STS Model Painting Month - ASSIGN HERE with the BEFORE photo of your model

Hello friends!
If you just like me have a growing collection of unpainted projects to paint or repaint "someday in the future" and you're waiting for a good moment to start working on them, then I hope you can join the STS painting month! It will be in May. A whole month dedicated to painting one of your projects. We will start painting in May and hopefully finish our projects within that one month.

There will be 3 topics dedicated to this event. This first one is only for the BEFORE pictures of your chosen model. The second one will be for all discussion and work-in-progress pictures and I will open it on Saturday 1st of May. The last one will be only for the photos of your finished work (also opens in May). If you finish your model and post the photo of your finished model on the special topic you'll get a congratulations card (real or digital, whichever you prefer) early in June  

Please, choose one official model and don't change it after committing to that one. All extras and side projects can go to the general topic. Of course, we'll be happy to see them too!  

This first topic is only for posting a photo of your chosen model before repainting it. You can also tell us about your plan for the color and technique that you want to use and inspiration for your project.
When I see your post here I'll write your forum nickname on the list of participants, together with your chosen species.

Important: we don't start painting the official model before May. But you can start prepping your model in April already. It means removing seamlines, and any annoying elements. You can also cover the model in primer or gesso.

If you have any questions, please send them in [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

So exciting that it has started!
Here is my 'victim', the Wing Crown Rough Collie which I have always wanted to repaint, as it has been basically done here but the sculpt is one of the best I've seen of this breed! I plan to repaint her like my Rough Collie Bonnie, who is sable and white- so I'll be copying her markings as precisely as I can and will hopefully end up with a mini replica of her! And I think I'll just use acrylics with a gloss finish over her eyes and nose!
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Nice collie. Looking forward to seeing the repaint. Are you planning to remove the line under his neck?

I will probably start with these pewter figures of prehistoric plants:
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Really interesting choice Halichoeres!
And thank you so much Roger! I'd love to be able to remove the line, but I'm not sure how as it marks the point where the head has been stuck onto the body, so can't be cut off! But if anyone has any suggestions I'd love to know, although maybe this would be better in the progress topic!

I thought you might be able to fill up the line with WePAM paste, but I have never used it myself. I am sure Caracal would know, perhaps he'll see this.

rogerpgvg wrote:

I thought you might be able to fill up the line with WePAM paste, but I have never used it myself. I am sure Caracal would know, perhaps he'll see this.

That's a wonderful idea! Yes, I've heard of it and it sounds fantastic- I'll have to do some research on how to use it! Thank you!

Awesome choices! I'll post a photo of my victim soon too.

Lilias, you can for example use Apoxie (clay or sculpt) or Miliput for filling the gap on the neck if you like. I've never tried Wepam paste, but it also sounds like a good product.

@halichores please, tell us which one is your official model (for the final collage) and which one is an extra? Of course, you can paint as many as you like but for the event, it's one official model per person, please
Also, please, tell me how each of these species is called? I have 0 knowledge of prehistoric plants

Ana wrote:

Awesome choices! I'll post a photo of my victim soon too.

Lilias, you can for example use Apoxie (clay or sculpt) or Miliput for filling the gap on the neck if you like.  I've never tried Wepam paste, but it also sounds like a good product.

@halichores please, tell us which one is your official model (for the final collage) and which one is an extra? Of course, you can paint as many as you like but for the event, it's one official model per person, please  
Also, please, tell me how each of these species is called? I have 0 knowledge of prehistoric plants

Thank you so much for the tip, I'll have a look into these products!

Nice choices everyone! It's good to see that we're already helping each other out before we've even started

I still have to decide who my official victim is going to be. I have a dog custom that will need to be painted, but I have not finished the resculpt yet. I'm not sure if he'll be ready for painting at the start of May. So I might go for a safer option which will either be my 3D printed fennec who's currently only primered or a wild cat that I've always wanted to give a new paint job (mojo lynx or clouded leopard) maybe I should go for a cat since I'm sure I will paint the others eventually and I've had the cats for ages (I'm not really good at making decisions, as you might have noticed )

My nominated project : to turn a normal plains zebra into the extinct quagga.

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Here's the 'before' - an original finish CollectA common zebra. A duplicate I bought specially to repaint, not the CollectA zebra from my collection, who's quite happy to keep all his stripes!

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I'll be using the exact stripe markings from this real quagga, the only one to be photographed alive (and I do have a couple of shots of her other side, too, so the pattern won't have to be a mirror image, or guessed at!), so it'll be both a model of the species, and a portrait of this famous individual.
But of course this is a tinted slide, not a true colour photograph, so I'll be taking my quagga's colouration from modern photos of preserved specimens in museums.

