Gokufan's Celestial Genesis Twilight

I started out today by painting the arm guards on her right arms. Same process as on the left arms from my last post. I also painted her collar bone scales like the other chitinous areas.

Then I tried adding some color to her skin. For sunlight I used a glaze of something like 15% VGC Moon Yellow, 15% desert yellow and 70% basic skin tone. For blush I used a glaze of 15% VGC Hexed Lichen (purple), 15% gory red and 70% basic skin tone. I really liked the effect of the yellows, but the purple blush didn’t work nearly as well so I ended up blending most of it away.

Now, I’ve been saving the best for (almost) last. I’m talking of course about her eyeball crown! The amount of detail here is incredible, I count 40 eyes in all. They’re in a variety of sizes and all attached by webs of stringy connective tissue. Parts like this make me take a moment to appreciate the sculptor’s skill. This model was sculpted by Big Child Creatives, but I don’t see a credit for a specific sculptor(s) anywhere on the box.

Anyway, I start by putting gory red in the crevices. Then do a few layers to shade up to desert yellow, and another few layers to shade up to ivory. I’m going to have to go back and paint all the connective tissue that isn’t in the crevices, but I’m planning to finish the pupils and irises first.

There are corneas sculpted onto the eyes, but they’re a bit smaller than I want so I start by painting a VMC Black circle centered around them but larger than them. For each iris I pick a dark paint and a light paint. For the eyes I’m using a light source from the top/center of her head, so I do a dark to light, top to bottom gradient over the black circle. Then I come back and paint a black pupil in the center, and add a dot of ivory at the top. (Pupil aside, this is the same way I’d paint a GW style round/oval gem.) On the box art all of her irises are yellow but I want a more colorful approach.

My plan is to have no eye adjacent to another eye of the same color. I start out by picking 8 eyes on the left side of her head and painting each a different color.

• Green: VMC Flat Green and VGC Escorpina Green.
• Blue: VMC Dark Prussian Blue and VMC Light Turqoise.
• Grey: VMC Basalt Grey and VMC Ivory.
• Purple: VGC Hexed Lichen and VGC Squid Pink.
• Orange: VGC Hot Orange and VMC Dark Flesh Tone.
• Red: VGC Gory Red and VMC Basic Skin Tone.
• Brown: VMC Leather Brown and VMC Desert Yellow.
• Hazel: VGC Hot Orange and VGC Escorpina Green

This is making me want a bigger palette…

By my count I have 32 eyes left, and there’s still the connective tissue. This isn’t something I’m going to finish in one painting session. I’ll plug away at it for awhile and post another update when I finish.