Hole in My Head Protocol
Elsa Bloodstone and the Giant Size Man-Thing
Elsa Bloodstone is just a fun character. When she first appeared (in a brief 4-issue miniseries in 2001) she was a bit of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer clone, but after a five year hiatus she reappeared in Warren Ellis’ brilliant Nextwave, reinvented as a world-weary monster hunter with gravity-defying hair and a sarcastic personality. She’s been a mainstay in Marvel’s supernatural-flavored books ever since.
For this one I decided to skip the speedpaint and went with a triad approach with washes for some of the darker areas and drybrushed highlights.
Man-Thing is…let’s be honest, he’s a blatant ripoff of DC’s Swamp Thing, with a name that proves we’re definitely not doing phrasing. Honestly, the juvenile jokes about priming my Man-Thing, varnishing my Man-Thing, etc, really are just too easy. That doesn’t mean those jokes weren’t made throughout the painting process though. Just imagine what it’s going to be like when he hits the tabletop…
(And yes, Giant-Size Man-Thing was a real Marvel title that ran for 5 issues in 1974. They must have been doing it on purpose, to see if anyone was paying attention. Clearly they weren’t.)
This one was a lot of fun to do. I’m sure I broke out just about every shade of green and brown I have in my paint collection, and the model’s texture made it a great candidate for the standard base color-wash-highlights approach. I’m very happy with how he turned out.
