A Little Something X-Tra

I've getting ever-closer to actually starting my X-Men...

Although, technically, these three are the final characters in my Brotherhood of Mutants batch (some more credibly than others), with my punk-hair Storm, I've got enough to field a legal team of Uncanny X-Men (but I'd want to fill out the roster a bit more before I do).

First up is the Mississippi river-rat herself, Rogue. She has the best claim to Brotherhood of Mutants, since she actually started out with them (before absorbing Captain Marvel's powers and reforming).

Her outfit is the now-iconic '91 Jim Lee design, which is probably her best look and also the point where the character become a lot less interesting (style over substance right there). It has a shiny metallic green, which I did my best to replicate with highlights (having repainted it over when it looked like I'd given her stripey pyjama trousers)

The explosion worked out well, which was basically a mix of drybrush and wet blending. It does make for a dynamic pose, but it can also look awkward. I tried a number of photos, and actually think the best one is top-down. It also means that, if you paint her looking skywards (the direction that she's flying), from any other angle, it seems like she's rolling her eyes (probably at something said by loverbayou, pictured below).

Gambit has a far weaker claim to Brotherhood of Mutants, other than having a shady past. As a model, he's much easier to paint than Rogue, with the only real test being the wave of kinetic energy and the faces of his playing cards.

It makes for a lovely dynamic pose, worthy of a character with the second-best French accent (the first being Officer Crabtree).

Despite two decades of unstinting service as an all-new X-Man, Colossus found himself defecting to Magneto's team in the mid 90s when he came down with a bad case of the writers not knowing what to do with him.

I'm glad the model kept his original 1975 design, which is fantastic and a great compliment to his steel skin. Since I'd never attempt it otherwise, I pushed myself to do non-metallic metal on his skin (as that would closer resemble the comic illustration). 

It was fairly nerve-wracking stuff, and I'd only ever attempted it on smooth weapon blades before, rather than full musculature. But with lots of reference materials and a wet palette full of greys, I got there in the end and am pretty happy with the result.

My only complaint would be the Sentinel arm he's holding above his head. A bit of basing is fine, but I'm not crazy about tying a model so closely to one opponent, especially since it shadows his head most of the time (Rogue had a similar chunk of metal in her raised arm, which could fortunately be left off).

It's a shame there wasn't an alternate version, as with Juggernaut, to have an empty hand, or even the option to swivel the wreckage so it wasn't so prominent. Never mind - it just means I'll have to start collecting Sentinels too!