Go for it Tony.         the good lord has faith in thee

Thanks buddy but I ain't too sure he even knows who I am sometimes.

Tony Lee

Nicely sculpted figure.  Looking forward to seeing him painted.

Regards,  Rick

Perfect conversion Tony-\

Whatever you did to him---it's working

get to painting---I'm behind you all the way!

Thanks Indy btw we lived in Oxnard for alittle over a year.

I got him cleaned up today and mounted on a base, will do finial touch up tomorrow and primer.

Thanks for coming by bud

Tony Lee

Cleaned and primed

I don't know what that black speck is on the back of the neck,i'll check.

Tony Lee

Pvt Mutt

 

I don't know what that black speck is on the back of the neck,i'll check.

Tony Lee

The lable form his coat?

You might want to try to drill/carve out the cuffs of the coat where the wrists are attached, at least a bit. The position you're choosing will point that directly at the viewer and it's hard to paint a reallistic cuff interior if there is no depresion there.

Yeah that's what it is ajlafleche,the lable in the jacket collar.

Yep I saw the cuffs but was hoping no one noticed,I should have known better than try and pull anything around you guys.

Thanks fellow,i'll clean them out tomorrow.

Tony Lee

(In evil voice) We shall call him Little Tony, and he shall help us RULE THE WORLD!  HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA

Brian

aaarrrrrrr

Tony Lee

Tony, great start so far. Painting figures isn't so hard, I'm sure you'll do allright. So I wish you good luck and have a nice day

Pawel

Pawel

Painting figures isn't so hard, 

Pawel

I must disagree here. FIgures are the most challenging area of our hobby to get right. You can pass off a tank with the wrong colors, an aircraft with the wrong camo, a car with orange peel and no one "outside of a small circle of friends" would notice. But we all know, we are pretty much hard wired to know, what a human looks like. Get a face wrong and anyone will know.

FIgure painting is a really hard task master but worth the effort.

Well awright, looks like I started a debate here - unintentionally! AJ, of course building models isn't the easiest thing to do. And I have no problems agreeing that the top of building models is painting figures. (the dio builders and wooden ship builders will probably have their problems here, but...). Do we want to discourage people of taking a shot at it? Do we want to tell one can not get results he/she wouldn't be happy with? Do you expect an experienced modeller with tens (or even hundreds) of completed models to have bad problems with painting his first figure? I sure don't, that's why I wrote what I wrote. I didn't want to say painting figures is easy. And I didn't

And while I still look to improve my figure painting skills, still a lot of room for improvement, I must say I have a lot of fun painting figures and so I stick with what I wrote - painting figures isn't so hard. I know you disagree and I respect that. That said, I wish you a nice day

Pawel

If I may throw in my two cents please? I think how hard figures are depends on who you are.

I've seen:

Armour guys consider aircraft difficult because of all the decals.

Aircraft guys consider autos hard because of trying to get a perfect clear gloss finish.

Auto guys consider armour hard because of all of the tiny 'fiddly bits'.

So frankly are figures hard or easy? Everyone will have a different opinion.

Practice makes perfect and you don't know till you've tried it. Looks like you've got a well detailed figure, a crisp figure is much easier to paint than one with soft detail. Looking forward to seeing your work!

Hold on now folks. You guys have both made some good points  and I appreciate them all.

My dad always told me that "NO ONE" is born with the ability to do a task no matter what it is. It's all part of a learning process. Some have an easier time of it and others don't so depending of your determination and attitude you can do anything anybody else can.

I don't have much trouble with the mechanics of building something,never have but when it comes to the artistic side of something now that's a different story, it takes a lot of effort on my part to pull that off.

With modeling you get out of it what you put into it. That takes us right back to the "Determination and Attitude" part of it. Right now what I build is not perfect and a very unrealistic goal but a clean well received model is and if I stay with it the "Perfect" might just rear its head one day.

I've always felt that for my models to be complete they needed a figure to set them off so here we are and if you people and your guidance will stay with me we'll get er done.

Thanks for dropping by

Tony Lee

May the force be with you Tony.

I agree with you that it figures that figures give scale and life to a display and we improve as we go along.

