Good news and bad news.
Good news: I finally finished the sculpt a few days ago. Since the last update, I added the final touches: a decorative arrow on his backplate, a few folds on the sleeves, a jewelled ring on the right hand, and an embroidered Rune of Hashut on his glove:
Bad news: the paintjob. :06:
First the brush-on primer (with which I had never had any trouble before) gathered in some areas and formed ugly bumps and streaks when it hardened. Maybe I didn’t mix in enough water, maybe I added too much so that it flowed around instead of sticking to the surface, I don’t know. Worst of all, it clogged up the little holes in the armour trim, which I seem to have made too shallow.
Still, in a spirit of optimism, I tried to remove the excess primer, re-opened the holes with a needle where I could find them, and primed those areas once more. Slightly better than the first time around, but not much.
Then, when I put the first layer of actual colour onto the armour trim, it started clogging up the holes again. After another attempt of re-opening them with a needle the whole thing started to look very ugly indeed.
And just as I was steeling myself to press on and see what I could salvage from this mess, I dropped the whole miniature - into my brush-washing cup, no less - which must have damaged its pointing finger because it came off shortly afterwards, and of course it is nowhere to be found. It’s all rather vexing. I think I’ll take a break from it for now and see if something can be done in terms of damage control later on.
Focusing on the positive, the sculpting as such was a rewarding and instructive project for me, and I’m very happy with the outcome. Lots of lessons learnt. Thank you all for your kind feedback during the process! :21: