The Once and Future King Part 1

Earlier this year I participated in the 5th Dimension's online contest and, as one of the prizes, received the figure Arthur from Figone.  It's 1/35 scale but, since it represents a child, he's only about 40mm tall.  I might bring this along to the Crystal Brush competition and enter it into the Fantasy Single category.  Normally 1/35 scale figures wouldn't be eligible, but figures sized 40mm or less should work.  Last year's 2nd place winner was 1/35 scale dwarf from Heroes and Villains, so if that was let in this one should be too.

I wanted to add a bit more detail to the figure, so I used a few of the pieces from Etch-Masters.  The shield on his back and belt around his shoulder both etched brass.  That should give me another good place to add some freehand work.  I also switched out the sword blade.  The original one looked proportional to the figure.  But I wanted something bigger, so it really looked like a child holding an adult's sword.

As a child the face was a bit of a challenge.  I wanted to keep a lot of the details soft so he would have a youthful look.  Too many dark lines and the figure will look old.  The same goes for female figure, you want to downplay a lot of the details.  I still need to make some adjustments.  I'm not happy with one side of the mouth, but it's getting there.  The clothing is pretty far along.  I wanted a little more visual interest, so I put a checkerboard pattern on the pants.  I'm considering adding an emblem to his chest, but with the belt in the way I'm not sure.  Once I do the shield I'll make a decision about his chest.

Completed Officer of the Guide

Well, I think the Officer of the Guide is pretty much finished at this point.  I tweaked the boots a bit and brought the highlight up even further.  Then did some shading on the sword hilt, his scarf, and the hat (all the other black sections).  For these I used Pure Black, Dusky Skin Shadow, Dusky Skin, and in a few places mixed in some Dusky Skin Highlight too.  These fit more into the brown-black spectrum whereas the boots are more of a neutral grey for highlighting.  I finished off the gold details on the hat and then attached those fiddly little spurs.  They're really tiny and there was not much to attach them to (no holes in the back of the boots or anything) thus they're very easy to knock off and lose.  So that's why I waited until the very end.  Even so I dropped on in the carpet while trying to attach them and was extremely lucky to be able to find it.  Phew!  After that I went in with some pigments (3 shades of yellow/sand) and did some minor weathering.  This guy is an officer so would probably keep pretty clean.  Just some dusting on the boots, knees, and a tiny bit here and there.  I want to print up a little plaque for this guy, but unless I see (or you all notice) something amiss I think this guy is all done.

I'm very tempted to take this guy along to Crystal Brush.  He'd fit into their large scale category and there's a good chance Pegaso will be sponsoring a special award so he'd be eligible for that too.  I've got a couple other 75mm scale figures on their way, so if I can finish either of them off in time (plus everything else I have planned) I'll have some options.  A friend told me to check out imodeler.com.  It's mostly vehicle stuff, but for fun I tossed up a few figures into the main gallery.  Turns out they hold a monthly competition and they voted my figures/pictures Best in Show.  The award comes with a free kit.  I expected a tank or plane or something considering the main focus of the site, but the judges wanted to send a figure instead which I thought was really nice.  That figure, another Pegaso Napoleonic, might be a Crystal Brush option too.

And a couple close up detail shots

WIP - Officer of the Guide Part 4

I'm slowing a bit on Slaine, so I hopped back to the Officer of the Guide figure.  I used some sand colors on the base, but I plan to go over it with some pigments to add a bit more depth to the color once the rest is finished.  The boots were a challenge.  Shiny black is tough but I think it came out pretty well.  In person I can see some of the blends still need a bit of work, so I'm not completely finished with it.  I also attached and painted the scabbard.  I was leaving it out of the way while I did the brunt of the base work.  That was another good project for the Scale75 metallics.  Again I used a base of Necro Gold + Reaper's Imperial Purple, then transitioned to Elven Metal and finally Citrine Alchemy for the top highlights.

I also did a little tweaking on Slaine.  There are some claw scratches sculpted into his left shoulder.  Now that the tattoo was in place I could go back over it with some blood (Tamiya Clear Red) coming from the cuts.

