Hey everybody! I've decided to do something drastic. Something to improve my figure painting skills. I've never really been happy with my figures, and I always wanted to improve. But how? I have many books, and online articles, but I only paint figures when I'm doing a diorama, which means about 4-6 figures every 2 months.

So I've decided to really do something to improve. I am going to paint a single figure in a basic colour scheme. Then I will strip it. Then I will paint it again. And I will strip it again. And I will do this until I am happy with my painting skills. Then I will try black and white cloth. And strip and paint the model again. Then I will try camouflage. And hopefully, after a month or two I will be a master figure painter.

I have picked the figure and I wil post pics of the figure and the finished paintjob. I will number the paintjobs, 1, 2, 3 etc. I won't show my steps until my painting is really good. The figure is 1/35 by the way and made by dragon.

I'll start tomorrow.

Good luck with that and I hope it works out for you.

Firstly, don't rush it... take it easy and concentrate on the techniques. Giving yourself a couple of months to become a 'master figure painter' is rather over-ambitious. That said, who'm I to know - you may be the next Pietro Balloni or figure painting Boy Wonder

Personally I wouldn't recommend continually stripping the figure down, but paint other figures. That say you can later see your progress as opposed to only having the picture references.

Don't wait "until my painting is really good" to post the pics. How can we advise you where you're going wrong then? We may see something you don't. You may also be overly critical, where we can be objective.

To become a master figure painter you need to spend time on a figure site, where those "in the know" hang out, where you can learn from their experience and advice. While Armorama is terrific, it's an AFV site. Consider visiting and posting your work on Historicus Forma. Contrary to popular believe all manners of figures can be seen there, not only historics.

Rudi

I am going to post pictures of each painted figure, but I won't show the steps until I am happy. And yes, master is over-ambitious, but I hope to see an improvement. I would like to paint seperate figures but I don't have enough, and I would not be happy with my earlier ones and I'd just end up stripping those and re-doing them. I'm a perfectionist, which is the main problem, and I hate when I can't do something up to the standard that I have in my head.

Here are some pics of the first paintjob. I'm not painting everything, because it's too time consuming so I only paint the face, shirt, and pants. The shirt got a little messed up with a wash, looks kind of like leather now, and the white dots that I just noticed on the pants are just dust. The pictures aren't the best right now. I'm building a macro box tomorrow so they'll turn out better then.

Please feel free to judge my painting as if you were a golden demon judge. You can try to make me cry. Anything. Just as long as you say how I can improve the aspect of the model you're commenting on. I'm thick skinned so lay it on! And you can post figure panting links too. I paint with acrylics btw, and the figure is a dragon body with a leftover alpine head. Thanks for the help!

I like your "take-no-prisoners" attitude ..good luck and you need better lighting for your photos

I decided that painting everything took too long, and I wanted to focus on one thing at a time, so I decided to work on the face. I didn't like my last face, so I looked at what I was doing wrong and tried again.

I decided that instead of following what everyone else does, I would do what looks natural. I always wanted to add more contrast so I painted on the dark shadows under the nose, lip, chin etc. I painted them with a dark flesh color mixed with a bit of black and they ended up looking just like shadows from an overhead light.

I also focused heavily on highlight placement.

The pictures were taken with my new setup, but they really do look way better than the last face I did, and they look better in real life (imo). I'm just happy I found something that works for me.

Please feel free to criticize my face as if you were a judge at a modeling competition. Just suggest how I can improve what you are critiquing.

nothing wrong with your work, much much better than my figures..
the eyes need work though.. but i would say the face is really looking good.. keep it up

yeah, way too much reflection. I'll post new pics after I redo them. I was really focused on the face, not the eyes.

I fixed the eyes as best I can without redoing other face portions. The eyes are quite unusual as they are kind of opened wide. Next time I will extend my highlights further, as I think that is what people like Jaume Ortiz do.