First Figure Attempt - 1/35 Vietnam-era US Soldier

Dan,

Most of my figure pics are done with the 3 desk lamps I painted them under. Withthe ability to white balance a digital camera, the light source is no longer a proble. I set it up so unwanted shadows are gone and the empahsis I put on the kit are easier to see. I usually test a flash or two as well but I drop back and use the zoom feature to enlarge the figure. If you scroll through this forum, you'll see examples or look me up in the photo section at armorama to see the results, and if you have the patience to dig through long enough, my "studio."

Al

Thanks for the excellent comments.  I thought seriously about laying "ground" around the figure, but I really wanted it to be about the soldier, so I left him standing alone, kind of like a statue.  I may reconsider - I can add it around his feet.

One thing I've learned is that painting figures is a lot like the make-up tricks I learned in amateur theater years ago - the bright light of a flash (or theater lights) takes away the natural shadows of normal lighting.  In other words, my soldier looks great up close up in person under natural light, but the flash washes out all shadow.  In theater make-up, you highlight the "shadow spots" on your face with darker colors so they don't wash out completely.  It's the same with these figures.  The shadows seen under normal light need to be recreated in paint for the figure to look right under the artificial light of the camera.  Since you can't all come to my house to see the work, highlight and shadow colors must be added to make the photo look good.  Kind of changes the meaning of the work - you're working for a great photo, not a great figure.  I also think I'll try some camera shots outside in natural sunlight to see the different effect.

I'm thinking I may use the camera as a guide on my next effort - do the basic painting, then take a hi-res digital photo, and use that as the guide to adding shadow detail.

Appreciated the reference sites too - thanks again.

Dan H.

Good start (or restart) in the dark and arcane art of figures. Since you coated him with flat, I'm assuming the shine s from the flash.

One of the major focuses of figure painters in getting good highlight and shadow detail. Vallejo has a great tutorial on this under Model Color. The quick and dirty way to achieve this is a wash and drybrushing, but the effects are much less satisfactory than highlighting and shading. This is particularly important in a figure with a monochromatic scheme like yours.

One of my clubmates just wrote an article on color theory for our newsletter which can help in getting the highlights and shadows to look more realistic. You can find it on page 4 of our newletter

Your figures will look much more realistic if you use some even very simple groundwork on the base.

Here are a few sites that specialize in figures:

http://www.hfmodeling.com/

http://www.planetfigure.com/

http://www.timelinesforum.com/

Looks pretty good after 20 years. Better than mine.Keep up the good work.

David