Infinity: Shinobu Kitsune WIP

Howdy Howdy!

So over the weekend I decided to work a bit on one of my absolute favorite sculpts for Infinity: the Shinobu Kitsune for Yu Jing. Lately I've felt a bit stagnant on Malifaux models and needed a change of pace. My friend Reuben has been getting back into Infinity and building up the local community, so I was easily coerced into brushing on some paint for this gal (by coerced, I mean only mentioning Infinity made my brain go oooh shinies).

I was taking a look at my Infinity models and deciding which one deserved some treatment. I decided on this one, even though I figured she'd be a real challenge and easy to mess up, but she is the one I'm most excited to use on the tabletop and I started the work.

I took some textured plasticard that I already had cut into a circle a long time ago and cut it in half. I also used plain plasticard and a strip of thicker card and used them to cover up the slot in the base. I had to keep the tab on her foot as she has a tiny contact point where her toes are, as I am too lazy to figure out another solution or attempt pinning such a small area.

Through some clever anglesI feel I've done a decent attempt of covering up the slot while preventing it from being obvious as a lazy cover up. This part took me way longer than I had anticipated, as shaping the card to be round was very difficult with just a hobby knife - again, too lazy to get sand paper from the store. I left part of it as bare base as proof of said laziness.

The next day I primed the model black. I airbrushed a minimal amount on the model, only using Black/Sombre Grey on her pants. She's very tiny, and I wasn't too confident on using the airbrush for the NMM grey for her torso and arms. I'm sure I could do it, but I wanted a dark metal color and that required more control via brush. Eventually I plan on practicing my airbrush technique with a lower psi than normal, as right now I'm used to about 40psi. In his painting book Angel Giraldez, the Infinity god, mentions he uses 30psi and is able to get very thin consistent layers so I figured that I should try that out.

After spraying the pants lightly I sprayed the entire base black, then did the riveted section with Grey/White. I then mixed a light green and light blue 50/50 and sprayed the other half quickly. After black lining and edge highlighting you get what you see.

I then started working on the pants, which was extremely challenging to say the least. I already struggled with a similar texture before with the Oniwaban with disappointing results, so I tried something new. Painting black is one of my weaknesses, as it's hard to do without making it look grey for me. Although I feel they look good, it still doesn't read as black to me and some parts are very sketchy and inconsistent. I also didn't realize that I didn't have good lighting while I painted in the living room, so it affected how I painted. I may touch it up later on but I didn't want to stay hung up on working the pants.

Here I just put some basecoats on the face, hair and armor. For the face I used Reaper Tanned Skin Shadow. The hair was a 50/50 mix of Wolf and Somber Grey. The armor was 50/50 Cold Grey/Black.

Here it is with better light from the kitchen, which was when I realized I should have painted there lol. Here is where you can see more of the inconsistencies in the pants.

Here is how she stands as of now. I started on the NMM for her legs, torso and arms using Black/Cold Grey/White. I painted on Wolf Grey/White for the hair with a glaze of Reaper Blue (can't remember which one) with a limited controlled glaze of GW Nuln Oil for shading. I also painted the face using Reaper Golden Skin Shade/Mid/Highlight with a bit of white for the brightest areas, and used the Reaper Blue color to shade the eyes.

There are some areas that I like and some I need to fix. The plates on her shoulders get lost on the model as they're just black, so I plan on just painting them the same NMM as the rest of her armor. I also mentioned earlier how I need to clean up the pants as well, as it just seems messy to me. I'm particularly happy with how the face and hair came out, especially considering I spent less than five minutes on the face and hair is generally a weak area in my experience. I also like how her hip area and calf turned out, I wish I was as consistent with her arms but they're so darn tiny.

So far it's been a great exercise in restraint for me. For everything except the face I only used two palettes, and it's all been a variation of grey. Her hair and pants are the same colors, just different mixes of Sombre Grey and Wolf Grey. The rest of her is different variations of Cold Grey, Black and White with attention to values. Like the Oniwaban, I wanted to keep her sort of monochromatic with the only change of color coming from her sword, which is something I've got to paint when I'm done with the rest of the model. I'm also debating if I should put rust on the base for variation using pigments, I just don't want to mess up the work I've already done.

Hopefully I can finish her this week and move on to another Infinity model. In the small list I made to play against Reuben I needed 4 Shaolin Monks and 2 Celestial Guards, I may do the Guards next - or most likely my painting ADD will kick in and I'll move onto something completely unrelated. Until next time, let me know what you think or if there are any criticisms!