesn't need practice on eyes?
• Airbrush color shading
• Hand highlighting
• First use of Stynlrez colored primer

The super vibrant colors were a really nice change after months of painting gray ships and dark KDM models.

Perfect model? Oh heck no.  I could have done a lot more fussing with the rocks, my highlighting is very off in a few places, the tentacles deserved more detail, and the dark recesses of the skin lost some definition along the way. 

But he's done.  And on to the next.

Sand Kraken with Dorothy for scale.  He was procured a few Gencons ago and promptly stuffed in the closet.

First use of Stynlrez primer.  It shoots super smooth, without any prep or thinning.  However, for this model I realized later that I'd rather have worked with a black primer.

I darkened the primer layer with a stone brown color, then began applying greens with the airbrush very directionally to get the shadows.  I didn't want to use inks/washes to define the skin, and mostly succeeded.

Mostly complete model; here I'm building the whites of the eyes up. The orange mane was masked and airbrushed in a build up of 3 colors.  The brighter colors in this stack were used to accent the tentacles.

Finished model, side view. 

Finished model, back.

Finished model, reverse view.