Two out of three .....

A bit more work on the figures has now progressed them to the stage where the main core colours have been completed.

In my mind, this achieves for us two of the three criteria that I first identified as objectives for the figure painting. Namely, we've got good depth and strong bold colour. My camera work is amateurish ( a single overhead lamp on my workbench) and it's a very old digital camera, so the images shown don't really do the figures justice in that respect. "In the flesh" the colours have a really nice depth, vibrancy and tone to them, but are still quite subtle in overall look.

So, the steps since the last session were .....

The blue was done using acrylics, mainly because I find oil washing on deep blues doesn't work that well, I find it's just a bit too translucent. So, I use a three layer approach using Andrea paints blue paint set. I really like these acrylics, they have good pigmentation and dry quite "flat". In this case it comes as a six tone set, my technique here was to go from 2nd shadow as the under layer, with the base colour on top, then moving to the 3rd highlight to finish. Effectively I've accelerated through the six available tones using the ones on either end stopping off in the middle along the way. It creates a fairly strong transition, and on a bigger surface are you might want to introduce a few more of the intermediate tones, but at this scale it works fine.

The gaiters were then completed by highlighting them with Vallejo Ivory 005. That pallete (using the wiped off Gold Ochre oil wash) is my "white" and is the white I use on all my figures. It's warmer and less harsh than many you will see.

Details on the gaiters were then painted black and then highlighted with a suitable mid grey for the straps and light grey for the bone buttons.

Lastly the yellow was completed by highlighting with Foundry Yellow 2c

So, now we have the core figure well on the way, further steps will be to add the detail, doing this in the way I'll show will provide us with our last element .... the definition 

John

The Heart of the Miniature

Is, in my opinion the face. It gives the figure life and is the aspect that makes us believe its a little human being.

For that reason I always like to paint the face early on in the process. It sort of makes me feel like the figure is coming alive and helps me push on to get the rest of the painting done.

So a few rules I apply to face painting on 25mm (I'm old school! 😁) figures .....

1. Paint the face to the very best of your ability, time spent on this aspect of the figure will pay you back more than any other element of the paintjob. A well painted face on an otherwise "averagely" painted figure will still look like a good figure overall, conversely, a poor face on an otherwise well painted figure will really drag the rest of the figure down.

2. Do not paint eyes on 25mm figures, unless you do this perfectly (and I do mean perfectly) it will ruin the face, make it look like a google eyed zombie, add nothing, and take your time to no real value.

So what's my technique?

I have five steps ......

1. Paint the whole face (and for that matter any other flesh on the figure) with Foundry Flesh 5a
2. Once dry, wash over with Coat d'arms Ink wash "Chestnut"137 (this is an old Citadel paints wash that I used to use when they made it, it worked for me and I've never changed, luckily it's still being made by someone else under this brand)

Having done this the face will look like this

Once the wash has dried (won't take too long as it's only water based). I then do the following

3. Repaint the face with Foundry Flesh 5a, but this time leave the deep recesses still showing the underlying colour
4. Highlight the bulk of the raised parts of the face with Foundry Flesh 5b
5. Finish by adding very small amounts of Foundry Flesh 5c to the bridge of the nose, the upper cheeks and point of the chin only.

The overall effect will be something like this

It's a fairly simple variation of using the standard foundry "flesh" palette, but it gives a really good effect (well at least I think it does! 😊)

So, now the figures are "alive" time to start adding more colour .....

Wash time

No, not your once a week bath ..... 😊

Having blocked in our first key colours on the coat and gaiters it's now time to apply some oils.

The key principle here is that I have block in a very light "version" of the underlying colour that I want, and then wash over with oils. This provides the benefit of providing a solid base of the colour underneath the oil wash, whilst still allowing the depth and the richness of the oil pigmentation to "shine" (it does quite literally, but we'll deal with that issue later). It might not come across that well in the images (I'm using a 10 year old digital "family/holiday" type camera under a spotlight), but take it from me, the richness and depth you get using this technique is subtle but really good.

