I have never done much with the zenishifts beyond creating some examples for the website or for color posts on this blog. Therefore, I decided I wanted to play around a bit with one of them on a bigger project.
In perusing the web looking for something I ran across Reaper's Father Dagon figure. Somehow it screamed male beta fish at me so I started a collection of different fish photos. It seemed like trying to mimic the free-flowing pattern displayed by these fish would be a good place to start for a zenishift.
Then I thought about the other component of the model, the base, which looks like a ruined column to me. I have been fascinated with the descriptions on the web of creating a fake marble look using a dried-out wet-wipe (I had some of them left over from the beginning of the pandemic). So marble it was going to be.
Father Dagon
Step 1 - Assemble and cover with matte black primer.
Step 2 - Apply white non-metallic paint to the areas along the tail and spikes using short strokes to give a sort of spiky look.
Step 3 - Put Twin Sons all over the model using a large wide brush. Brushing allowed me to apply a bit thicker coat of paint on the white sections while keeping the paint on the black sections fairly thin. In addition, brushing the junctions between the two primer colors gave a sort of blended look.
Step 4 - Dry brush body using Death By and Bullion dry. Added Gordian Knot over the spots on the tail.
Step 5 - Add the finishing touches with Death By claws, Redrum eyes, and Pearly Gates teeth.
Base
Step 1 - Prime with matte white paint.
Step 2 - Airbrush with Pearly Gates.
Step 3 - Cover the surface of the base with a dry wet-wipe that has been stretched apart to leave small holes.
Step 4 - Spray Black Ice over the wet-wipe. Once the surface is dry take off the wipe.
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This is where things did not go as I expected. I barely got any black paint to show on the surface of the base. I think the wipe brand I was using had fibers that were too tightly packed together to allow a nice flow of paint through. Therefore, I gave up with the "automated" marbling technique and tried something else.
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Step 5 - Hand paint squiggles and small areas on the surface of the base with Black Ice, Silver Fox, and Death By.
Step 6 - Fill in the etched areas using thinned-down Black Ice.
Step 7 - Add sand, grass tufts, and a few flowers for decoration.
Step 8 - Assemble final figure
Conclusions
Using Twin Sons in a slightly different way work out much better than I expected. In contrast, my attempt at marbling using a wipe failed dismally. However, I think that the hand-painting I did worked fairly well to give the base and ruined column a weathered look.