The reason I chose this project? Because it's such a complicated pattern, I've had the idea a while and really love the idea of creating my own quagga, but always put it off cos it's such unfamiliar territory to step away from the horse colours and patterns I'm so used to - I've never painted any kind of zebra before, these will be my first stripes!

A fantastic choice, can't wait to see it!
And all those sound wonderful [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] , especially the dog! And I would love to see a repaint of your beautiful Fennec too!

Oh, a quagga that's wonderful! Great idea!

A-J, from the sound of it I really like your 3D printed fennec idea

Hmmm, what shall I repaint? I have some duplicate horses and cows, so I may do one of those.

I think I might actually do a bull, and possibly give an Ayrshire or a dairy shorthorn a go. I'll be repainting the Schleich 13632 Holstein Bull

Now, I'm going to get some paints for him

Great choice too!

Great choice Adam

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] a quagga is a fun choice! (You'd have to paint less stripes then most other zebra species haha). I did a quagga for the (model horse) namopaimo of February and had a lot of fun doing research and figuring out the correct colour since there aren't any coloured photos of the original living quagga (there is the cool quagga project where they are trying to recreate a quagga like zebra, but their colouration is still different from the original one). I still have a document somewhere I think of the reference pictures I used, so if you ever need that during the sts model painting month let me know :)

For me it is going to be one of these:
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I'm probably going to paint both, but I will have choose one official one before the start of May...

Advicot wrote:

Hmmm, what shall I repaint?  I have some duplicate horses and cows, so I may do one of those.

I think I might actually do a bull, and possibly give an Ayrshire or a dairy shorthorn a go. I'll be repainting the Schleich 13632 Holstein Bull

Now, I'm going to get some paints for him

Great choice! Could you share a before picture when you have a chance?

Yeah, can do!

A-J wrote:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]  a quagga is a fun choice! (You'd have to paint less stripes then most other zebra species haha). I did a quagga for the (model horse) namopaimo of February and had a lot of fun doing research and figuring out the correct colour since there aren't any coloured photos of the original living quagga (there is the cool quagga project where they are trying to recreate a quagga like zebra, but their colouration is still different from the original one). I still have a document somewhere I think of the reference pictures I used, so if you ever need that during the sts model painting month let me know :)  

Good to find another fan!

I've been following the quagga-recreation project for years, I found out about them when I was researching przewalski's horses for a college paper on their behaviour and got sidetracked reading up on the wrong species for a whole day

I've collected up my references, a combination of the black'n'white photos, the taxidermy specimens for coat colour lthough they're so varied I'll have to pick the one which looks most like the London female (and I even tracked down one picture taken from above for the layout of the join between dorsal stripe and vertical stripes), and colour paintings for a bit of added inspiration cos I find flat panel/canvas art styles translate well into 3d model painting

Bonnie wrote:

rogerpgvg wrote:

I thought you might be able to fill up the line with WePAM paste, but I have never used it myself. I am sure Caracal would know, perhaps he'll see this.

That's a wonderful idea! Yes, I've heard of it and it sounds fantastic- I'll have to do some research on how to use it! Thank you!

Roger is right, quite easy, just wet all around the line then cover the line with paste, let dry, and add paste as many times as necessary! :)

Caracal wrote:

Bonnie wrote:

rogerpgvg wrote:

I thought you might be able to fill up the line with WePAM paste, but I have never used it myself. I am sure Caracal would know, perhaps he'll see this.

That's a wonderful idea! Yes, I've heard of it and it sounds fantastic- I'll have to do some research on how to use it! Thank you!

Roger is right, quite easy, just wet all around the line then cover the line with paste, let dry, and add paste as many times as necessary! :)

Thank you so much!
And those two look wonderful A-J, you are so talented that I'm sure whichever one you choose will turn out beautifully!

oops! I should have writen "all along the line" of course!

here my next repaint: the cheeta from Clairet:

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..till now, I didn't dare because I had few.. It wouldn't be too hard to meliorate its painting.. :)

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] Looking forward to seeing that cheetah come to life with a bit of paint

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] The quagga is a good species to get sidetracked on, I'm excited to see your process and end result

And [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] you're too kind

Caracal wrote:

here my next repaint: the cheeta from Clairet:

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..till now, I didn't dare because I had few.. It wouldn't be too hard to meliorate its painting..  :)

Excellent choice, can't wait to see it!