Gokan/Slaine WIP 3

I've been doing a lot of detail work on Slaine.  I started out on the leather, using a base of Brown Liner.  I then took Blackened Brown and mixed in Leather Brown.  At roughly 2 or 3 parts Leather Brown to 1 part Blackened Brown I began to mix in Khaki Highlight.  I also attempted to give him a few tattoos.  For that I used Soft Blue and mixed it with Fair Skin.  I varied the amount of blue for darker and lighter areas.  I also switched out Fair Skin for Rosy Shadow for some of the darker areas.  I touched up the design with pure skin tones to clean up the lines.  Then gave it a few glazes of skin tone and GW's red glaze in some of the shadow areas.

With the hair, fur, and shoulder pad finished I could finally add the arm and sword.   I did the initial layers on the sword first (a little easier without the head in the way).  But it still needs some more work before I'm done with it.

Gokan/Slaine WIP 2

I decided to tackle the tartan pattern on Slaine.  He's typically wearing on in the pictures I've seen.  Although the pattern isn't always the same, it tends to involve brown stripes on an orange background.  These colors are consistent with an ancient tartan color scheme (red becomes orange, black becomes brown).  I did a little searching and found the pattern below that I thought looked good.  It hits the main colors and has enough going on to be interesting.

Painting a tartan seems really tough, but if you break the pattern down it's surprisingly simple.  If you can paint stripes then you can paint a tartan.  I've posted a detailed write up in the Gokan/Slaine tutorial on this website.  The short version is you break down the pattern and start with the largest stripe.  Paint the horizontal and vertical stripes, trying to keep the spacing consistent and follow the contours of the cloth.  Then, where the stripes cross, go in and add the dark square.  With those finished, pick the next most significant stripes in the pattern.  Add in the color variations wherever those stripes cross over other colors.  And then the next stripes, and the next, etc, going from the biggest stripes to the smallest.

 

Gokan/Slaine WIP 1

I'm taking part in a paint along competition over at CMON.  We're all painting a 54mm figure from Olivier Bouchet called Gokan, the Guardian.  The paint along project will be going on for a while (we don't have a deadline yet) so there's still plenty of time to join in.  You can get the figure from Olivier's website: http://ob-sculptures.blogspot.se/2014/09/gokan-guardian.html .

The figure bears a striking similarity to the comic book character Slaine.  I wasn't familiar with the comic, but once someone pointed it out (and I looked up some pictures) I decided to paint the figure as Slaine.  As the CMON project is sort of a paint along I decided to put together a step by step tutorial as I work on the figure.  The beginning of the tutorial is already up on this blog.  As I continue to work on the figure I will keep adding to the tutorial until it covers the full figure.

http://powellminipainting.blogspot.com/p/painting-gokan-slaine.html

After base coating the figure I got to work on the face and body.  In most of the images I've seen Slaine has red markings on his face, so I included those here.  I'd like to include some Celtic style tattoos as well, but I haven't decided on a design or figured out exactly how I plan to do it.  I haven't painted any tattoos yet, so it will be a new challenge.

WIP - Officer of the Guide Part 3

Between Thanksgiving and finishing up a commission piece, it's been a little bit since I've worked on this figure.  I finally got around to fixing him to the wood base, so now I've got something else to hold on to while I paint him.  That meant I could finish off his pants.  I brought the red down to the boots and then put on the final layers of highlights (Fire Red + Fair Skin).

The pants were a good exercise in shadow and highlight placement.  It's all based on zenithal lighting or what's called the stop sign rule (image below).  Imagine a light above the figure and light/dark is determined by the angle of each surface.

There are a lot of small folds so you've got the highlights on the upper surfaces.  As we go around to the insides of the legs the light gets blocked so even the upper surfaces get pretty dark (it's a tweak to the stop sign rule, but true to the basic idea - how much light would hit the surface).  Then there are the larger surfaces.  His right leg which is mostly straight so I did a bit of a light to dark gradient from the top to the bottom.  The bend in his left leg gave a big top surface that catches a lot of light.  Again I did a subtle gradient from light at the top down to dark, then back to light again at the tip of the knee.  Notice the strength of the shadows, how dark they are, varies.  Major features get darker shadows than minor ones.  And lastly there are small details like the seams.  I went over these with the shadow color (Burgundy Wine) and then did a little highlighting along the bottom edge where it would catch the light.  Capes, clothing with folds, anything like this are great places to work on your light placement (and blending).