Advice Please - German Figures for Russian Front

The nice thing about painting figures with oil paints is the ability to easily blend the different skin tones, shadows and highlights. The pain about oils is that you have to mix your own skin tones and the long drying time. After decades of painting my figures with oils, I have found an easier way. It uses 5 shades of skin tones and a product called Acrylic Retarder, which slows down the drying time of acrylic paints and allows them to be blended. Model Master makes 4 skin tones; a dark shadow, medium shadow, a warm tint and a highlight tint, plus I use an additional basic flesh tone as a base. This is much faster then using oils, easier because you don't have to tweak your flesh tone mix for every shade you need and you can reproduce matching colors every time.

Hi Steve,

by 'oils' I mean oil paints that come in tubes. You need artists' quality, not students'. You should be able to buy a set containing all the colours you need, though I cheat and use flesh tint oil paint as a base coat. This set will last you many years - several of the oil paints in my racks were bought ten years or more ago.

There are many different methods for painting faces, and with time, you'll develop your own. here, however, is quite a good starting point:

http://www.hubhobbyshop.com/hint28.htm

Pleased you like the figures. I think it's fun to do non-military subjects from time to time.

Cheers,

Chris.

Thank you for the advice Chris. This gives me a starting point and I understand practice and experimenting will be key. To make sure I understand completely though, when you say 'oils' for the hands and heads, are you refering to the tube oils that need to be thinned? Such as oils used for painting on canvas?

I really appreciate your assistance on this subject. By the way, what a diverse set of figures you have displayed for examples. I like them

Thank you,

Steve

Hi Steve,

that's one of Dragon's finest products you've got there. As to painting, I use enamels for the base coat (usually white), and then acrylics for the main painting. however, if the uniform is mainly one colour (such as khaki drab or field grey) then I use enamels to spray this too. For hands and heads I use oils. These figures were painted using this technique:

However, there are lots of other techniques which work just fine, too. the thing to do is to take advice, practice, experiment, and see what works for you.

Cheers,

Chris.

I went to the local hobby store (not so local really, almost an hour drive each way). They had none of the figures available that you guys suggested. However, the did have this kit:

Dragon 6273

All I can say is "WOW"  ... the details are far better than I ever expected. Anyone have advice for someone that has not painted figures before? Should I use acrylics or oils?

Thanks,

Steve

I'd want to use figures kitted out with at least some winter gear - at the very least, scarves and gloves. Dragon do several sets of German figures wearing winter uniforms suitable for the period, such as these:

http://www.dragon-models.com/html/6372p1.htm

http://www.dragonmodelsltd.com/html/6305main.htm

http://www.dragonmodelsltd.com/html/6154-2.htm

and these guys, with standard helmets:

http://www.dragonmodelsltd.com/html/6157.htm

Cheers,

Chris.

The below listed figure sets are just a few from Master Box. I myself have not built one of these sets yet but I'm planning on purchasing a few here shortly. But this may be something you might want for your dio?

 Scott