54mm Knight Helm work and other bits

This week I worked on my 54mm knight helm, his scabbard and belt.  Also I did a little more rework on the white surcoat to make it a bit whiter than previously.

I was a bit stuck on what to do about the helmet.  When in doubt just start painting.  At worst you can always undercoat again.  Initially I had the top hand a deep maroon but that just didn’t look right and was too dark.  I then came across the idea (it flew into my funnel so to speak) of painting the visor in the same blue as the cloak and shading it from white to dark blue like the cloak.  Ie an extreme zenithal lighting example and carried that also onto the metal of the rest of the helmet.  The blue shading was a bit easier the second time round and looked quite nice.  Reminds me of the Iron man visor.  Keeping with the idea of replicating the colours of the figure in small scale on the helmet I painted the hand white like the surcoat.  I had to over shade between the fingers of the hand to make them stand out.  Otherwise the hand looked like a really bad rubber glove.

On the main body surcoat I lightened up the white a few levels as he was looking a bit on the grey side.  I’m happier with the look now but the white is getting towards the lumpy side after so many (thin) coats.

For the main belt I went for a light brown.  The colour range was

VMC German Black/Brown
VGC Charred Brown
VGC Bestial Brown - base
VGC Leather Brown
VMC Iraqi Sand

Might need a another go a a few bits are a bit rough

The cord belt above the main belt was done in brown/orange and then highlighted with Orange Fire.  This was a make it pop a little and break up the white surcoat.

To inject a bit of warmth back into the figure I did the scabbard in a dark red/brown (VPA Shadows Flesh) to tie into the shade colour of the face.  This was then highlighted up to orange with an old Citadel Blood Red and VGC Orange Fire.  I have some AP reds (part of the set I won some time ago) but find them very poor.  I keep going back to the old Citadel Blood red (from the old, old hex pots).  Probably time to invest in some Vallejo reds before it dies for good.

Also I have been playing around with lots of snow effects trying to get something I like.  Hopefully next week a few findings from all the experiments.

Feeling the blues (and blue whites, and the oddly purple)

The week was blue cloak week.  I needed a break from white and also wanted to see how the blue would end up before trying to finish the white surcoat.  Ideally I want the two pieces to match at a tonal level.  Or at least not clash.  Originally my range for the blue cloak was

VGC Magic Blue
VMC Sky Blue
VGC Dead White
VMA White

but the Magic blue didn’t shade down very well at all.  I tried VGC Flat Blue but that ended up looking purple next to the very light blue.  Thanks Josef Albers for that.  At least I know now why a totally flat blue can look purple sometimes.  On a side note I would recommend reading “Interaction of Color” as it’s one of those interesting color books about why blue sometimes looks like purple and orange looks like brown.  So I swapped out the Magic Blue for VGC Night Blue which worked much better.

I found I have one tide mark on the blue/white transition that I will need to work back down.  I’m working with super thin/watery paint so you need to be very careful as you aren’t painting as much as moving around puddles of dirty water.  You can’t let a puddle of water dry and leave a paint ring.


I’ve also started on the back of the shield, spear and helmet.  Still not sure I will use the helmet but I’m 75% there so might as well paint it.  No idea on what I’m going to do with the shield front.  I’ve been looking at some heraldry pictures but haven’t found something I like that I think I can paint.  So I’ll work on the back of the shield for now.

I also purchased the Tool rack from Miniature Scenery to replace one of the corner paint racks.  It's a standard mdf laser cut job that comes flat packed that you assemble yourself with PVA glue.  Lots of lovely storage for all those paint brushes and odd bits that I have packed away but keep having to get out.

Now I just have to wrestle my painting area off the wife who is painting up the resin gears I made for her steampunk outfit.  Lots of metallic paint (at least someone is using them) and washes going on there.

54mm Prince of Novograd white work and 28mm Flemish figure for Saga

Two main bits of work this week and a bit more detail on painting white.  Things were a little rushed last week hence the short post.

 I spent some time this week working more on the white surcoat of my 54mm knight.  This is a challenge as I don’t normally paint white and there is a lot to cover.  I’m using a very similar white range as I did for my test 28mm viking figure with some more shading down.  Colour range current is

VMC Black Grey
VGC Sombre Grey
VGC Ghost Grey + VGC Dead White - base
VGC Dead White
VMC Gloss White
VMA White

I’m pretty much done with the shading and am still working up the highlights.  To avoid that paste like consistency of white paint I’m working with very thin glazes with a unifying glaze of the base coat every 3-4 steps of shading or highlighting.  My shading was a bit too dramatic (i.e. bad) but with a number of base coat and mild shade coat glazes all over the surcoat I managed softened the transitions.    So I’m still not getting the smoothness of transitions right.  It’s getting there but is very slow work.  After an hour of thin whites and greys you aren’t really sure you have changed things much.

In addition to the base coat glazes to unify the shading/highlights I’m also doing some glazes of the shade/highlight colours.  But I’m being selective on this so for example the top half of the figure is getting more highlight glazes and the bottom is getting more shading glazes.  All this is in an effort to achieve that zenithal lighting result of the lower portions of the figure being darker than the upper portions.  Thus your eye is naturally drawn up to the face of the figure.

