With Dave Stone’s current challenge providing some extra motivation to get back and finish models what got started some time ago, I finally took aim at Red Skull, whom I’d assembled, sprayed black and then based shortly after completing Crossbones, back in April last year, followed by him sitting around taking up space for 9 months…

In painting him, he was another example of me playing with “different shades of black”. I kept the OSL from The Tessaract to a bare minimum, with just a tint on his right shoulder and arm with a hint of it seeping through his fingers.

Things like the colour and type of Red Skull’s uniform/costume and the Hydra logos have changed across the many depictions of him over the decades, so I went with a Hydra logo palette which offers just a hint of his early origins without outright just overpainting the Hydra logo with a Swastika on my MCU/Comic-Book-Punchy-Toy-Soldier-Game model. This isn’t Flames of War or Bolt Action after all!

I did try to paint Oberst-Gruppenführer collar badges on him, though you really can’t see much more than an impression. After that, Red Skull’s skull was painted red because Red Skull. Sadly, the spray varnish I used (which is normally fine) kinda roughened the final texture from my smooth paint – I may have sprayed when it was too hot. Luckily it’s only really noticable when you’re looking reeeeealy close, but bloody annoying, nonetheless.