@Tom; you have quite some filling to do with that one!
@Tat; The detail on this figures is quite soft. It'll be a challenge getting that painted.
@Jim; Welcome aboard! You have the honour og being nr. 50 in our campaign!

Lower half done (Ron - was alot of putty).

Started on arms. I put the ammo pouch on the figures back - that seems to be common in alot of the photos I have seen.



Pre-paint hint: I sealed the lower half of the figure w/ water based carpenters glue. It fills in the fine scratches and the line between plastic & filler.


Almost ready to prime...

Johnathon, good start on your figures. To help oils dry faster you can use a product called "Jap Dryer" or Japan Dryer". I have seen it listed as both. It will speed up the process of drying the oils. Have been using it for years. Another suggestion when painting with oils is to base coat the figure using acrylics in the same or close to the shade of the uniform. being painted. Acrylics typically dry flat and provided a good tooth for the oils to grab when applied. Then use the oils to do just the shadows and highlights. It means you are using less oil paint and therefore it will dry quicker. Makes it easier to blend your colors too. With the acrylics as a base, if you blend too far you only run into the base color and can start over. Hope this helps. "Q"

Finally figured out how to post my pictures here.

My scene is called Supplies for Colonel Saito.

Here are the two figures and some of the supplies:


The figures primed:


Painting from the inside out, flesh based with oils:


Uniforms based and initial shading with acrylics:

Hi Railmen,
It's probably better to do it through Photobucket of imageshack.
These accounts are free and you can simple add the link here.

Edit; never mind. It seems you managed to solve it!

great figures by the way!

Hi Ron, I finally linked to my photobucket account rather than the kitmaker account here. Thanks for the words of encouragement.
Jim

Thanks Ron, and yes it will be challenge given the level of detail. Anyways, will try and do my best to finish this.

Here's what I have done earlier today:



Not much progress you'd say. But this where I spend sooo much time -- painting the flesh coat itself. Painting and waiting for it to dry before another round. Its either the paint is too thick in some areas or too thin that it gets runny. In the end it takes several coats just to have an evenly painted flesh tone.

Is it paint / thinner ratio? is it better to use a small flat brush? Appreciate any tip on this.

Cheers

Tat

I guess it's the paint, because I have this too.
What I always do is take the basecolour, apply 2-3 thincoats.
When dry give it 1 or 2 darker coloured washes, followed by 1-2 highlights, constantly keeping my fingers crossed everything works out...

Hi Guys,

Here' my Reiscast Paratrooper efforts:



bit of colour





Ron, I've Uploaded the pics.

Al

Your figures look very lifelike, Alan.
How do you tackle the skintones?

Thanks for uploading them. You'll the first one to get the ribbon!

Hi Ron,

A much better figure painter than me once told me that using brown/flat earth is a good base for any flesh tones.

Recently I've been using the Life Color Flesh Set. It contains 5 colours although I use only 3 of them

Flesh 1st Base 2 coats
Then 50/50 1st light and 1st shadow.

The life color paints require only a tiny amount mixed in a drop or two of water. 2 or 3 light applications will usually give a reasonable blend of skin tone. For lips, cheeks, ears I use varing degrees of XF Flat Red mixed with some of the 1st light. .

Let each application dry thoroughly, check and then add more tone as necessary to the main areas and then a little colour for the lips, cheeks etc.

The life color paints dry with no brush marks and flow very easily, Big John put me onto them and I'm still experimenting but they make life so much easier. Use them in tiny amounts mixed with water.

Cheers

Al

A begining!

Before going to technique I’ll start with my choice of paint, brushes and so on. I’m old school; I use Humbroll enamels. They have degraded much through the years but this is what I took my first step into the hobby with and I stick to it – almost. The thing is, you can’t teach an old dog new trick! I’ve tried water-based paint but I find it difficult to get the same results as with Humbroll. My favourite choice of brushes is the Kolinsky line bought from Historex. They are fairly prices, last long and have a nice long brush length.

