my first attempt at figure painting...this is a bit old. The base is a Coke bottle cap. Filled it up with plaster of paris and sprinkled some woodland scenic grass and foliage. Comments and criticism most welcome


Sniper on the loose... by dioramaposty, on Flickr

A Ok First Attempt, Figure painting is quite a fine art and requires a lot of practice and effort to see the results you want.
I have some important questions.
What paints are you using, The uniform looks quite thick,
Do you prime? Priming can create a better key for thinner coats of paint, Sometimes I Prime, Sometimes I dont, I have been priming my marines as I am using very thin coats of paint.

Your green looks very luminous, Something that for a sniper would be a bad idea.

I reccomend vallejo paints, and some good goole seaching before you start painting a figure,

A good start is * Russian ww2 uniform, German ww2 unifrom E.t.c, A basic search, but will give you a rough idea of what Colours you may need to paint, If you know the unit, Year of service and Area of operation they may be good to add to your search.

I dont want to overwhelm you with techniques, but there are some AWESOME Tutorials out there..

Faces with acrylic..
http://zyclyon-tutorials.blogspot.com/2009/03/1_28.html

painting in general
http://www.acrylicosvallejo.com/blog/2010/03/painting-figures-with-model-color/

Thanks James for your views. I use Pebeo or Camel oil paints and I didnt prime this figure as I didnt have access to primers. I have access to only one Tamiya store here and tamiya paints arent good for brush painting. Vallejo I have to buy from eBay and it will cost me a bomb so I use local oil paints as the acrylics are quite bad. This was done last year and now am working on another figure which I have primed with a tamiya primer and using thin coat of oil paints...takes hell lot of time for the coats to dry

Try some cardboard as a pallette- squeeze the oil paints onto a piece of cardboard and wait about 1-2 hours- the oil carrier in the paint should be soaked up by the cardboard, creating a little halo around the paint splotches- this will also speed up your drying times.

Interesting Karl...after 1-2 hours can I use that with turp?

Yeah, with turp it is fine.