Another couple of Marvel United miniatures today – and the final pair of April’s models. We have Ben Grimm – the ever-lovin’, blue-eyed Thing and his close compatriot, Johnny Storm – the Human Torch! Unfortunately I didn’t get Red or Sue completed in time for April and still don’t have them done for the intended group shot, so we’ll have to come back to the other half of the team once they’re done…

Originally, The Thing was one of the “easier” models that we’d picked out for Marouda to paint, but when we started playing through the Fantastic Four box I decided to take the lead on getting the FF to the painted stage and so painted Ben up fiirst.

Johnny was produced in a pretty nice clear red plastic, so I had to decide how best to paint him. I’ve seen some renditions of this model with Johnny’s blue uniform and human flesh painted in, with the flames around him being either left clear or painted in, but with models like this being on the less common side I preferred to lean into the transparency, so gave him some all-over treatments of thinned orange and yellow contrast, doing my best to remove it from the raised areas of the model and just adding in Johnny’s eyes, mouth and the Fantastic Four logo on his chest in white. Not especially realistic, but something that works for me in the comic-book context (and – let’s face it – also would for a fantasy or 40k model).