Blue, blue and the end of a relationship

Yep, redo the shoes

Got a few nights of decent sleep so I hit the blue paints and cracked on with 75mm man (aka Dapper Dan).  For all the blue work the colours I used were (from dark to light)

Midnight Blue (old Citadel range)
VMC Flat Blue - base colour
Lutheran Blue (unknown Citadel range) - I’ve re-potted all my Citadel colours so have lost track of what range some are from
VMC Light Sand - didn’t use much as too yellow
VMA White - I found the Model Air white much easier to mix with than the standard whites

The jacket went pretty well as all the folds and creases helps out the shading a lot.  The back of the jacket was harder being very flat.  There I found the highlights were smaller so the base colour was more the first shade colour.  This worked ok as most of the back of the jacket is well lit.

The pants were a pain.  After two tries I just repainted them all and tried again from scratch.  This worked much better as I scaled back the amount of shadow work.  The pants are very straight so I had to be super smooth (or tried to) on the blends as any obviously stepping lines between shade coats really showed up.  I pushed the highlights on the front folds quite a lot to make the base colour look darker.

Overall the larger figure is much harder to paint as the smooth areas are bigger and thus the blending has to be better than on a 28mm figure for example.  Big flat areas are hard to shade well.  I’m seeing why at this scale a lot more people use an airbrush for the bulk of the work.

I tried using a blue ink for a 5 o’clock shadow look but got carried away and ended up with a 3 day fungus growth instead.  So repaint time again.  I was quite annoyed as I was pretty happy with the original paint job on the face.  The shoes need to be redone as my highlighting experiment as seen in the picture above didn’t work.  The red handkerchief adds that tiny spot of non blue.

Although a test figure I think I will do some kind of display base for him.  In part as a further learning exercise and also as I’m getting happier with the overall result.  Currently I’m thinking of a linoleum floor in a check pattern and a wooden bar as the background.  I think that will fit the 1950/60’s feel.

Brand name worn off from constant use, I'll miss you guys

On other news I think it is time to announce the end of a relationship.  After twenty odd years my ever faithful Roymac 3550 brushes and I have parted ways.  Many, many armies were painted with these brushes and I’ve gone through quite a number.  But after a few evenings with a Windsor and Newton series 7, you don’t go back.

$80 never looked so good