I Dream Of Jean Grey

 Painted up in less time than she ruled as Queen of England!

One of the five founding X-Men, Jean was originally called Marvel Girl to service both brand awareness and the Smurfette principle. She was also a telekinetic, latterly a telepath, and eventually the most powerful of the group.

There's far too much backstory to summarise here (and besides, there's another model for Phoenix), so this Jean Grey is straight from the 90s reboot, where she ditched any codename and went with a fairly pedestrian uniform of blue and gold.

The first hurdle with the model was getting it positioned on the waves of telekinetic energy. I've been having a run of models that don't want to stand on their own feet (Nightcrawler, Angel, Iceman, Shadowcat, Archangel) and it's always a nerve-wracking business gluing them together. And believe me, the worst is to come.

The next challenge was the yellow of the costume. All the comic and cartoon references can't seem to agree on what yellow Jean wears, other than it's different to all the other X-Men. It varies from a coppery orange, to a very pale lemon yellow. I split the different and went with a base of Averland Sunset, washed with Fuegan Orange, layered with Averland Sunset, Yriel Yellow and Flash Gitz Yellow. 

That got me where I wanted without having such deep contrasts as, for example, Wolverine.

The blue was simpler - Kantor Blue base, layers of Macragge Blue, blended with Caledor Sky. I also painted the 'leg panels' (no idea) blue, despite them usually being yellow in the comics. When I left them yellow, they looked unfinished, and they're blue in the cartoon (and it's my model, so there).

The energy waves were Doomfire Magenta (I promise it's not the only contrast I own - the mutants just use a lot of pink energy signatures!), blended with Ulthuan Grey.

Jean's characteristic red hair was something I was very pleased about: Skrag Brown base, Agrax Earthshade wash, Wild Rider Red and Jokaero Orange layers.

All in, I enjoyed painting this model a lot more than I was expecting, and I'm really happy how it turned out. Marvellous!