figure painting example

[Vietnam Seabee]

Great tutorial..thanks
terry

[deemery]

The idea of black primer is to create 'default shading' as you add paint on top of the primer.  There's always a bit of tension between keeping your paint colors thin, and getting full coverage.  That's particularly noticeable when painting white (shirt) on top of the black primer.  A bit of practice helps get you used to getting the right amount of paint.  For the white shirt, I had to go back and paint it twice, 2 thin coats.

dave

[Zephyrus52246]

I paint in the opposite sequence.  I start with the shirt/pants and finish with the face/hands.  The present batch of LPs, I primed with the black, but had issues seeing the detail on them versus light grey or white primer.  Probably due to my not so young vision.  Your figure looks great. 

Jeff

[deemery]

I paint in the opposite sequence.  I start with the shirt/pants and finish with the face/hands.  The present batch of LPs, I primed with the black, but had issues seeing the detail on them versus light grey or white primer.  Probably due to my not so young vision.  Your figure looks great.

Jeff

"There's More Than One Way To Do It."   

dave

[deemery]

Here's the washes.  This took about 10 minutes but makes a huge difference.  

I put a bit of the flesh wash around the eyes, ears and neck.  

This wash has a reddish, rose or rusty color.

Then the wash for the rest of the figure.  I'm using Citadel "Nulm Oil" which has been highly recommended by both model railroaders and figure painters.  The color looks to be a thin neutral grey.

This got painted along the lines of the broom, the belt line, between the legs on the back, along the apron, around the collar and under the arms (both front and back.)

Some close-ups.  This looks dark when you look this closely, but from normal viewing distance it looks a lot better (as you can see in the other photos.)




The final step will be to do a matte varnish once the washes have dried.  As they dry, the colors will fade a bit.

dave

[Dave Buchholz]

Dave, thanks for your step by step tutorial.

I would anticipate the initial darkening should be airbrushed on. As to not create too thick of an underlying base coat would cover fine detail.

Fifth Dave to the right.

[Philip]

Looks like a clean sweep Dave!

Nice work.

[ACL1504]

Dave,

Well done, Looks like he swept a lot of dirt/dust as well.

Tom

[Dave Buchholz]

If you add carpets, make sure he doesn't sweep it under the rug. I don't trust the look in that guy's 1/87 eyeballs.. Looks kind of shady to me.
😅

Dave #5

[deemery]

Here's what the washes will do for a commercial figure.  This guy is from the Woodland Scenics 'roofers' set.  There wasn't enough contrast between the (African American?) skin tone and the hair, so I painted the hair a darker grey.  Then I added a bit of the flesh wash to face, neck and hands:


Next, I did the Nulm Wash on the clothing.




I'll let this dry, and then do the matte varnish.   Total time spent on this figure was less than 5 minutes.  Most of this was done with a good quality #0 'round' pointed brush.

Don't forget, by the way, these guys will be in the poorly illuminated interior of the Machine Shop, so adding more contrast will help you see the detail.  The WS figure doesn't have anywhere near the same level of cast-on detail as the KnuckleDuster figure.  But he's closer to scale size, the KD figures are really 00 size so they represent quite tall and bulky people (basketball players?) in HO scale.  I try to keep the KD figures grouped away from other closer-to-scale figures. 

dave

[Rick]

Dave, those figures look excellent.
Thanks for the tips and how you did it.