From TamsinP - Curtgeld "Is that the best you can do, you pansies?" (28 points)

My 23rd submission this year is my Curtgeld. I've actually painted up the same figure (in slightly different poses) twice - the Snowlord will get to choose which one he wants (Curt - you can only have one; the other is for me! Me! Me! *lol*).

Marv from Sin City

I'd say that he's a marvelous antihero (see what I did there?).

• He's got that heroic square jaw. 
• He gets very drunk. 
• He'll do anything to help a friend.
• He's an ugly beggar, made more ugly by all the scars. 
• He won't hurt women. 
• He doesn't have any problem using violence , even in everyday encounters.
• He falls in love with dangerous dames. 
• He frequently discovers he's killed people and has a hard job remembering having done so and why he did it. 
• He has some great lines in the films (and probably in the graphic novels too).

Rumour has it that the make-up technicians for the two films protested at Mickey Rourke being cast in the role. They said it would be much easier to make a pretty boy ugly enough to be Marv than it would be to prettify Mickey Rourke.

The "Marv" figure is 28mm from Hasslefree; the victim is from the Dixon gangster casualties pack. The figure comes with two different heads, two different right arms, one left arm and the left leg which all need gluing in place.

Oh, and I did them in greyscale - it seemed appropriate.

This was my first attempt at greyscale. The most difficult bit was that most of his clothing is black, so I needed to differentiate between items. I ended up using 4 different dark greys, washed black, heavy highlight in the same grey, slightly thinner black wash, then two more highlights followed by thinner black washes. The reason for the black washes after each stage was to tone down the contrast.

Once the blacks were done, it was onto the lighter shades for face, hair, hands, singlet and belt buckle. As far as possible I tried to leave "shadow lines" where the light areas meet the dark clothing. Finally I added some darker grey to resemble bruises and scars on his face and some red for blood spatter.

They got a coat of Klear, then another of matt varnish. The belt, buckle and boot-uppers got a coat of gloss varnish on top of that; the coat, gun and the victim's hair got a coat of satin varnish.

The pics do seem to show something grainy reflecting light. I'm not sure if that's the varnish or maybe dust from when I added the ground texture to the bases.

Some of you may be wondering about the title of the post, It's a quote from Sin City (as distinct from Sin City: A Dame To Kill For).

[Marv's last line, blood pouring from his mouth, after the first shock from the electric chair] 
Marv: Is that the best you can do, you pansies? 
[They shock him again] 


From Curt:

Fantastic! I love it. Wonderful work Tamsin. Marv is an absolutely perfect antihero and it's made even better with you doing him up in the spirit of Sin City - just brilliant. 

I particularly like the chiaroscuro effect of the blood spatter juxtaposed against the greyscale setting. Excellent stuff.

I can commiserate on how hard it is to properly photograph greyscale figures. It's very fiddly as you have to have good control over the lighting, ISO settings and backgrounds - I must go a hundred varying shots to find one that I'm happy with. So my hat's off to you m'dear!

Interesting lore regarding the makeup artists working on 'Sin City'. It seems tragically poignant as Mr. Rourke used to be a very attractive man before the botched plastic surguries in his middle career. 

I've very much looking forward to having Marv amongst the other antiheros in my Challenge display cabinet. Thank you Tamsin!