Re: Betta's repaints.....Dinosauria series added 7/18/24

[SidB]

Terrific outcome. Glad that you saved your hair!

[Fenestra]

Loving it! The subtle white stripes on the wings and tail are a very nice detail.
The base is beautiful. Well done!

[Dusty Wren]

Love those yellow bars on the Deino's face and the patch on the throat. They draw your attention to the face, while still looking very natural.

The base turned out great, too, and I think the "wet" effect is very convincing! I'm headed to Ikea this weekend, so I'm going to have to look for those plastic plants (my Deino also needs a base to keep him from tipping off my shelf).

[Bread]

Very nice repaint and base. The colors you chose just work so well together, bright yellow followed by grey and black, very good choices and turned out great.

[Shonisaurus]

It has been great! Those muted colors for that deinonychus Safari are the ones that I like the dinosaur companies to apply, much better than the original Safari paint and above all that base is spectacular. My congratulations.

[ceratopsian]

Beautiful job.

[bettashark]

Ok folks, it's been uhhh. Forever. But I'm back, this time with like. What. 3 repaints? This first one is an oldie but a goodie, so good I actually own 2... (So at least child me thought it was good lol) The Safari/Carnegie Corythosaurus! This took ages, mostly because I wound up hating my original repaint and washing it with black until it looked better and then changing the head and neck markings. I was originally going for a cock-of-the-rock look, but yeesh. ORANGE, folks. ORANGE. I swear you could've seen this poor thing from space.
Other additions are 2 small alterations to the sculpt! I updated the front feet using epoxy putty and added spines down the back using really tiny pieces of construction paper with their very edges folded over with tweezers and dipped in super glue. Sadly, I did not go into the research enough to find out about more modern neck reconstructions, so it remains as it originally was. If I ever actually buy more epoxy, maybe I'll have a go at it. But possibly not. I spent several months on this thing and I'm kind of Done, you know?
Next repaint will be up like. Tomorrow? Later today? Something like that.

[Lanthanotus]

Looking splendid

[CARN0TAURUS]

@bettashark

WOW!  All that tiny detail and hairline thin brushwork!  Plus the fading and blending is just gorgeous!  Everything looks nice but that head is off the charts amazing.  I can only imagine how nice it looks in person.  Detail that fine on blown up pictures reveals flaws and yours doesn't have any so seeing something flawless like that in person makes it looks even sharper and cleaner in hand.

[paintingdinos]

The foot update looks fantastic, very well done. The color choices are bold and beautiful, and the sort of "early morning/dawn" pallet for the one CARN0TAURUS posted looks perfect for this model.

[Dusty Wren]

Oh, man, these turned out so well! I have a soft spot for the Carnegie Corythosaurus, and you have done that sculpt justice with both of these paint jobs.

I especially like the black around the eyes and the colorful mottling on the crest of the second one. Acrylic dries so fast, how'd you'd get the colors to mix like that?

[ceratopsian]

The second repaint is quite stunning.  I love the way the orangey-brown coming through the darker brown in the barrel of its ribs emphasises the rotund shape and makes the model so much more 3-D.  And I love the head and neck showiness.  If I had seen this offered somewhere, I would have snapped it up in an instant.  So you might have spent months on it - but it was worth it!

[SidB]

This was not a waste of time, you've decisively rejuvenated a sculpt that was very good for its time and breathed new life into it. Well done!

[Bokisaurus]

Very nice, I like both versions and that orange one actually worked!

[Shonisaurus]

Those touches of paint so warm that you have put on the figure of the corythosaurus in relation to the crest radiate and infect one with optimism. You have done a lot of work, it is a very colorful repaint and what has been said, apart from how well painted, those touches of animal painting make the most depressive person in the world to be optimistic. It is a very nice paint job.

[Gwangi]

Those Corythosaurus are outstanding. I love both color schemes but perhaps the one with the blue throat more, although I like that orange too. I wonder how they would look on the PNSO Corythosaurus. 

[bettashark]

Thanks everyone! 
Onto the next one! (After a delay for Fish Emergencies. Fish is ok.) Here we have the Field Museum Mold-A-Rama Quetzalcoatlus. Now, this type of figure isn't the most detailed or the most realistic, but they are basically small statues, so I thought, why not lean into that? I decided to make this figure look like an old bronze statue. I think it came out pretty well, but I definitely had to play around with it to make it work. I think if you wanted to replicate this, all you'd need to do would be apply a matte sealant (paint slides off this plastic very easily without one), paint the whole thing brown, wash it heavily with black, and then drybrush with bronze metallic. I used Golden brand metallic paint; it's the only one I've found that actually looks metal and is available at Michael's. :p Sealed with satin varnish, aka a mix of roughly 50/50 matte and gloss because I'm too cheap to buy actual satin varnish. Tbh, it might be better to carefully drybrush with a little gloss, but eh. It looks pretty good, and very good in sunlight.
As for the actual sculpt, this figure comes with the area around the tail and hind legs filled in, so I chiselled that out. Some of the detailing was a bit faint, so I carved it in deeper, mostly with an x-acto knife, a toothpick, and my fingernails (this plastic is VERY soft). The base is hollow though, so it tended to topple over. I fixed this by cutting out the bottom of the base, filling it with glass seed beads and hot glue, and then gluing it down to some construction paper and cutting out around the plastic. This makes it stable and gives it decent heft! It might actually make a decent paperweight now.
One more archosaur coming in this batch, plus a bonus figure I forgot I did! Also forgot to photograph... Did I mention the fish emergencies?

[bettashark]

Well, I had an image storage issue, but here, at long last, is the thing absolutely nobody has been waiting for: the Safari mini T. rex!
This was another random color choice experiment. This time I got burnt umber, powder blue, and baby pink, plus black and white. Didn't actually end up using any of the pink, but I think it came out ok. Went for a vague barn owl inspiration and tried adding freckles. It was an attempt. I learned. I gained experience. It's fine.

[bettashark]

Aaaand before i manage to forget to add it for like 6 months, here's Latimeria menadoensis! For some reason my camera does not like these figures and has a heck of a time focusing on them, so I only got 2 decent photos both of the right side. (It also absolutely refuses to show the metallic eyes.) Oh well! I'm happy to complete my set of coelacanths.

[Creature]

@bettashark these repaints are gorgeous! I'm especially in love with the Corythosaurus with the blue head markings. The blending and shading on that is superb