Arena Rex

The figures from the Arena Rex kickstarter arrived this past week.  I've been looking forward to these for a long time so I put my other projects on hold and started on one of my favorite sculpts from the project, Otho Mentulus.  He's got a ton of detail and it's one of the more historically accurate sculpts.  I've gotten used to working on larger scales, so it's been an adjustment to paint a gaming miniature again.  

For the skin I stuck with my usual mix, Reaper's Mahogany Brown, Chestnut Brown, Rosy Shadow, Fair Skin, and Fair Highlight.  I made a small adjustment in the shadows, instead of going pure Mahogany to pure Chestnut to pure Rosy Shadow, I mixed Rosy Shadow into both browns (about 1 part rosy shadow to 3 parts brown).  You wouldn't normally notice the difference, but in large shadow areas I think it helps.  Because of his pose he's got some large shadow areas like his chest.  As usual, after the regular shading I went back with red and purple glazes to add a little more variation to the skin

The metals are the Scale75 metallic paints.  I've used these on my last few projects and really enjoy working with them.  The bronze is Necro Gold mixed with Reaper's Burgundy Wine, then that into Elven Gold and finally into Thrash Metal.  The iron is Black Metal mixed with Reaper's Pure Black, then that into Heavy Metal and finally Speed Metal.  In both cases I use a matte paint to help darken the shadow areas and reduce the shine from the metallic paints.  The helps keep the shadows dark even when the light hits them.

I used the Burgundy Wine color as my shadow tone for both the red and the blue sections.  I haven't quite decided what I want to do with the feathers, red, blue, or split the difference and go with purple.