Marvel: Crisis Protocol – Iron Man

Continuing on from Red Skull, I really wanted to try my hand at a little more glazing, and so I turned to Iron Man.

I went with the card art for this one, as Iron Man is red, right?

If only it were that simple. I’d decided on a mid-tone of Vallejo’s Model Air Red, from there I could add the shade and highlights as required. But how best to apply this mid-tone?

Here’s how I went about it.

I primed in black and then covered this with a base coat of Burnt Umber (VMA). I then applied zenithal highlights using Light Rust (VPA) at 45° and Bonewhite (VGC) at 90°. I didn’t use the usual colours of a grey and white, as I wanted to use a glaze and red is much better covering brown based colours, like the two I chose.

I then mixed up a glaze in my airbrush cup, Red (VMA), Glaze Medium, and thinners. The exact ratios are hard to say, as I just played around until I had the consistency I wanted – I sprayed onto a bit of card already covered with various other colours to see how thin it was.

This glaze was then sprayed all over Iron Man, and at this point I thought I’d gone too dark with the base. The Red over the Bonewhite and Light Rust worked a treat, but the Burnt Umber just wasn’t colouring, but I decided to see how things went, as I could always adjust later.

I then added the rest of the base coats using a brush; Middlestone (VMA) for the gold parts and Pale Grey Blue (VMC) for the Silver.

I started pushing up the red highlights using a glaze of the Red and slowly adding Elfic Flesh (VGC) to it. It was only much later that I twigged on the idea of adding the brighter highlights in Pure Elfic and then glazing over, which worked a treat, but I wish I’d thought of it at this stage!

I then added final highlighting of Dead White (VGC).

The good thing I found with glazing, especially after the addition of a little flow improver (Vallejo) to the mix, which slows down the drying time, is that it enables you to push the pigment around to just where you want it.

The shade was applied in the same manner; this time a glaze of Red with Mahogany (VMA) added to the mix.

I moved away from glazing for the other parts of his suit and used the two-brush method of blending.

For the gold: highlights – Heavy Goldbrown (VGEO), gradually adding Bonewhite (VGC), and then just Bonewhite. Shade – Earth (VGC) plus a little Beasty Brown (VGC).

For the silver: Highlights – Ghost Grey (VGC), gradually adding Dead White, and then just Dead White. Shade – Heavy Blue Grey (VGEO).

These are quite subtle, though, and don’t really show on the photos, in fact, they aren’t that noticeable anyway!

Last thing was to add his uni-beam and repulsor thingies. I filled them in with Dead White and then, using the same method I used on Red Skull for the cube, I sprayed over a thin glaze of Electric Blue (VGC) through a small hole in a piece of plastic – this avoided any overspray. Again, this hardly shows up in the photos, but it looks okay in reality.

For the base I used the same method and colours as I did on Red Skull, except I forgot to leave off on the drybrushing to create a shadow underneath him.

I varnished with a couple of coats of Vallejo’s Mecha Matt Varnish, and then decided to see if he could fly – he can’t!

Yup, I sent him flying off my desk and high into the air. He tried to stabalise his flight, and I tried to snatch back to safety, but unfortunately he hit the deck pretty hard. I’m sure that, if you look closely enough, you’ll be able to spot the few scrapes of paint, and something doesn’t appear quite right with that hand!

Well, that’s Iron Man, up next is our friendly neighborhood hero, yes, it’s Spider-Man!

Key

• VMA – Vallejo Model Air
• VPA – Vallejo Panzer Aces
• VGC – Vallejo Game Colour
• VMC – Vallejo Model Colour
• VGEO – Vallejo Game Extra Opaque