First blood - step by step

I know, I said that Menhom Dark Shadow is finished, and that I'm happy with the way he looks, but with time I came to the conclusion, that I could really pimp him up a bit, especially the sword. So I decided to follow one of Slawol's advices and add some blood (not rust though).
I think that Menhom will be just after a fight, with fresh blood all over him, but not in the place where the fight happened, so I won't have to deal with all the messy splashed and puddles of blood on the ground.

And here's step by step what (and how) I've done.

1. The Blood
To create blood I'm using mixture of Tamiya clear red (X-27), Badab black, Leviathan purple (GW washes) and Smoke (70939 VMC) to get more opaque look. After all blood is not very transparent fluid, even when fresh. Leviathan purple is bringing back some redness to the otherwise brownish mix.

Here you can see few samples I made when I was trying the colours

As you can see on the last picture I added some UHU glue, trying to add more volume and some stickiness. But the result is far from expected. My UHU glue (wich is UHU Power) is not the best one to do the task, it simply didn't mix with the paints properly, instead it's giving me something that looks like bits of solidified  blood and tissue (which BTW reminds me last episode of True Blood I've seen this morning;p). It's not something I can use in this project, as I'm going for fresh blood, but most definitelly something I'm gonna save for future.


2. Hand
Because the way he keeps his right hand reminds me of bird's calves (and because I'm not completely happy with the paint job I've done here), I decided that he's using his hand in the combat, most likely ripping enemies throats and tearing their hearts out, so his hand is covered in blood with possibly some droplets dripping on the ground. In this case I simply covered it with rather thick layer of paint. To do the hanging droplet  I used a hair glued to one of the fingers, with a little tear of paint at the end. Then I covered that with paint to hide the hair. Because I want that to be freshly spilled blood, I used gloss varnish on the top.

3. Sword
First, before I could apply blood on the blade, I had to make metal a bit brighter, so dark blood stand out better. I simply applied few layers of highly dilluted Chainmail (GW), to make sure I won't cover shades completely.
I tried to find some pictures showing how the blood on a sword should be placed to make it reliable. For the sake of realism  I even watched one episode of Spartacus. At some point I was thinking about something like aformentioned Slawol did on one of his Orcs (here), but then I decided against it, as it supposed to be a fresh blood, and 'fresh' in case of blood means runny and without any clots.
But then after all this research and thinking I simply went crazy with gore on the sword and the result you can see on the pictures below. As an excuse I can use that his right hand suggests that lot's of blood spilling was done recently, so sword basically bathed in blood should be justified.

4. Drops and splashes
First of all I did few drops on the ground under the hand, I'd do the same under the sword, but it hangs outside of the base, so it was impossible. I did these drops simply with the brush, because they're not splashes from a hit or something. Then I had to decide what I'm gonna use for more dynamic splashes  on the robe. I know red on red doesn't look too impressive, but that's different shade (temperature) of red, and after all, clean robe would look weird (not to mention a chance to hide a bit this awful head in the middle of his trophy chain). After few tests I decided to use flat and rather stiff brush and a toothpick, and then added few more spots with the brush. Results are on the pictures below.

And here are overall picture before and after:

5.Conclusion
I'm not entirely sure if I made Menhom look better, but at least different;] And I managed to cover with blood few weaker elements, so hopefully changes I made will benefit him.
Besides I learned something new, and that's always a good thing. So I'm happy that I tried new technique, and for the first time it's not looking that bad, right?

And while he's on the table I decided to tweak few more things... but about that tomorrow;]

cheers

'eM