I've been spending time with this Fella after work for about forty five minutes each day; four days a week for three weeks, and he's finished. My original plan was to blast through it in one week, but that didn't happen. I had read something really inspiring on a forum about pushing ones self to do work quickly and being satisfied with it, and then moving onward. I believe in that, but it just didn't work with my schedule. Hell, he's done regardless. And I'm happy with what I've done with it.
The Shiflett brothers, Jarrod and Brandon...I don't know where to start. For those who already know 'em, you most likely dig them as people and artists, because they're down to Earth, and talented visionaries. Their style is very unique, and it helps to approach painting one of their pieces with a divergent hand as well.
I wasn't sure where I'd take this piece, but I realized after a few sessions that I was going to use really dull, septic Earth tones on the figure. I also wanted him to have these burning eyes that sear and drip with Hell, and I actually wanted to paint lava like drips trailing down his chest, but after a test I realized it was way too distracting, so I backed off. The base had me stumped all the way through, but finally at the very end I decided to paint it with some spectral blues and greens.
I loved working with this piece. The anatomy is a real statement to how well the Brothers understand a muscular body and subtle contrapposto (thanks Norman). A powerful piece all the way, so happy I got this bad boy in my Detolf already.
It never fails, every time I hear or think of the word Devilman I invariably drift to the White Zombie song, "Super Charger Heaven" with it's chorus, " Devilman, Devilman - calling. Devilman- runnin' in my head, YEAH!"
Well at long last, I finally assembled and painted a Max Factory Devilman kit. Had I not been commissioned to paint this piece, it's very likely that I wouldn't have painted one for myself. With all of it's lovely detail, the sculpture is quite intimidating to me. It may have been at Wonderfest earlier this spring when Brandon Shiflett and I were getting hammered as nails drunk, talking kits, Danzig and Art in general; he asked me if I would paint this kit for him. It had been many years since I'd last painted a Takayuki Takeya piece, so I said, "Fuck yes I will, man." To coin Charlie Sheen- the thought rollin' through my head was, " Winning..." Yes, I just did that.
The only direction I got from Brandon was that he really wanted to see some magenta tones, the rest was for me to work out. So I went in there with the magenta and purple tones, then accented with rusty oranges gold. It feels great to get the poison out with this; painting this beautiful piece was a tremendous release.
