¹⁄35

Figure painting with Acrylics

This is a short article on 1/35 scale figure painting using acrylic paints. There are many articles in the archives that deal with painting figures with oils, here is a simple process of figure painting that gives good results, without the hassle of oil paints.

equipment

First we deal with equipment. In my experience, for figure painting Vallejo Acrylics are unsurpassed. I personally have a limited library of colours but I mix colours a lot to achieve the shade I desire. I also don't use a lot of different brushes, for this example figure I am using one single brush, a Javis 5/0 picked up at my local hobby shop for around £1.50.

The Primer i am using is Games Workshop Citadel Colour Skull White, I can't stress enough how important priming is, until recently I did not prime my figures, and this produced results that I deemed acceptable at best. A primer acts as a key for the paint to adhere to, allowing thinner coats and better adhesion earlier in painting the figure.

The Figure

This can be a daunting prospect at first, there are hundreds of figure manufacturers out there for you to choose from, to name them all would be pointless but I will name my favourites out of the (very few) manufacturers I have used. For detail Alpine Miniatures surpass all, being crisp, precise and are cast in a hard resin, the only downside I have found with Alpine is that the resin is slightly brittle. And my workhorse, Verlinden. Verlinden figures are generally a little over-scale, only by a few milimeters, but to be honest i don't think this matters, if you have a diorama for example, you wouldn't want everyone the same size and build. Verlinden figures aren' the most detailed either, but when you are starting out in figure painting, I believe to much detail over complicates things.

Construction

When constructing a figure, care must be taken to clear all flash (thin paper-like pieces of plastic or resin attached to the figure as a side effect from the moulding process),raised seam lines ( more common in standard plastic figures, this is similar to flash, but less prominent), and in resin figures, all air bubbles must be filled. It would be a bit silly if your tank commander had a hole in his forehead.

When constructing plastic figures there is usually a instruction sheet either inside or on the back of the box, as with most resin figures there are no instructions, so be careful you don't put some pieces in the wrong place, its good to look at references before you start the construction to see where the equipment would sit. When constructing plastic figures normal modelling glue is used, but when constructing a resin figure Cyanoacrylate, more commonly known as CA or superglue is used.