But to the painting


Step 1
I make a mix of no 26 (earth brown*), no 226 (a kind of darkish green*) and no 67 (German panzer gray*). This mix is thinned slightly with turpentine and brushed to the figures. This is set aside for 10-15 minutes, just enough for the paint to stick firmly to the figure


Step 2
I make a new mix like the above only darker than the original, this time with more of no 67 and some of no 98 (chocolate brown*). This mix is then thinned with turpentine to a milky appearance. I do this in a “top” from a Cola bottle (which I ALWAYS seem to have a bundle of lying around – wonder why?) When thinned I place the top slightly angled on the table. This gives a variation in the solution. At the bottom it’s highly thinned but at the top it’s less thinned. This gives the advantaged that I have different solutions to choose from.
I begin with the heavily thinned solution. When I paint the dark areas, I always turn the figures upside down; the light will then shine on the parts I need to paint you see. From time to time I turn the figure upright to evaluate the process. Areas found to need more are given more of the highly thinned paint (which increase as time goes). At the end I take the less thinned paint and put that in very dark areas (like between his legs, under pockets, very deep wrinkles and so on)


Step 3
The same procedure is done with highlights. The mix is still the basic mix only this time with some no 61 (flesh colour*). Another difference is, that this time the figure is held upright all the time

Step 2 and step 3 is done one after the other. To blend it all I then take a big brush and with a stamping-like motion blend the colours together. This has to be done gently though!

* I do not have an official colour card so I can’t give their real names. The numbers are accurate though.

Hi Kenneth,

Nice work.

This is my other entry for the campaign the Ultracast tanker kneeling:





Pic uploaded

Al

I’ve come a bit further now. Shirts are different to trousers and jackets as they are made of lighter fabric. This is not only a thing for the sculptor to remember but for the painter too to consider. The lighter fabric creates deeper wrinkles and folds and therefore the shades and highlights are much more important. In short, we have to have a much more bold approach to our mixes.
The steps are the same but this time I mixed two or three mixes for both shades and highlights. The light shirt is particular difficult as are all light colors like yellow and shades of white. With these the keyword is patience! Heavily thinned shades and highlights added a little at the time. And one thing more, DO NOT USE WHITE (or yellow) !! they are fare to bright and give a “toy-ish” appearance.

Hi guys

Some fine entries so far!

Snowed in this weekend so had some time to complete my first effort.

Tamiya SU85 tanker, going to be used on my current SU122 build.



Cheers

Keith

Hi Folks. JV reporting fer duty.

For this campaign, I will be painting the following two figures. Both are now assembled, cleaned and primed. I am not sure as of yet if they'll be created for stand-alone vignettes. I shot these rather quickly to get started even though I have about a zillion other things to do right now, so please excuse the mild quality of the pics.

The first one is a soviet tank commander from Alpine. I am constantly amazed by the quality of these figures.



Second is a very slight modification. The body is from the excellent Austria Last Battle 1945 set from Dragon, with an Alpine head (I'm a big fan!). This one will most likely end-up as a small vignette.



Primed with a mix of Tamiya Neutral Grey (XF-53) and laquer thinner.

Cheers!

My Pre-Painting Steps:


Step 1 - Figure assembled. I build the whole thing w/out the head but inc. weapon.



Step 2 - Prime w/ automotive rattle can. I use wire thru the feet vs. glued to a flat base so I can spray straight down (upside down for the figure) and get the lower / under areas.



Step3 - Black wash (acrylic) for shadows.



Step 4 - White drybrush (acrylic) for highlights.




Next: the real work starts - LOL

Hi Guys,

Some great figures coming along here, excellent stuff.

Al

Hi Ron , This looks like a great campaign. I see that the time frame was 1/1 - 1/7, do you think you might run this campaign again? I didn't see it until it was almost over . Thanks,Vince

I enlisted I think yesterday. I have some of the Dragon vietnam erea figures that are going on my entry in the mighty wheels campaign. They are being painted with a combination of Model Master's, Tamiya, and Vallejo's Acrylic paints. This is the first time I have used all acrylic paints. They flow and cover a lot better than enamal paints.
The first figure is the driver from the Dragon Mule kit.


This is the first wounded soldier.


This is the second wounded soldier.


This is a third set one carring a wounded soldier.

The last one is kind of a bad picture I need to pratice a little more. Hopefully I'll get some time this week to work on the figures and my picture taking.

Tom

Hi Vince.

I think the campaign ends June 30, 2010.

Cheers

JV

@ Keith; figure looks good, allthough I must admit that, looking at the first picture, his posture does look odd. One more and You'll be awarded!
@ Neo; you are really going to town on this one, aren't you? When the peinting turns out as great as the conversion, you'll have a superb figure!

@ Vince; you are looking at the European way of writing a date, not the US-version. Over here we use the day/month, so you should read 1st of July. Plenty of time to join in!

Right on! This is great.

I was just thinking of an unexpected side effect of my restarted 1/35th scale hobby. I really prefer to add figures to all my vehicles for a couple of reasons; lends scale, and kind of lends character, story to the model. The tanks look lonely! So, I've ended up painting a lot my figures than I used to; I counted thirty-ish on my dresser top display, but dios like this sure helps up the #;