Well, I haven't done squat for the hobby in the past few weeks, either due to laziness or busy-ness, so I guess I'll throw in my 2 cents ...
I exclusively use acrylics; Vallejo & Model Masters. So, I guess my tutorial will be on the use of acrylics. I will also be using photos and such from a recent build, so sorry ... nothing new to see. (I will say however, that my camera takes pretty good up-close pics. The picks out the nasty details and blemishes nicely and I find that taking pictures in progress not only shows me the flaws, but also the blending of the colors ... or the lack there-of.)
First, I start off just like anyone else by assembling the figure. (Maybe we can do another contest later on about how people to that .... as there are a million ways to do it.) I, personally, assemble the figure as much as possible, to include pouches, etc. However, I typically leave off the hands/ arms and I always leave off the head. This is to aid in painting the flesh colors.
Next, (again, a personal thing ...) since I assemble my figures using wire in the joints, I will glue in extra wire from the feet, shoulders, and neck and then clamp this extra wire into some home-made paint clamps to help aid in painting. Here, you can see this particular figure's head attached in the clamp. Also, I've already primed the figure w/ MM acrylic grey primer. I always prime as this helps bring flaws and seams that were missed. I also prime pieces since I scratch a lot of detail and many pieces are made from different mediums such as resin, plastic, soda can aluminum, wire, etc. The prime coat gets everything on the same page. As you can see, I've cleaned this up a few places already. (Note: Before priming, I also wash everything to remove oils.)
Next, I typically start the figure w/ the flesh tones, painting the face and hands. Although I've hardly ever used oils to paint, I can say that I understand the biggest difference in using oils versus acrylics. Using oils, you basically end up taking away from the oil coat until you get the basic look you want. Using acrylics is just the opposite. The "secret" to acrylics is suttle layering. I think this is why I love using them. After getting everything cleaned up and a fresh coat of primer on....
....., I start in with 2-3 thinned coats of MM flesh tone as a base coat. This ends up giving me a very pale looking figure that needs a beach vacation.
(To note: I only use an airbrush in applying the primer and the base coat. Everything else is hand painted using brushes.)
After satisfied w/ the base coat, I then begin "washing" the shadows in using MM's burnt sienna. Typically, I'll use a more highly thinned paint here and I'll continue adding layers until I'm happy w/ it. Just the way acrylics dry quickly, I find that using mutiple layering gives me more control. At this point, the flesh tones are looking quite horrid, but here's where the patience comes in.
Typically, while I'm working on the shadowing, I'll also paint the hair IF its visable. So now a quick summary ... basically, I've gotten the light and dark down ... now, its time for blending things together using mixes of MM's flesh tone (used for the base coat), warm flesh tone, burnt sienna. I don't have written down mixes for these. I just go by the look each and every time. I find that this keeps my figures looking one in a million. Again, the secret to blending the colors here is using suttle thinned layers of paint.
After I have the mediums blended the way I want them, I use VERY SUTTLE highlighting ... and I don't typically use a light color. Confused? Don't be. To help add some highlight AND life (warmth) to the flesh, I add thinned but unmixed MM warm flesh tone. At this point, this is where I always step back and look at the face, sometimes using a mirror, after painting each and every layer. Put on too much here and you're going to be starting over. Be suttle, and you'll end up w/ a winner every time.
For this particular figure, I didn't go too heavy on the shadowing since there were going to be dark colors around the face to help "darken" things up. Here I've added some detail w/ MM's aircraft interior black, then added a sheen to the glasses using Future Floor Polish.
As you can start to see w/ the figure's head, and as advised by numerous books, I paint from the inside out. Basically, this means that I paint flesh, then undershirts, then jacket, pouches, straps, etc. .... inside - out.
Now on to the uniform. As stated before, I like to assemble as much of the figure as possible before hand. I find that this keep glue marks to a minimum. I begin, again, by priming the figure w/ MM grey primer. Same cleaning-up process as above w/ the face.
Whether its painting the new ACU or the 3-tone DCU uniform, I like starting out w/ a base coat of Vallejo's deck tan. Its not too different than the grey primer, but I've found that it gives just the right look for sun faded tan ... or "scaled-down" tan. Take your pick. This particular figure is getting the 3-tone DCU. The green color was mixed, mulitple times, using MM's OD green and tan/ sand colors. (This was the first time that I had painted the DCU, and using hindsight, I should have made the green spots a little smaller as I think they ended up drowning out most fo the tan base color.) After applying the green, I used a fine detail brush and MM's rust to add in the brown striping.
The vest & details are painted w/ MM's dark tan. Other details are painted w/ MM's aircraft interior black. Again, using the inside-out technique.
Weathering the uniform came easy, and again, using acrylics, its all about using multiple suttle layers. I used a highly thinned washes of MM's interior black (this is the only black color I use BTW. It has a grey hue to it that helps tone itself down.) I used more of these washes on the vest & pouches as I didn't want to darken the DCU uniform too much. I wanted to keep that sun-faded look, but I still had to add shadowing to the folds. For highlights, I dry-brushed unthinned Vallejo sand yellow to the vest, camelbak, pouches, etc. For the DCU, I dry-brushed very slightly w/ the base coat color, deck tan. The weapon was done using the same methods as described above. A base coat fo MM's interior black was used and since this is an SF figure, I went back and painted striping on the M4 using Vallejo deck tan & MM's dark tan.
Once everything is completed as its own part its all brought together. Since I use wire to attach everything together, I don't worry about CA glue squishing out from joints since the glue is attaching the part to the inside of drilled out holes and not just flat surface to flat surface. **IF something is going to be glued surface to surface, make sure to scatch off the paint in this area so that resin bonds to resin (or plastic to plastic) and not paint to paint.
All decals were printed off my home printer on regular paper just using images from the internet and Photoshop to resize them. In hindsight, I think that this figure would benefit from a slight dusting w/ pastels. Also I typically, "seal" my figures w/ a flat, clear coat, but since this one has the "futured" glasses, I decided not to.
But, if there's one thing to take away from this write-up on painting w/ acrylics its this: Painting w/ acrylics takes a lot of patience. Painting in suttle layers is THE KEY to blending colors in the acrylic medium. IMHO, acrylic paints, specifically Vallejo, used in multiple thinned layers gives the user a silky smooth finish that is unmatched by anything except the real thing.
Credits: I rely heavily on two particular books in my stash of references; Modelling and Painting Figures #8 by Osprey Modelling; and How to Paint Realistic Military Figures, 2nd Edition by Kessler and Winar, by FSM. I also rely VERY heavily on opinions to those on this forum (to name them all would double this post, but they know who they are.)
Hopefully, this post will at least help someONE in figure painting w/ acrylics.