Are you going to Scarborough Fair?

Ah, it finally arrived!
As a preorder bonus for Bayonetta, one UK store offered a free replica scarborough fair gun to those who preordered the game with them. Having bought the “witch of vigrid” artbook and not being too fussed on the limited OST they provided as part of the “climax edition” of the game, I went and got one.
It still kinda sucks that UK buyers had the choice of EITHER the scarborough fair or the Climax edition of the game while Aussies had their guns as part of their climax edition bundle but I digress.

Then the game release date came and went, I got my Bayonetta but no scarborough fair. Then, last week, it finally came…

2 things strike you when you first take this thing out of it’s box.

1) it’s really quite heavy for it’s size. You may not be able to pass it off as an actual weapon but if you use it to pistol whip someone, it’ll definitely leave marks!! And…
2) It’s really shoddily painted!! The actual sculpt is rather good and the details etched into the body is good too. It’s just that the person assigned to paint in the details was either really lazy or simply can’t hold a paintbrush steadily!

Paint leakage is pretty much everywhere and it really spoils the look of the gun.

Even the elevated words suffer from patches of unpainted letters…

But the black areas were the worst. it was as if, not only could the painter not hold a brush well, but was probably using one several sizes too large!!

And it affects both sides too equally.
Sufficed to say, I was rather disappointed with the overall finish. But what could a model kit painter with various paints and brushes possibly do to fix a badly painted… oh, right!

So that’s kinda what I did. I wasn’t willing to use up the excessive amounts of paint required to do a full repaint of the poor thing so I instead, opted to simply try and clean up as much of the problem areas as I could.
This did lead to some problems with the correct shade of purple needed as it required a custom mix, but I got a decent approximation which only really shows up under strong light. I found a match in the gold colour by using my “old gold” paint which I used on my knight of gold.

It’s still far from perfect but it’s much better than it was initially. Had I decided to go all the way, I’m sure I would be able to make it look even better.

The lettering was redone and made a little clearer.

Shots of the other side. I also experimented with using washes to change the colour of the gem but stuck with the original green in the end as the washes made the gem a little too dark so the colour wasn’t as vibrant.

The handle is actually quite small. I’m not sure if that’s the correct way to hold the gun, with the middle finger on the trigger, but that’s the only way for me to hold the damn thing!

Overall, I’m a little disappointed that I had to put in some extra work to get it to this level, but at least the gun was a freebie! With a little more effort and attention, this extra could have been fantastic, but I still can’t say anything really bad about it. I just wish they included it with the climax edition as opposed to making the 2 separate exclusives.
Still, the painting practice got me working on my Sheryl Nome again after a long hiatus. I was finding it hard to get back into the swing of things, but that’s all sorted now!!