Help for 1/72 figures

Read your mail in the aircraft forum too. Never built the old Aific Mitchell, because it always looked, how to put this, well,...old... I built the B-25C from Italeri, though. But I've seen people doing great jobs with not-so-good kits, and even old Airfix offerings can turn out pretty good. I once built their Ilyushin Il-28, then the only one available, and I had a whale of a time making it look better than what the kit would have been. But that's not the point. Pilots. Well, at that scale, I think it is a mistake to show off lots of details, My 1/72 - 1/76 figures, when I put them in my dioramas, are painted with acrylic flesh paint, then I use a wash made out of artist's oil Burnt Sienna and white spirit. The wash will go in all recesses and crevices, leaving the 'higher' parts of the face (and hands) lighter in colour (chin, forehead, nose, knickles,...). Do not bother painting the white of the eyes, it's not worth it and won't matter. My flesh tone is obtained by mixing various amounts of white, yello and red, and I aim for a slightly different shade of 'flesh' for each different figure.

Ditto the 'don't try too hard.' A slight shading under the chin to accentuate the shadow; don't overdo it or it looks like a painted figure rather than a small person. DO NOT try to paint the eyes; at that scale all you really see is the shadow unless they're looking up, wide-eyed staring.

Note that in the wash described above, "white spirit" is THINNER not white paint. Burnt Sienna is a medium-dark red-brown.

Thanks, Corrie... Always forget that what is known by a name here is not always known by the same name somewhere else... But even in French-speaking Belgium, where I come from, we call it 'White Spirit'...

Turpentine is also a good thinner for artist's oil. Smells nicer too!