Completed Vesha and Elmer Ellsworth

Rounding up a couple recently finished pieces. First, the most recent, is Vesha from Bold Miniatures. I had a blast working on this bust, just a really fun piece to paint. I started her with the intention of practicing female skin. But this also became a piece for me to focus on painting light. I tried to push myself to be bolder in my use of color in the primary light, working with Lemon Yellow for the highlights rather than just a subtler off white. I also played with adding blue to the shadows, though I know I could have been bolder with the color there. Finally this was the first piece I made a serious stab at painting cast shadows on.

The second finished project I wanted to share was Col. Elmer Ellsworth, a 75mm ACW figure from FER miniatures. I painted this piece as a gift for my dad, a Civil War buff and the person who first introduced me to miniature painting. I tried to take the lessons I was learning from Vesha and apply them on Ellsworth as well. Again I worked with a warm yellow light, which was interesting to paint onto the dark blue uniform. And I worked in cast shadows which you can see on places like his forehead from the hat, his shoulder from his head, and on his leg and shoe from the sword.

ACW Confederate Infantry Part 1

Here's something a bit different from my usual subject matter.  I'm working on a confederate civil war figure from Pegaso (54mm).  My dad is a big Civil War buff.  He's been collecting artifacts since he was a kid and has basically converted part of their house into a mini museum.  I've painted a couple ACW figures as gifts for him and this is another one that will end up in his collection.  He actually picked up the kit at a toy soldier show for $5 (not bad considering is retails for almost $50).  My parents come to visit this past week and so he brought it along.  The box art is just okay (I think the lighting/photo is to blame for that) but when I opened it up I realized it's actually a pretty neat little figure.  The figure will be holding an old tattered flag in his left hand, so I'm doing it as an end of the war figure, on the road to Appomattox.  We're coming up on the 150th anniversary of the end of the war, so it's good timing for this project.

Obviously it's pretty early, just base coated his uniform and then worked on the face.  I need to do a little more research before I get too far.  My dad pointed me in the direction of a couple good reference books, hopefully I can track them down.

Here's a close up of the face.  The focus isn't that crisp, but you get the idea.