I have a hard time too. My choice is to try and not do figures.

    The only advise I can offer is keep it simple. 35th scale figs are painfully small and trying to add to much shade and shadowing just makes a mess. A good base color, a whisper of shadow, and a stoke or two with a lighter dry brush is about all I can do. Hair is my hang up.

    If your doing a large scale figure or a bust, as your signifigant other, if they use make up, how they apply it.

Hello!

That's about the best I can do:

Now when I do an extreme close-up, he doesn't look all that good, but with a naked eye I think it's all right. My method is simple and I go about it like this: I paint the whole face (and the hands, and so on while I'm at it) with Humbrol 63 (OK, we're talking white boys here). I let it dry really good - so at least 24h. Then I apply a dark brown wash - also Humbrol thinned with airbrush thinner or in a pinch - lighter fluid. Before this has a chance to dry I apply a dry-brush of a custom mix - some white with a tiny drop of the same brown I took for the wash. The result is usually a little pinkish - just what we need. The dry-brush blends well because the wash underneath isn't really dry yet. Now after the dry brush you can paint some additional highlights, but then let the whole thing dry well again. So another day it would be time to do the next hard thing - the eyes. I usually pull some hair from my head and paint the whites, then try to do a thin line above and under the eye, and should something go wrong I try to correct it with a tip of a really sharp knife. At the end I paint the iris (what's the plural of that?) as a dark dot. Please note that I didn't say "black" - I think black and white shouldn't be used for the eyes, the contrast is too hard for that. Just take light grey and dark grey instead, much more realistic, IMO. The next critical thing - eyebrows. This can be done with a fine brush or with a single hair. The eyebrows set the emotion of the face. And the lower lip - it's good to take brown to paint it, and leave the upper lip alone. This way you show your fig as having a mouth, but not wearing lipstick. And then there's the hair - it's good to paint the hair two colours, a little darker overall and then some thin lines with lighter colour. Here you can score the hair surface with a tip of the scalpel to cut dense grooves in the "hair surface" and dry brush lighter colour over that. I mean groove, apply darker colour and dry brush lighter colour.

Dang, that turned out pretty long... Photos and some more details are on my web page:

http://www.vietnam.net.pl/35en.htm

And please remember that nothing replaces trying and practicing. My parachute instructor used to say: It's easy after 10 000 times!

Thanks for reading and good luck with your figures!

Paweł

Have you looked on YouTube?

Search 'painting miniature figures' and you'll find a pile of videos. When I learned I tried to follow a series of photos in a book or magazine- watching someone do while explaining is a lot easier.

First I wanna say THANK YOU for your service to this country. If I could get my faces to look that great I would be trilled. I'm new at modeling and trying to learn. I know it'll take practice like you said. But thanks for the site and the pic. 

The names you mentione, Verlinden and the other one. Is their stuff on u tube or somewhere else. I'm going through the same pain with dragon figures or any 1/35 scale faces. I'd love to watch their stuff and try and learn how. Tks

watch Ian E on YouTube I've learned so much about figure painting from watching his videos. Here is a good one for painting faces.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cO3PjztDGVQ

Thanks a lot, guys. I was really pretty bummed about it yesterday.

The Ian E video already gave me some pointers ; the type of brushes, the consistancy, the wetness, not going too fast... easy trap to fall in as Vallejos dry pretty quickly!

I also wonder how Dragon's quality influence the final result ; their heads aren't the best on the market, often quite expressionless, the grooves are shallow... but I can't blame everything on it.

I guess it's scrub-and-reprime time again now...

Glad to hear you're making some progress there! 

Only real advice I can give you is just try a couple different techniques till one 'clicks' with you. And the Dragon figures should be good for the practice. Better figures are easier to paint, older Tamiya ones are fine for working on uniforms but the poorly molded faces are a pain to paint. Something like Alpine are excellent but I'm not sure you want to buy something that expensive to practice on. Still you can always strip them and repaint them. 

Only other advice from me is I prime the face in a flesh tone and then paint the eyes. If you don't like them it's easy to go back and paint over them and redo. I used to leave the eyes to the end, where it's a lot more work to redo them. 

I’m like Pawel in that I can now get my guys to look ok as long as you don’t get too close. I like to work in dissimilar layers. And it takes time. First an acrylic base coat for the flesh. After that has dried overnite, I’ll paint the eye area in enamels, and clean up shortly after with thinner to just leave that color in the eye slits. Again allow plenty of time to dry. Next I move to oils and tint the flesh with a wash of Burnt Sienna to the tone I want. If too dark, I’ll remove excess of the tint with a thinner moistened brush. Next I’ll make up a wash of black and Burnt Umber to do a five o clock shadow or dark shade area such as clothing to flesh edges, nostrils, mouth, etc. Lastly I’ll mix up some enamels to drybrush for highlights of flesh on the cheeks, nose, etc, as well as add eyebrows last...

Base colors to wash’s to dry brush finish

Well all I will say is that I've never used oils because of the long wait time. I always use acrylics. They work for me and I hope you find the help you need from the info the guys gave you. Good luck and keep trying.

Thanks a lot!

Great work Stikpusher! Those look fine to me :-)

Gamera : I thought the same thing ; I got a precious few Alpine saved for projects I hope to achieve some day, but prior to that, I rather work my hand on easy-to-come-by Dragon figures. I sometimes find that the heads don't leave you much to work with, though...

Indeed, the classic Verlinden method is pretty straightforward but you need a lot of time in front of you and days of final drying.

Halfway through Ian E's video, I already understand some of my shortcomings, and those are confirmed by Brett Avant's book that one of you kindly uploaded here :

- I used flat brushes because the method was called drybrushing, but this is obviously wrong ; once the base color is brushed on, I should switch to fine round brushes and work more precisely ;

- the thinning should be done with distilled water, not tap water ;

- the wet palette : I had no prior knowledge of that tool but it looks pretty useful to work with Vallejos : they dry super-quickly and that probably explains my pretty rough finish...

- I also noticed Ian E dries his brushes on a wet paper towel, unless I'm wrong... I need to watch the whole thing carefully.

One trick I picked up for dealing with acrylic paints like Vallejo is this mix. 

49% water

49% Future- which is basically gloss acrylic paint.

2% Retarder- which you can buy at the craft store. It slows the drying time of acrylic paint.

I put mine in a used contact lens cleaning solution dropper bottle. I use plastic blister packs as a pallette. Add a few drops of Vallejo, paint and when it starts to dry out add a drop of the Future solution and mix it with a toothpick. When the blister pack is covered in paint toss it in the trash and get another. 

TigerII

Well all I will say is that I've never used oils because of the long wait time. I always use acrylics. They work for me and I hope you find the help you need from the info the guys gave you. Good luck and keep trying.

 

 

For oil washes, the drying time can be sped up by using a hair dryer...

the one great thing about oils is that they are very forgiving. Goofs are easily cleaned up. Acrylics on the other hand with their rapid drying times...

Here's a good tutorial on painting figures. Hope this helps!

https://figurementors.com/tutorial/step-by-step-painting-of-a-54mm-saxon-warrior/

I began with Dr Fausts method;

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i-rsH9wdaVg

Which I've since modified to include some oil and watercolor blending. You are not strictly limited to one technique.

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/DJMikeOz/media/DSCN0302_1.jpg.html

And that is still my favorite figure.