Before discovering the passion for Dioramas I used to paint vinyl figures like an assembly plant to play with. All it took was a diorama competition that had an entry date that spanned one week. Within that space of time I had entered two dios. The first one was horrible, the second was also horrible but much improved and got me a prize for my figure painting ability. So I think practise makes perfect. Over the years I hoped I have improved further.

Anticipating to see your painted figure soon.

Cheers,

Richard 

Sorry if it sounded like I was discouraging to Tony, that was not my intent. Figure painting is a journey that many of us have been on for many years and we continue to learn. Very few painters achieve spectacular success their first time out. We learn, practice, get advice, retrace our steps, practice, get a little bit better, get a bit worse, practice, hopefully improve, practice. Anyway, Tony, give it a shot. Hopefully, you'll get honest feedback here (and anywhere else you post) that will help you along. It would be great if the most honest feedback were to be, "That's excellent!"  

Awwwww AJ you weren't discouraging at all. I'm no stranger to disappointment that's just part of life.

You know when people first start in the hobby or even come back after a lot of years some of them ask what brand of kit they should start out with and nine times out of ten they are told Tamiya,i'm talking tanks here,and that's where I am with figures.

I don't expect to do any show stoppers ever,just a presentable figure to finish up a shelf queen if you know what I mean. I'll post some pictures up later today of the base colors and ask for advice on how to proceed so stay tuned.

Thanks

Tony Lee

Howdy Folks, boy is it hot.

Ok I filled the hole on the back of the neck and hollowed out the cuffs. All the base coat colors are applied so I guess i'm about ready to get down to the nitty gritty after it dries for a day of two.

Flesh is "LifeColor" base coat flesh. The uniform is "Panzer Ace" 335 German tanker II Feldgrau and the belt and boots were painted with a mix of "Tamiya" Flat Black and Nato Brown.

Standing by

Tony Lee

If that 335 Feldgrau is Vallejo, there's no need to wait that long for it to dry. I apply highlights and shadows with highly thinned Vallejo minutes after the main coat has been applied. Before you do that, however, you might want to do you skin with highlights and shadows. The rule of thumb is to work form the skin outwards. Here's vallejo's tutorial on their paint, in case you haven't seen it before.

OK AJ, Thanks

Tony Lee

Man Tony, after all that talk here you off to a great start!  Love that skin tone.  I keep hearing about Life Tone.....maybe I should be checking them out!

Brian

~Tony- Great start,  my friend--as you know I exepct great things from you  & enjoyed the PM's and getting to know you some.    Meanwhile...looks like these guys wanted to have a conversation and I missed it.

I'm certain that Pawel was just being encouraging saying Painting figures aint all that hard(you know--mind over matter)  {{Somehow I keep digging you out Pawel -- Somehow I seem to understand your Eastern European sensibility}}   Even still....my arguement would be that painting a figure isn't hard, but painting a decent figure takes alot more work and time and practice than we usually think it does. Even after the number I've painted with some success, I still forget just how much work goes into it---and a really great figure? No one here that I see can say, myself included....but I'm on the road

Pawel

Well awright, looks like I started a debate here - unintentionally! AJ, of course building models isn't the easiest thing to do. And I have no problems agreeing that the top of building models is painting figures. (the dio builders and wooden ship builders will probably have their problems here, but...). Do we want to discourage people of taking a shot at it? Do we want to tell one can not get results he/she wouldn't be happy with? Do you expect an experienced modeller with tens (or even hundreds) of completed models to have bad problems with painting his first figure? I sure don't, that's why I wrote what I wrote. I didn't want to say painting figures is easy. And I didn't

And while I still look to improve my figure painting skills, still a lot of room for improvement, I must say I have a lot of fun painting figures and so I stick with what I wrote - painting figures isn't so hard. I know you disagree and I respect that. That said, I wish you a nice day

Pawel

Well, we do come here to have discussions about modeling right? so sobeit if a debate gets started. Tony, You can have your thread back in just a sec, I just wanted to say a few things about what Pawel said there, my own views.

