Knight Models The Hulk [WIP - Skin Tone]

Painting The Hulk's skin tones has been strangely cathartic for me as the simple repetitive act of blending and layering of shadows, midtones, highlights and the many half-tones in between put me in a calm state of mind amidst the troubles of everyday life. There have been times when I have just peacefully sat blending and layering paints and have hours pass by without even realising it. For this Knight Model piece, most of the time I didn't even have any music playing in the background. My mind was empty save for these thoughts ... blend, blend, layer, mix, blend, blend ... you get the idea.

Knight Models The Hulk, work-in-progress on skin tone

Wonderfully sculpted piece made painting the skin tones very easy

Veins were painted using a mixture of purplish blue and dark green

Finding the right hue of green for the 1/28th scale Knight Models The Hulk miniature wasn't easy as there are a lot of versions out there, sourced either from the cartoons, comics or movies. Initially, I had  wanted to use The Hulk in the Avenger movie as reference for the skin tone but that hue was bordering on flesh colours which I felt may not be appropriate for the comic-book feel I was going for (I used a similar comic-book feel for Knight Models Spiderman). In the end, I settled for colours which ranged from a dark purplish green all the way to a bright yellowish green. This was inspired by a comic cover art by Gary Frank for Issue #110 of The Incredible Hulk (see last picture of this post).

Hulk's pants will likely be painted to simulate denim

Back view of the Knight Models The Hulk, work-in-progress skin tone

Muscle tone in The Hulk's legs were equally well sculpted

As my Vallejo Model Color collection is still pitifully small, I mostly used the old Citadel colours to paint The Hulk. Shadows comprised Vallejo Model Color Oxford Blue mixed in with Orkshide Shade and Knarloc Green while the basecoat was just Knarloc Green alone. From mid-tones to highlights, a mixture of Knarloc Green and Gretchin Green was used with an ever increasing ratio of the latter.

The Hulk has a physique any Mr.Universe would kill for

Flow of paint strokes were done to mimic actual human muscle fibre

Looks like Bruce Banner keeps a regular appointment with his manicurist

For The Hulk's nails, I went for an ochre-green look. Sadly, I forgot to record the paints I used but I believe I added some flesh colours to the general skin tone mix to achieve the results you see above. 

Cover art by Gary Frank was my inspiration for The Hulk's skin tone

Next up for The Hulk should be his pants which I plan to paint to resemble a denim texture. Although I had achieved pretty good results with Knight Models Logan when painting his jeans, I had - similar to the case with The Hulk's nails - completely forgotten what colours I had used to achieve the denim texture. So it will be like starting from zero again with the exception that I can at least remember the technique I used to paint Logan's jeans. Or at least I think I do ... I guess we'll find out soon enough.