any help on brushes or techniques to painting 1/35 figures faces and uniforms to good detail. im amazed on how great detail is reached on small figures and was wondering how its done.

-from a noobie

Vallejo's home page has a tutorial on how to paint with acrylics. I can link you to their main page, but they use Java to navigate through the site, so I cannot give you a direct link to the info.

Vallejo's Homepage

The better the figure/face the easier the painting.
Bad Italerie or old Tamiya figures are hard to paint.
You don't have to spend a fortune on AM resin figures to get goodresults,Dragon and new Tamiya figures are much better.

Then practice, practice, practice.......

Don't be afraid of oils, get a bit of practice then bring on oils.

I’m not quite there myself but this is what I found out so far. Apart from Scott’s useful advice on practice and good quality models, the only 2 things that come to mind that may be obvious is a large, table top magnifying glass and good lighting.

It doesn’t have to be of very high magnification, x2 to x5 should be sufficient but it should be large enough for you to cover the whole figure and more in any position. Mine surprisingly was used for knitting. A standing ones frees both hands. Don’t know why they need mag glasses though. Requisitioned mine from my Mum who does knitting. Nice to know the very old “kid” can still get freebies from the old folks.

Good lighting helps you in placement of highlights and shadows and washes to bring out the details. Avoid yellow light. A table mounted overhead fluorescent lamp should do it. Natural light is the best but then again that’s difficult to get at least not 24 hrs.

A good quality 00 brush is good enough for the fine details like eyes, badges, etc and one each of #1 and #2 should cover you for the wider areas. For stability make sure your arms are supported to your elbows otherwise its hard to keep steady.

Beachbum, what's the recommended brush made you used? I am spending a fortune on brush alone.

Oops! I used quite a bit of Tamiya and Winsor & Newton brushes.

Yeah CK, what type of airbrush did u get?? My old expensive brush is at his retirement age. Can u suggest any brand and where to get them.

btw fellas, i read the valejo article..one question came out, did the article is only mean for Vallejo paints? How about any other acrylics ?? such as gunze or tamiya??

anyway here's the link to the vallejo article Article

I don't think Tamiya work well. The pigment distribution doesn't work as well as Vallejo.

I use citidel paints from games workshop- the colour names may be funny-Vomit brown- but with the new resealable lids I am using a lot less and the paints are not drying up
also great metalics and the greatest of inks-(I lovee Inks) they also mix well with Valleyo

Ouch! Those are really expensive brushes Agrillion. The most expensive brush which I "accidentally" (always pays to look at the price) bought was a sable brush for RM 18. I've forgotten the brand but it was 00 and not too bad.

The majority of my brushes are the cheapo ones that you get for half a dozen @ Tesco. However, I do have 2 Faber Castel ones which hold paint well and retain their point. Trouble with the cheaper 00 is they don't soak up too much paint forcing one to go over an area more than once. Pretty difficult if your just fine lining collar or drawing an eye.

I don't think they're as expensive as your Windsor & Newtons though.

ive been painting and trying things out alot these days with figures. I realized for a greenish figure, il use lets say model master olive drab as a base coat over my primer, pre shade it, then add different shades of diluted green shades, 2 layers of future, black wash, dullcoat, and good results.
P.S. enamels for my base coat and acrylics for the rest worked well for me., or jsut acrylics all around.
that velijo article is a good one to look at!

Frank

Better quality figures will give better results, but resin or metal figures don't always justify their cost. When neccessary I replace Tamiya and DML's figures' heads with resin ones by Hornet or Warriors (although I find Hornet heads may be scaled a bit better to DML figures). Between these two companies, they have well over 100 sets of heads - German with various headgear, bareheaded with various expressions, British/Commonwealth, American, French, Russian, Italian, Japanese, Black, female, even skulls, and skulls wearing helmets. Of course, to get the wanted results requires patience and practice, patience and practice,...