I thought it might be instructive to show just how much correction is needed when painting model figures, especially when working on crucial facial detail on a small scale - in this case 28mm.
Or rather, just how much correction is needed when I'm painting model figures!
I've been working on this 28mm figure (of Ygritte: Kissed by Fire, from tabletop miniatures game A Song of Ice and Fire by CMON). She's been cut from her base and remounted on a pile of Scots pine bark and Milliput.
Here she is after a zenithal prime (brown and white - I was going to paint her yellow and changed my mind), followed by some washes and paint. Her hair is done, but face and hands have just had a thinned coat of Vallejo flesh wash ink. I'm using a Raphael 8404 No.1 brush from here on.
You can see how good the sculpt of facial details is, making the painter's job a bit easier.
After a coat of flesh tone, the eyes were painted in with very dark brown paint to the sockets, then white to the eyeballs, then a vertical stripe of dark brown for the pupils. At that stage there's brown paint everywhere - that gets covered with flesh tone to get the following result. I've thinned the paint and added retarder to help avoid tip drying. (If the paint was thicker than this, it'd be impossible to correct things without resulting in a mass of splodgy paint ruining the details). This is after the first pass - needs more layers to build up stronger pigmentation.
It's all very cartoonish here - you can see the painted eyes bear little relation to the actual moulding - they're way bigger. Unfortunately (or should that be fortunately?), the eyes progressed quickly and effectively, and I've got no photos of that progress.
(You can also see the speckled texture - that's the white of the zenithal prime. Probably had my airbrush on too high a pressure. Next time I do this I'll lower the pressure and use white paint, not white primer, and see if that gives me a better finish.)
After this picture I added extra layers of brown to darken the pupils and reduced the eye size by working up from below, in brown, until I had the desired size, then using more of the flesh tone (Vallejo Pale Flesh), to reduce the brown line beneath the eye until it was almost gone. This went really well, first attempt, resulting in this:
The eyes are still unnaturally large, but it looks less exaggerated for real, than it appears in these extreme close-ups.
And I've made s start on the eyebrows. The technique here is to try and paint a thin black line, then reduce it down to the desired size using flesh tone. Her right eyebrow went fairly well, the left was a disaster! So here come all the attempts and failed corrections, in chronological order.
Until finally:
Bold, determined, confident - and still a bit Barbie, it must be said! I think eyes this large wouldn't really work on a male figure, but are fine in this instance.
And a reminder of how small the figure is, and a sense of how she looks for real, rather than in extreme close-up.
It's far from perfect (and the rest of the figure is unfinished), but I'm happy with it. There'll be a bit more tidying up of the face, but I'm nearly there.
The important thing for me was that, with suitably thinned, flowing paint, I was able to keep going at this, without building up too great a thickness of paint, until I was satisfied.
Next time I'll do better - I might even try to add white dots as reflections in the pupils. I didn't seriously attempt that this time around.
I hope this is of interest.
Or rather, just how much correction is needed when I'm painting model figures!
I've been working on this 28mm figure (of Ygritte: Kissed by Fire, from tabletop miniatures game A Song of Ice and Fire by CMON). She's been cut from her base and remounted on a pile of Scots pine bark and Milliput.
Here she is after a zenithal prime (brown and white - I was going to paint her yellow and changed my mind), followed by some washes and paint. Her hair is done, but face and hands have just had a thinned coat of Vallejo flesh wash ink. I'm using a Raphael 8404 No.1 brush from here on.
You can see how good the sculpt of facial details is, making the painter's job a bit easier.
After a coat of flesh tone, the eyes were painted in with very dark brown paint to the sockets, then white to the eyeballs, then a vertical stripe of dark brown for the pupils. At that stage there's brown paint everywhere - that gets covered with flesh tone to get the following result. I've thinned the paint and added retarder to help avoid tip drying. (If the paint was thicker than this, it'd be impossible to correct things without resulting in a mass of splodgy paint ruining the details). This is after the first pass - needs more layers to build up stronger pigmentation.
It's all very cartoonish here - you can see the painted eyes bear little relation to the actual moulding - they're way bigger. Unfortunately (or should that be fortunately?), the eyes progressed quickly and effectively, and I've got no photos of that progress.
(You can also see the speckled texture - that's the white of the zenithal prime. Probably had my airbrush on too high a pressure. Next time I do this I'll lower the pressure and use white paint, not white primer, and see if that gives me a better finish.)
After this picture I added extra layers of brown to darken the pupils and reduced the eye size by working up from below, in brown, until I had the desired size, then using more of the flesh tone (Vallejo Pale Flesh), to reduce the brown line beneath the eye until it was almost gone. This went really well, first attempt, resulting in this:
The eyes are still unnaturally large, but it looks less exaggerated for real, than it appears in these extreme close-ups.
And I've made s start on the eyebrows. The technique here is to try and paint a thin black line, then reduce it down to the desired size using flesh tone. Her right eyebrow went fairly well, the left was a disaster! So here come all the attempts and failed corrections, in chronological order.
Until finally:
Bold, determined, confident - and still a bit Barbie, it must be said! I think eyes this large wouldn't really work on a male figure, but are fine in this instance.
And a reminder of how small the figure is, and a sense of how she looks for real, rather than in extreme close-up.
It's far from perfect (and the rest of the figure is unfinished), but I'm happy with it. There'll be a bit more tidying up of the face, but I'm nearly there.
The important thing for me was that, with suitably thinned, flowing paint, I was able to keep going at this, without building up too great a thickness of paint, until I was satisfied.
Next time I'll do better - I might even try to add white dots as reflections in the pupils. I didn't seriously attempt that this time around.
I hope this is of interest.
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