Taking a break from white, grey and gloss white I painted up another Flemish figure for saga.  This figure is from Eureka Miniatures from their Dark Ages range.  An ok figure but with horrible little squinty eyes.  Really deeply recessed and hard to not blob on paint all around the eye socket.  Just need to finish off the base now.

A little bit of 54mm white

This week involved with working on my 54mm knight with most of the work being on the white surcoat.  I started with a base coat of 50% VGC Ghost grey / 50% flat white.  Thus was shaded down adding mid grey to the base coat colour.  My first shading was a bit rough so I had to reglaze back with the base coat a number of times to try and return some of the smoothness to the transitions.  After that I tried to remember that after every new layers of shading I needed to do a glaze in the base coat again.  On the lower parts of the surcoat I also did some very light glazes of VGC Earth and VGC Khaki to represent dirt/mud.

The cloak was base coat painted in VMC Sky Blue which is a lovely light blue.  Just what I was after.

Work and home life conspired and painting days were in short supply so that was pretty much all that got done.  I did get a new (old) 54mm figure off eBay.  I picked up the “Samurai with Naginata” / MAA84 from the Osprey Men at Arms series.  The lure of the multiple bright colours and wooden lacquer effects of samurai armour was too much and the price was very good.  The figure itself is well cast and minimal flash.  I do think that the body of the figure is a bit on the flat side.  I bit like figures from the early 1980s.  

54mm face painting, Ice Viking in 28mm and some static grass

A mixed bag this week.  I spent the first part of it working on the face and hair of my 54mm knight figure.  There isn’t much flesh on the figure as the alternative head I choose has a beard.  So I went for my usual flesh range (dark to light) of

VPA Shadows Flesh
VMC Medium Flesh (base)
VMC Dark Flesh
VMC Flat Flesh
VGC Dead White

Yes, Medium Flesh is darker than Dark Flesh :)  I also usually add some dirt shadows with Earth or so other dark tan.  After all there wasn’t much washing in the middle ages.  I took the highlights beyond what I normally do (I have the Cancon painting classes with Meg Maples/Mark Soley to thank for that) and yes, it does look better.  At a few meters away the face really pops.  Not 100% on the right eye, I think it may have to move up slightly.  Never been good at eyes and my own eyes aren’t helping things as they get older.

Slightly over exposed there..

For the hair I tried something different and went for fully white hair.  Normally I do the standard brown or grey.  The base colour was a warm off white (i.e. looked a bit yellow) VMC Light Sand.  Rather than do my 28mm hair technique of doing a dark wash followed by some dry brushing I tried to paint the entire hair as one piece, much like painting an irregular shaped sphere.  Another technique picked up thanks to the internet.  This was helped as the sculpt had the hair in waves down the head.  I medieval perm job.  On the underside of hair wave I shaded down with a tan yellow to brown and on the top of the waves I highlighted up with flat white to gloss white.  The end result was a little harsh on the shadows, so I need to go back and have another go.  But this is the way to paint hair so it looks like hair rather than strands of straw.

Still not being sure of the main colours for the knight I did a test figure using an old Ral Partha 28mm figure.  I went for a cool (blue) white for his shirt and a light blue for the cloak.  For the flesh I went for a lighter nordic skin colour and made the VMC Dark Flesh the base.  For the white tunic my range was

VGC Ghost Grey + VGC Dead White
VGC Dead White
VMC Gloss White
VMA White - I find the airbrush range white is great.  Very bright but totally smooth.

For the blue cloak the range was

VGC Magic Blue
AP Electric Blue (the lightest blue I had)
VGC Dead White
VMA White


So a “grey white” and “blue white” combo.  The blue cloak was too dark for what I was aiming for.

The final highlights of white are too extreme next to the Magic Blue.  Next time I will start with a lighter blue.  I’m also going to trial some snow effects for the first time on his base.  I’m not sure if the 54mm knight will have snow but currently he is looking like being a very cold colour scheme so the snow would add to that.

I’ve been doing some reading of various learn to paint oils/acrylics/etc books to expand and improve my skill set.  Something I picked up was that it is almost impossible to make a colour lighter and brighter by mixing.  By adding white you make the colour lighter/whiter but adding white always makes the colour duller.  Mixing any two colours will always also result in a colour darker than the lightest.  This is because paint is colour subtractive.  So for really light colours you need to buy them.  So after 30mins of trying to make a blue lighter and brighter than the AP Electric Blue I found those books know what they are on about.  I could get a lighter blue, but it was dull as.  Luckily I’m 5 mins away from The Combat Company so I went and grabbed a pot of VMC Sky Blue.  This is all going towards doing the cloak of the knight as a faded out blue.  So a very light blue base up to white/linen due to sun fade and weather.

Finally in all that excitement I finished off the bases of my two Flemish warriors with my usual dirt mix, flock and static grass.  More recently I’ve started to paint the grass tufts a few different greens and yellows to break up the uniformity.  Green base rims just to kick it old school.