I recently finished this bust after putting it aside for a long time. I've tried to paint the skin with a sheen in places to suggest wetness and have painted in some rivulets and droplets of water beading on the skin. I realise these are generic and cartoonishly out of scale but overall I was happy with the effect for this bust. The central image of the irezumi style tattoo is an image of Tetsuo which was copied after cover art of one of the colourised English language versions of Katsuhiro Otomo's manga Akira. Thanks to Dave Colwell and Trent Denison along with the craftworld team (who saw the bust at Australia's Crystal Dragon show) for some valuable feedback and advice.

  • Clive Jackson

    The tattoo and the water effects are great! Gold!

  • girlpainter57

    the sheen on bust and arms works well , as does the fluffy effect on the towel.
    Great skill with a brush

    • Josh_Underhill

      Thank you girlpainter. The towel was fun to paint. It’s an unusual material to see on a figure

  • Philippe

    Good job, the water effects are very nice! Gold!

  • Archigrog

    Another great experiment!!!

    • Josh_Underhill

      Thanks Archi. Painting interesting effects like this is a large part of what drives my interest in miniature painting

  • Francois "Frado" Daugny

    great effect!!

  • Dexter0015

    I’m speachless! The amount of freehand details on this piece is outstanding.

  • Alex Silvestri

    well deserved gold. The water ‘effects’ are really beautiful !

  • pstockley

    Great job. If you could have just painted the water drops smaller it would have been even more convincing. I know that is a lot harder than it sounds so I understand why you didn’t.

    • Josh_Underhill

      Thanks Paul, Yep, as it is it kind of looks like actual water drops on a model. In fact at this scale wet skin would probably be best depicted as broken stipples of a bright highlight like I attempted on the upper parts. was the first time I’ve tried it so it was a bit of an experiment and as I painted more I tried to do a few as small as I could (e.g. on the forearm). I plan to try it out on a larger bust with finer drops which might be more true to scale.

  • StephanPLUS

    For me its also a gold.
    Thanks for showing.

    • Josh_Underhill

      Thank you Stephan, I’m glad you like it.

  • Sergey Savenkov

    Gold!!!

  • fabrizio1969PLUS

    Gold

    • Josh_Underhill

      Thanks again Fabrizio…much appreciated.

  • pit rehmke

    Great work!!
    Excellent and imaginative painting. Like it a lot.

    • Josh_Underhill

      Thanks Pit-Rehmke. I often prefer simpler and less adorned busts and figures like this because they do sometimes give more room for exercising creativity.

  • Xavi333

    Very well done!!!

  • Pierre Balmette

    Great tattoos and water effects, love it! Gold

  • John Delamere

    TETSUO!
    Great job!