Templar Sergeant Part 2 and Video Tutorials!

Over the weekend I began painting the templar and managed to record a series of video tutorials showing how I painted the face.  Doing video tutorials is definitely a learning process.  Nothing fancy here.  No editing, no time jumps, no sped up sections, etc.  Just the entire painting process from start to finish and me trying to explain it all as I go.  I broke the videos up into 6 parts covering specific sections.  All in all, painting the face took me about 2 and 1/2 hours.  But with the explanations and introductions, the total video length is 3 hours.  It's a lot to sit through.  Thankfully you can skip around and just view the parts that are most important to you.

You can find all of the videos (and all of my future ones) here.  But I have also linked all of them below.

Part 1: Prep and Sketch

Part 2: Eyes

Part 3: Shadow to Midtone

Part 4: Midtone to Highlight

Part 5: Lips and Eyebrows

Part 6: Glazing

Templar Sergeant Part 1

With one knight just about wrapped up, I began to prep a new one.  Seems like as I get ready to start a new project I often go through an indecisive phase.  I know any figure is likely to take me two or more months to complete (a full time job and a baby don't leave me with a ton of free time!), so I go through a variety of ideas before I find the one that really grabs me.  I enjoyed working on the knight, so I am tempted to do something similar.  I've had this kit from FER sitting next to my painting station for some time and it's one that I've been interested in painting.  Officially the kit is a Hospitaller Sergeant-at-Arms holding a cross.  First off, I like to do something different from the box art.  The figure definitely has a warrior monk feel, so I have a hard time as seeing him as anything other than one of the crusading orders.  But he doesn't have to be a Hospitaller.  I looked around a bit online for references and eventually decided to do a Templar.  I know, not the most novel choice, but it's been a long time since I painted a Templar so why not?  Plus, the figure is a sergeant, not a knight.  So instead of the traditional Templar white, he will be dressed in black with a red cross detail.

The second thing I wanted to change from the box art was the cross.  Sure, the knight will have a cross on his clothing, but holding a giant cross icon just felt like when you look at the piece it's more about religion than the knight.  So I decided to swap out the cross for a banner.  I removed the flimsy resin post he was holding and drilled through the hand so I could insert a metal rod.

Next I had to create the actual banner.  I know that's not the most complicated thing, but I haven't done much sculpting so it's a challenge for me.  I started by looking through banners in other kits I own.  I found a nice one from a 54mm mounted Pegaso knight that seemed to be the right size and shape for this knight (and the motion matching that on his clothing, similar wind state).  My initial thought was to use instant mold to do a one sided cast and create a copy.  Well, that worked horribly.  One side looked fine by the other was atrocious.  I briefly considered just using the other kit's banner here... but decided that wasn't a good idea.  The main issue is that it's a metal flag and the rod supporting it is not all that thick.  It holds, but I'm concerned it would start to bend over time.  Plus if I ever want to paint or resell the other kit, the missing banner would be an issue.  

So I moved on to a new plan: sculpt a banner from scratch.  I looked at some tutorials and settled on an approach.  I took some procreate putty and created a thin sheet between two pieces of wax paper.  Using a rolling pin I further spread it out and evened out the thickness.  Using a straight edge and a hobby knight, I cut out the shape of the banner (using the one from the kit as a guide for the size and shape).  I then began the process of carefully folding and bending the putty to create the look of a flag in the wind.  Again, I used the other banner for guidance and inspiration, though mine is not an exact copy.  Here's how it turned out:

Unfortunately on the opposite side the wax paper crinkled and stamped a texture into the banner.

I considered having another go at it, but first I wanted to see if I could salvage what I had.  I started sanding down the texture and I think the result is much improved.  I want to work on it a bit more and perhaps I'll see if I can use some more putty to fill in some areas that I haven't been able to work out with the sanding.  If all goes well, then I will be able to use this banner after all.

Here's a quick look at the banner relative to the figure.  I plan on sculpting a bit more of the banner where it connects up to the pole and will embed the rod at that point to get it on there nice and secure.

I haven't decided on the setting for the figure yet, though I am currently brainstorming ideas.  I doubt there will be much narrative to the base.  But the box art has him weathered (dirt and blood) which I like.  So I'm thinking a post battle scene.  However will it be in a castle, on regular dirt, in a ruin, etc?  Ideally I'll come to a decision before I start painting... but in this case I don't think that is as critical as if I planned a scene for the figure and base told more of a story.

Germanic Knight Part 1

Sorry for the long gap in posts, I haven't had much time to work on figures recently.  It will probably continue to be like that for the next few months, so updates will be sporadic.  Since I'm having a hard time finding more than an hour at a time to paint (sometimes less than that), the Count Melenth project is getting put on hold.  The OSL on the body is tough and I really need 3-4 hours to just sit and work through it until I figure it out.  I just can't make much progress on that piece with these short painting sessions.  So, I decided to start on something else that would work better for the time I've got.  I decided to go with a knight from FER miniatures.  It's a great sculpt and cast, so should be fun to work on.  This should give me a chance to work on metals, leathers, and freehand (for the clothing and shield).  I started with the freehand and I thought I'd show you my process.  Hopefully the amount of information in the write up will make up for the lack in frequency in posting them!

A while ago I'd ordered a table mounted vice. Normally when I do design work I'll start by adding little dots as guides. Unfortunately I need one hand to hold the ruler, one hand to the hold the brush, and one hand to hold the figure... that's one hand too many. This was a huge paint when I tried to paint the samurai. But, with the table mounted vice I can free up a hand and that makes this early step so much easier! I was able to reposition the figure at different angles and work my way around it. I used a scrap of paper with the spacing marked on it and added dots around the figure (second image). When that was done, I connected the dots to form the borders for the edge design (third image).

I needed a design for the chest.  I decided to use a double headed eagle.  I like that image and haven't done it before.  I looked around online for references and found quite a few different versions of the eagle.  I settled on this one since it's a neat one with plenty of detail

To transfer it to the knight, I created a simplified version to start.  I had previously drawn a vertical line down the center of his chest.  This served as a guide for where to place the eagle.  Measured the height of the shoulders of the eagle (roughly halfway between the top of the heads and the top of the tail) and place a horizontal line on the knight where I thought those should fall.  I placed dots for the location of each eagle head (measuring the distance from the center line so they're spaced properly).  I did the same for the wing tips.  I then created a very rough version of the eagle design.

Once I was happy with the roughed in version (the size, proportion, location, etc), I started to fill it in and add a few more details.  While doing that, I rough in the shadows on the design as well (following the locations of what I'd previously roughed in).

And then the wings...

The design is by no means finished, but I've got the main idea of what I want to paint on his chest.  At this point I start to paint and shade the background (the bulk of his clothing).  This figure will have a black design on top of a white surcoat, so I started with the white.  Right now I'm just focusing on this chest.  Normally I'd do all the white together, but with the limited amount of time I'm breaking it up into small pieces which work better for those short painting sessions.

You'll notice that the white background made the design fuzzy, obscuring the clean edges from before.  That's fine.  The next steps will have me going back over the design to do the full shading and highlighting on it as well as adding further details and refinements.  What I've got here is meant to be a guide for the next step and not the final design.

An important question: why did I rough in the design before shading the background?  Well, I could certainly have done that first and then painted the design on top of it.  The reason I didn't is that I planned to use white with a high level of contrast for the background.  Getting smooth blends takes time and lots of work (layers).  Why waste time getting a nice smooth blend in an area that will be covered up with another color?  By roughing in the design first, I save time and effort by only painting/shading the background areas I need to.  I will have to go back and clean up the edges of the design, but that's a much quicker task than shading all of that white.