Help on 1/35 scale fig. painting

Hi There,

there are a few schools of thought on fig ure painting. One with washes dry-brushing, and the other the so called artist method. Personally I have tried them both and I have to say that washes are a messy but work well on the clothing. With the faces, I usually follow the testor's booklet (very useful) and apply the artist method. As the procedure is a bit long to repeat here, could I give you the name of the book? Modeler's Technical Guide No.2020C, by Testors (Model Master). This guide has everything needed from techniques to paint cross references, product guides, and conversion charts.

Hope this is helpful

Gianni

The subject of figure painting is involved, although here a few tips that you might find useful to get started with. For faces I paint a base of ModelMaster Skin Tone Base, and then I'll give a light wash with ModelMaster Skin Shadow. Using a really small brush, No. 0, I paint the whites of the eyes, and then use a tooth pick to do the iris and pupil. Eyes are critical. A lousy figure with good eyes, will look surprisingly lifelike, while a good figure without painted eyes will look mostly lifeless. Sometimes I'll use some artists pastel chalk (any shade of brown) to darken the face to represent day old beard growth. For the uniforms, use a dark wash to brush into the fabric folds to look like shadows. If doing a group of figures with similar uniforms, tweak the colors a bit for each different figure, just so that everybody is not the same identical shade of green or khaki, or whatever.

Andy

Don't forget that the current (July) FSM has an article (p34-37) on painting figures from 1/72 to 1/32.