OK then, moving on to the hair and the hats......
I decided to go with mid brown hair for all four. You can’t see much of it, so I didn’t see any point in spending time mixing for different hair colours. With hair, as with all other parts of the figure, you are trying to emphasise the volume of the area. You simply cannot highlight every hair, you’d go mad before you finished the figure. For this hair colour I used these.
I paint the whole area with 872 then highlight the hair volume with 875. If there was more hair on view I would use an intermediate tone, and possibly a final highlight, but you wouldn’t see it here so I saved some time.
At this point I decided that I needed a light and dark on my palette so I could tint and shade the colours. I used these..
I rarely use black and white because I think they are too stark. I save them for highlights and shadow on black and white areas of figures.....
Here they are on the palette...
The next stage in painting is to block paint the helmet in German grey and to “frame out “ the face area with the same shade. It is far easier to paint up to an adjacent area neatly than it is to paint a fine line between the areas to delineate them. Make sure you paint the underside of the helmet up to the face, this is what makes it stand out (pop). At this time I also painted the chin strap in the same colour.
Next up, I highlighted the middle of the chinstrap with a lighter shade of grey. I made this by adding a touch of basic flesh tone to the German grey.
This can be seen on the palette here....
The strap tint is the one below and left of the dark grey blob. Using flesh as a tint warms the grey slightly and differentiates it from the helmet.
The tints above and right of this are the ones used for the helmet highlights.
The first tint is used on the flare at the bottom and on the crown of the helmet. Remember to unload the brush first to remove excess paint, and to start the stroke where the lightest coverage is needed. You want to paint it, not flood it.
The second tint is also used in these same areas, but covering a smaller area leaving some first tint visible between that tint and the base colour. The last, and lightest, tint is used for edge highlights and the very top of the helmet where it is horizontal and would catch and reflect the most light. To highlight edges it is easier to use the side of the brush, just touching the edge in question. You can do it with the point, but run the risk of painting into the shadow area.
I didn’t take pictures in between the various layers as I use a wet brush and only rinsed between colours.
Here are some shots of the figures as they are now.....
The top figure shows the shadow generated by the initial framing out in dark grey. This makes the face and helmet pop nicely off of each other. Don’t worry about slight over painting on the collar, this will be fixed when that is painted. In the second shot the figure on the left has an olive grey base colour, but the technique is exactly the same, just mix your highlights and apply them as shown. All colours have been applied with the same number 1 brush.....
Lastly, a useful resource for basic German uniforms, including relevant VJ paint colours, can be found here...just use the stated colour as a base and tint or shade with the light or dark paint.
Hope this helps, as always just ask if my Wiltshire is difficult to understand!
I decided to go with mid brown hair for all four. You can’t see much of it, so I didn’t see any point in spending time mixing for different hair colours. With hair, as with all other parts of the figure, you are trying to emphasise the volume of the area. You simply cannot highlight every hair, you’d go mad before you finished the figure. For this hair colour I used these.
I paint the whole area with 872 then highlight the hair volume with 875. If there was more hair on view I would use an intermediate tone, and possibly a final highlight, but you wouldn’t see it here so I saved some time.
At this point I decided that I needed a light and dark on my palette so I could tint and shade the colours. I used these..
I rarely use black and white because I think they are too stark. I save them for highlights and shadow on black and white areas of figures.....
Here they are on the palette...
The next stage in painting is to block paint the helmet in German grey and to “frame out “ the face area with the same shade. It is far easier to paint up to an adjacent area neatly than it is to paint a fine line between the areas to delineate them. Make sure you paint the underside of the helmet up to the face, this is what makes it stand out (pop). At this time I also painted the chin strap in the same colour.
Next up, I highlighted the middle of the chinstrap with a lighter shade of grey. I made this by adding a touch of basic flesh tone to the German grey.
This can be seen on the palette here....
The strap tint is the one below and left of the dark grey blob. Using flesh as a tint warms the grey slightly and differentiates it from the helmet.
The tints above and right of this are the ones used for the helmet highlights.
The first tint is used on the flare at the bottom and on the crown of the helmet. Remember to unload the brush first to remove excess paint, and to start the stroke where the lightest coverage is needed. You want to paint it, not flood it.
The second tint is also used in these same areas, but covering a smaller area leaving some first tint visible between that tint and the base colour. The last, and lightest, tint is used for edge highlights and the very top of the helmet where it is horizontal and would catch and reflect the most light. To highlight edges it is easier to use the side of the brush, just touching the edge in question. You can do it with the point, but run the risk of painting into the shadow area.
I didn’t take pictures in between the various layers as I use a wet brush and only rinsed between colours.
Here are some shots of the figures as they are now.....
The top figure shows the shadow generated by the initial framing out in dark grey. This makes the face and helmet pop nicely off of each other. Don’t worry about slight over painting on the collar, this will be fixed when that is painted. In the second shot the figure on the left has an olive grey base colour, but the technique is exactly the same, just mix your highlights and apply them as shown. All colours have been applied with the same number 1 brush.....
Lastly, a useful resource for basic German uniforms, including relevant VJ paint colours, can be found here...just use the stated colour as a base and tint or shade with the light or dark paint.
Hope this helps, as always just ask if my Wiltshire is difficult to understand!
As these figures are not conventionally based I won’t do that. I will wait until the top part is painted and varnished so I can handle them without damage.
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