Pawel, we see it all the time--as you say " an experienced modeller  with  tens (or even hundreds) of completed models to have bad problems with painting his first figure? "  They sure do--there's tons of guys like that--that went on & on developing vehicle skills and never put the work into thier figure skillset---and now won't show you thier attempt at a figure--even though thier builds are crying for them! It's a whole new skill-set and its back to square one(almost) and most of these guys won't do it--won't be as B@LLZY as Tony and just put some work into it

GO TONY!!

One more thing--as a Dio guy---Yes Dioramas require  a vast bunch of skill-sets, a convincing Dio needs great figures, vehicles, landscape,ect,ect and every kind of finish  BUT to  me the ultimate scale model in terms of dificulty in all fairness , is the flying model plane- Guys that can build a realistc scale model plane that actually flys with the same flight characteristics as the full-scale original are the kings of scale models.

Ok I'm done 

Hey guys I don't mind anybody coming in on my threads as long as the it stays on subject as this one has. It's when the girlfriends,cats,dogs and goldfish take the lead that's uncalled for.

I've got one reason to be showing what I do and that is to show other new people and maybe give them some encouragement to hang in there because lord knows I can't compete with you people but I at least try to compete with myself. Heck it's just a hobby and not life or death.

So you guys carry on,i'm enjoying it and that's what it's all about.

Tony Lee

Tony, you're movin' on nicely, just, like AJ said, it's practical to complete the skin first (sometimes gets messy and it helps if you don't have to watch for the color boundary), and just then move to the uniform and finally the gear.

If the debate is OK, I'd like to write some more on this.

Adam - I'm a nice guy and I mean no harm and no disrespect. I sure wish people would have no fear to learn something new, but I know they often do and I admire anybody who is willing to leave the safety of known environment and reach out for THE NEW.

And while building models isn't easy, as you have to know a lot and try hard, I think it also isn't THIS hard for people who do it as a hobby. I just think we need a little bit of distance in almost everything we do. And then if you mess up a fig, you can always strip the paint and try again, so no sweat, right? Of course it's differentfor a new man, who just starts the hobby and don't have many practical, but also mental skills (for example dealing with work that went wrong). An experienced modeller worked out many things like handling a brush, mixing paints, not giving up. Still many things to learn, but this is the thing I was thinking about.

So Tony, respect for trying something new and thanks for sharing with us. I'm sure you can do it, and I'm going to watch your progress just to find out how good the result is going to be, because I know it will be good. Best luck with your project, and have a nice day

Pawel

Great job so far Tony, afraid I don't really have anything to add to what the guys have already said though.

I applied the first coat of burnt umber wash  today and this looks terrible. With the naked eye it doesn't look near this bad. Is this normal?

Sorry,i'm only human, after all.

Tony Lee

Hey Tony,

It looks like your wash was a bit thin.  I would say thicken up and just rehit the lips, eyes and ears again to get them a bit darker.  But other than that I think your doing good so far!

I also found this link some time ago.  Maybe it will be of some help:

http://www.modelarmour.com/index.php?option=com_jfusion&Itemid=81&jfile=viewtopic.php&f=12&t=866

Brian

Instead of a wash, try laying in the shadows with a darkened shade of the base color. You'll have more control of the depth. That said, yes, when I did washes, it was not uncommon to look pretty bad until the dry brushing went on. Again, though, layering in the shadows and highlights as in thetutorial in the link I sent you, will give you a better effect in the long run.

The way i do faces now, in 54mm , slightly larger than 1/35 is to lay down the base flesh as you did. Add the whites of the eyes with Pale Flesh, add a point of dark brown, blue or green for the iris and reshape the eye with the base. I'll then start layering in shadows with Vallejo Dark fleshtone from their games line added to the base. Lighter shadows in larger areas first, then thinner layers of darker in the more deply shaded area. Next come thinned base color applied to the forehead, chin, upper lip, upper cheek bones, jaw line, and ridge of  the nose. The higher areas get some base mixed with pale flesh and thinned with a final very thinned aplication of pale flesh to the very highest highlights. Poster Dupes and Browniii came by my house last march and we did a sit down painting session. Following these instructions, they were quite happy with their 1/35 faces.