Painting a 1/10 scale bust
Jun 22, 2007
 

Sometimes I like to try other aspects of the hobby. It's feels like a breath of fresh air and avoids that hobby burn out that many of us feel at some point.

When bending photo etch is becoming annoying, then it's time to try new things.

I tried painting a few figures that will go with the tank I'm building and in the process I found that figure painting can be a very fulfilling activity. If done well it can be a source of huge enjoyment.

Because I always want to do the best I can, I found this site called PlanetFigure where a some of the most talented figure painters in the World hang out. And what I saw was mind boggling.

The degree of detail, of artistic ability is second to none. These guys are true artists. They play with light and shadow and it's absolutely amazing to be able to achieve that with 54 mm height figures

I don't want to be at that level (yet lol) but I decided to make a bust in 1/10 scale after the amazing examples that I saw.

One of the top sculptors of the se busts is Young B. Song. Not only he is a master sculptor he also is an amazing painter of it's own busts.

I got the one I felt was more appropriate for my "testing", but I'm sure that more will follow.

It's a bust of a Deutsche Afrika Korps Tank Officer with beautiful proportions and a very good stance.

Ice cold, looking to it's right using the service cap with dust goggles and with a pair of binoculars hanging from a strap.

Painting the face

That has to be the most scary part of painting a figure. How to achieve the flesh tones? Those subtle variations in color that a face displays?

Well, one of the best figure painters in the World (Jaume Ortiz Forns) was kind enough to do a Step by Step on PlanetFigure so I eagerly absorbed the whole thing and went to the shop for a complete supply of face painting colors from Vallejo

Painting it is quite simple really.

• First a base color.

• Then we add 3 lighter tones. What we call light 1, light 2 and light 3. These are a mix between the base color and the lighter tone. In fact light 3 is that light tone applied pure.

• Then we do the same for shadows. Again using a mix of the base colors with the darkest shade color of the range.

The rest is retouching and adjusting the places where these light or dark colors appear on the skin.

The REALLY daunting task is blending it all so that there are only soft transitions between these 6 or 7 different colors on the face.

And this requires a patience of a saint. I used strictly acrylic colors. To do this, I used them very very diluted in layers that you can't really see unless they start to settle one on top of the other.

Time for doing this? A lot, but that's the purpose of the hobby isn't it?

After the basic skin tones are defined is a good idea to do the eyes.

Instead of normal white I used Ivory white for the eyes with a center spot of blue followed by the black spot and a couple of white glow points.

However, this guys looked like he had headlights (lol) so I had to tone down the blue tone a little bit to avoid the armor piercing look that he had

Painting the uniform

After the face anything is easy. I had bought a LifeColor set of German Uniform colors for my 1/35 figures and the Tropical Tan tones are of course included.

That made my life easy. I airbrushed the base tone on the uniform and hat, and then used the same technique (a little less detailed but it's the same principle) for highlighting and shadowing the folds on the uniform. Supposing that the Sun is at Top left position (looking from the front of the figure, it becomes very easy to know what's in shadow and what in light.

We don't have to enhance as much as a 1/35 figure due to the scale effect, but some scuffing and wear on the uniform becomes possible to do and it looks very effective.

This figure has some accessories like binoculars headphones and wiring that will be added at a latter stage.

I'll be updating this page so that you can see if I did it well ;)

What was used in this kit

Vallejo Acrylicos and Lifecolor German Uniforms set Paints
Badger 150 Professional Airbrush

Photos taken with Canon EOS D60 and Speedlite 380EX Flash