Let's start at the very beginning .....

A very good place to start ....

My "painting journey" (How pretentious, and I'm not even an artist!), began many moons ago, and like many, I've evolved through the usual phases of Humbrol enamels, black undercoat, acrylic layering etc.

About 10 years ago (about the time I started trying (badly) to make figures of my own), I started to think about what I was trying to achieve with the painting, I took it back to first principles and have experimented and evolved my technique ever since. In these posts I'll try to progressively explain why I do things in certain ways, whilst we walk through the painting of the unit. I'll try to keep a balance between "boring" text and images (likely to be more explanation at the start), but let me know if I'm saying too much!

I would argue that to make a figure look great, you need to achieve three main objectives, depth, colour, definition (other things may come to mind as I ramble on! 😄

So, all figures start with .....

Undercoat or Primer

Most folk, painting most things, start with a white or at least "light" primer. The reason is fairly simple, most paints don't fully mask the colour underneath them (unless you put them on very thick or in several layers). The colour underneath "bleeds through" and impacts on the colour on top. That's why most paintings, walls etc start white and then get painted on top. Not many of us would undercoat a wall black before painting it a light yellow for example.

So why do so many figure painters undercoat figures black? The answer is easy ..... it's a bodge, it's a quick way to create depth and definition by allowing some of the black to show through at the edges. However it's very crude in both respects and it directly impacts on our third objective colour. I would also argue that you can make a figure with a black undercoat "decent" fairly easily, but it's actually quite hard to make it really "good".

So ...... it's white then? Well err yes, but, as most folks painting figures know, a white undercoat is a pain, miss even the smallest bit and it shows and looks crap, also, while it helps with colour, it adds nothing to depth and definition.

So, the solution?

Mine is to Prime white, but then wash over with a suitable darker colour, which, importantly only lies in any strength in the creases and edges. Doing this "helps" us with all three objectives. The wash doesn't overwhelm the white primer, so it still helps us with the "colour", the lining effect which the wash gives us helps to create "definition" between different surfaces, and the gradation it produces on wider surfaces and curves helps to create a degree of "depth".

So in the next step on our figures I have washed over with an Oil paint and Liquin mix, in this case the Oil Paint is Winsor &Newton Raw Umber Artists Oil Colour

Shown for illustration is our first company of the rank and file (who are being painted in parallel with the command, so we'll alternate between the two as we go).

Next time I'll talk more about paints and show the next steps ....

John