So in this case, I've used two oils in the form of a wash, the yellow is Gold Ochre, the black is Blue Black (I only use Winsor & Newton Artist Oil Colour, so take that as given on all the oils from here).

First step

The Yellow is applied to the gaiters first, this is because I am actually going to be making these white/canvas. To do so, I apply the yellow wash, leave for a few minutes, then wipe of roughly with a small piece of sponge. This has the effect of "staining" the area, without making it a strong yellow. I find this works very well for a base for a "white" top layer, although I never actually use white on any of my figures.

Second step

I next use the yellow wash and overpaint the coat. In doing so, try to stay within the previously blocked in areas. It doesn't matter too much if you go over a wee bit, but try to be neat as it helps retain the definition of the edges.

Third step

Using the Blue Black wash I over paint the shoes and tricorne.

The figure should now look something like this:

They now need to be left to dry.... (make sure you do!!) Working in batches will allow you to overcome any delays, by switching between working on oils on one set whilst then prepping the acrylic's on the next.

Next time faces ....

John

Paints

Before I go further with this, I want to say a little about paints. I shall add all usual disclaimers, I am not a trained artist, my views are based purely on my experiences as a layman. Others will no doubt know much better 😊

I used acrylics for many years, having moved on from good old humbrol enamels, mainly because acrylics are quicker and easier to use and the water based nature of them makes life so much easier and less fume filled.

However, a number of years ago I became disillusioned with the "modern" style of wargames figure, increasingly I saw them as gross caricatures of human beings, usually a cross between an orc and a gorilla. Sure, they are easy to paint, but I just really stopped liking the look of them. I progressively moved back towards more anatomically correct, slimmer figures, many of these being from older ranges.

There was a problem though, these figures are much more challenging to paint well. You have to really "paint" them to get them looking good as opposed to the "paint by numbers" style you can use with modern, chunky figures. I found my technique and the paints I was using weren't really achieving the look I wanted.

I knew that "back in the day" most of these figures had been painted using enamels and oils, I didn't want to go back to using enamels, so started playing around with Oils.

Using Oils was in one way a revelation, but also a bit of a disappointment. I could see that the Oils had so much more richness and depth of colour, but they were really hard to use and also looked "washed out" when used alone with a white primer. What to do .....?

I started to experiment using a mixed medium technique, acrylics and Oils together. This has a fundamental problem though ...... As we all know, the two solvents involved, Oil and Water, don't as the phrase goes "mix". How to get round this? The secret is that you must, must let either the acrylic or the Oil thoroughly dry before going anywhere near it with the other medium. If you do so they are compatible, the only exception being that sometimes the acrylic might struggle a little to "grip" on a previously oiled surface. It will, with a few additional strokes of the brush and it only happens occasionally, so I put up with it.

Anyway, that's enough boring text for one post! 😊

On to the next stage.

Blocking in

So, with the figure primed and then washed with raw umber (When I say a wash I mean a small quantity of Oil paint, a bit on the end of a matchstick, mixed with a few drops of Liquin till it makes a solution of the colour concerned which has the consistency of thin motor oil) I leave to dry for at least 24 hrs until the Oil paint is dry (it can take longer). The use of Liquin is critical in this, as it serves two functions, it thins the paint to make the wash, but it is also a drying agent which makes a huge difference to how long the Oil wash takes to dry. When I was going through my "trial and error" phase I once painted some horses with oils, which, several years later, still weren't fully dry!

Once dry I will then block in the first basic colours, which I will subsequently be over painting with Oils. In our example I've painted in the Coat and gaiters with Vallejo Acrylic 007 Pale Sand and the shoes and hat with Foundry Artic Grey 33A. In doing so I am filling up most of the surface but allowing the underlying raw umber wash to show through at the edges and also in any deep cuts or folds (similar to how you would if doing the "black undercoat" technique). The figures will then look something like this ...

Apologies this runs to much more text than I'd hoped, don't worry the text/image ration will improve once I've managed to explain the bulk of the technique as we progress forwards.

John