Welcome to another instalment of my repainting Triss Merigold series. You can see the first part here, and today I want to quickly describe two things: her skin and her trousers.

Repainting the face

The first thing I did was the skin, for which I used airbrush and some paints:

Here on the corset you can see an example of how I used the colors to build up the highlights and shadows, because the this is basically the same approach:

I used some Vallejo 71.271 German Red Brown with a little Magenta Ink from Liquitex for shadows, and some white to underpaint the places for highlights.

I applied my skin tones with glaze of Vallejo 72.704 Elf Skintone and 72.703 Pale Flesh, which were later covered with a fine mist of thinner mixed with Cadmium Yellow Light Hue from Liquitex. 

Her skin is freckled only on a narrow part of her face, so I had to change my tool to a paintbrush and thinned down Brown Ink from Vallejo. After this stage I moved to painting hair for a moment, as I was not sure how the paint on the model would react with my paints and if it wouldn’t peel off from the masking around the hair. Fortunately everything went smooth, the paint kept sticking to the model and I could return to the face.

I painted her eyebrows with Vallejo 71.293, and slightly modified the color with a bit of 72.704 Elf Skintone.

I applied the shadows around her eyes by airbrushing Vallejo 71.048 Engine Grey and I outlined the eye with a paintbrush. Whites of eyes look good if you add some skintone to off white and only use white as the color for painting light reflections on eyes. I also corrected off white and shadows on her eyelids with a fine glaze, and the blush on her cheeks with Citadel Contrast Flesh Tearers Red.

It’s only when I already had the base color for the whites applied, that I outlined her iris, and I colored the eyes in the very end.

I slowly moved down, creating lights and shadows around the nose and mouth. I also added color to her lips, using the same paints I’d used in the earlier stages.

I added some detail to her lips….

… and just cleaned up everything, while adding touch-ups and details. The face was basically done, so let’s move to the trousers.

Repainting the trousers

For painting the trousers I needed to protect the upper body, so Triss dressed up as a ghost and went “BOO!” 😉

The trousers were basically painted with two paints. The base was Vallejo 07.952 German Grey, and the highlight was 71.132 Aged White and 71.270 Off White applied in a zenithal way with my airbrush.

The next stage was a bit more annoying, as I had to pick the right thickness of my airbrush paints and try to get the feel of the trigger to achieve the same kind of grain of the base color to texture the trousers in my planned way.

This also gave me a chance to correct the placement of lights and shadows used to accentuate seams and construction of the trousers. Flexible masking tapes from Tamiya were perfect for this job.

Finally the most tedious part, the lockstitch, which is the decorative stitch on Triss’ trousers. But it was more of an exercise in patience than any secret techniques. Usual brushwork. 🙂

Done (for now)

So yeah, here is what we have been discussing today and in the next part I’ll address the corset and the base. 🙂

See you soon 🙂

UPDATE: If you want to read the last part of the series, here is the link to part 3.

You may not believe me but for the last few years I’ve been working mostly with large scale models, so when it came to painting something for myself I could hardly remember how to squeeze all the transitions and details on a 32mm model, hahaha 😀
So instead of fighting I decided to simply change the subject (maybe to one Triss Merigold?).

My problem with collectible statues

I’ve always been envious of the great display cabinets of all the proud collectors. Sometimes I tend to forget why I don’t have one. Purchasing this Triss Merigold model was one of those moments of confusion 😉 but all my reason returned as soon as I unboxed her.

The beautiful design was flooded with paint, as if it was machine-painted. I won’t make a good collector as I cannot afford the quality that could satisfy me… And just to be fair, Prime One models also can fail to impress me. The sculpts are great, composition and scale too, and even casting quality can be totally satisfactory! But if I am to enjoy and appreciate those sculpts, I would rather enjoy them not “colored”.

And no, I don’t mean those solid paintjobs we see on prototypes and master models, but the weaker models from production runs. I can barely understand why somebody who can afford such an expensive, limited model, so rarely decides to get it properly painted. Painted in quality that those beloved characters and great sculpts deserve.

Why Triss?

I’ve been a fan of the Witcher saga for years. And Triss Merigold was a character that felt pretty interesting to me, so when it came to choosing a statue I would like to add to my collection, the choice wasn’t all that difficult. The problem came when I saw the quality…

I know that Dark Horse statues are the lower end of the range of collectible statues, with brands like Prime One, Hot Toys or Sideshow placing higher than that, but still..

Triss Merigold that I received

The model I had was the Dark Horse version of Triss Merigold, official licensed statue of the character depicted in the popular games from CD Projekt Red. While the box looks nice and the pose is good, after unpacking the statue you can see that the quality seriously differs from the standards I’ve been used to:

Here you can see some more close-up shots of the statue, and for those unfamiliar, it is not small at all! These details are there, just not painted properly despite the size…

I even recorded a short video to depict it:

And if you have time for a slightly longer video, you can see some more details and angles here:

This immediately gave me an idea – why not try repainting the statue, so it would be closer to the quality that I would agree to accept. As I said, I had been working with large scale collectible statues for quite some time already, but rarely had opportunity to do something outside of the production models, so having this chance for a hobby project felt great!

Triss Merigold that I wanted

Here’s the image I chose for my main reference.

You can surely see the differences between the box art, the painted model presented on Dark Horse’s website and the model I received, can’t you? 😀

Naturally there was more, so here are two more examples of my main inspirations:

While one comes from the game, the other is from Xenbis. I also took inspiration from pictures found on guild_hunter_of_vengerberg‘s Instagram account.

Potential issues

So when I inspected the model, I thought there were two problems I had to solve:

The model was made of rubbery plastic, the soft kind. Which meant any kind of modeling work would be difficult, or at least not as enjoyable as the miniatures we’re used to. So if you want to do any upgrading or converting to your statues, have it in mind.

The other thing I was a bit worried about was the base, which was rather boring and bland. Of course, it is not the standard of the Prime One version, so we cannot expect too much. But still it was very basic and not very inspired.

The last thing I noticed was that the model couldn’t be disassembled. It was a one-piece thing, so handling is not as convenient as it could be if I were able to remove some parts for the time of painting.

But knowing these things I was ready to start! 🙂

Getting started with repainting Triss!

The thing I disliked the most on the model was the face. You aren’t surprised, are you? 😀 So the face would be the first thing I would like to repaint!

But before the cool and creative, artistic part, the mundane has to be done. So we started with washing the model. 😉

After the model was cleaned and de-greased, I was ready to start painting! 😀

I’ll be posting updates on the repaint here, and what seems to be the main fields for upgrade are: the face, the corset and the trousers. And stitches, a lot of stitches…. 😀

UPDATE: Now you can follow straight to part 2 of this article or even to part 3. 🙂