54mm Samurai socks/sandals/green armour and basing trials

Well I got cracking for a few days, then work hit and knocked me out for a few days but I picked up over the weekend.  So in the end on par.

Skirts and sandals

So firstly I tidied off the green armour skirt and finished off the green shading and highlighting.  Need to work a bit more on the two small reliefs on the armour pieces as they are currently gold but look a bit muddy.  The moulding isn’t great however.

Secondly was the socks and the sandals.  These normally seem to be white or off white so I started with VMC Light Sand and shaded down with some VMC Smoke and highlighted up with VGC Dead White.  I did a number of glazes on the toe area and on the ankle bones to make them the whitest part of the sock as they would be stretched the most.  The sandal straps I did in VMC German Black/Brown highlighted up with lighter brown colours.

I didn’t get to do the diamond pattern on the back yet.  I’m thinking I will do the arms first before attempting this.  This is because if I muck it up, there will be a lot of rework to fix it up.  Not sure I have the time for that.  Plus I’m scared of ruining all that lovely shading work I’ve done :)

Wall trial

I haven’t worked much on the display base yet so I started some trials on both the wall section and the road section using spare pieces.  For the wall I’ve pretty much settled on using five different grey shades with off white/white pointing.  The grey rocks are in a random pattern to try and make it look like these are just random stones but they came from the same area/quarry.  I did a number of brown shades all over and some dark green (Coat d’Arms Russian Green) down the bottom as water seepage/slime.  That was looking ok but not good enough.  So I went back and using some glazes highlighted and shaded each rock to try and get some more variation.  The good thing here was that since each grey shade was quite close to the other it was a case of the highlight of one grey rock was the shade of the next lighter rock.  Once that was done some more brown glazes to blend things back together.  My idea was that each rock would have been a different colour, but all would have been in the wall for the same time so “dirty” effects should be constant over all the rocks.

For the rock pathway I started with a base of VGC Earth and then did a number of red brown/brown rock colours.  It looks ok, but doesn’t really match with the wall.  So I’ll need to try that one again with more greys.

Many trials, nothing usable

Finally my daughter started on her entry for the Cancon painting competition.  She likes the idea of painting but only likes to do 20 minutes at most and is a little intimidated by what I’m painting.  Ie what she paints doesn’t look like what daddy does so she feels like giving up.  So I need to push her a bit but don’t want it to become painful.  Also I forget she has never seen me paint much so hasn’t seen the progression of my figures that much.

So orange

Currently she is painting up one of the G scale gauge (1/24 - 75mm) figures I purchased off eBay of a seated lady.  Luckily my Dungeon Saga kickstarter came and has some nice benches that fit the scale quite well.  So it will be a lady in a park (read lots of railway scenic flowers) sitting on a bench.  Lets hope we get there.

54mm Samurai one step forward, two steps back

New armour skirt colours

This week was a bit of going backwards to hopefully go forwards later.  I had another go at the lower green armour pieces.  These have small square recessed areas that I’m really struggling to get to look decent.  I tried base coating the entire piece again and having a go at shading with using VMC Hull Red as the shade colour to the Citadel Jade Green.  However it just didn’t look good.  The recessed areas make glazing near impossible as any wash/glaze pools in the recessed areas and the small size means the paint won’t stay on one side of the small recessed square area, but instead spreads out over the whole square due to the surface viscosity of water.

So I needed a different approach.  I decided to make the recessed squares a different colour, going with the purple of the main coat to tie the front and back of the figure together.  Also I went away from glazing the recessed areas and used old school army painter layering to build up the highlights.  I managed to get the shades in by holding the figure upside down the entire time I was doing the shade washes so they would dry in the right place and not spread out.  Also I didn’t worry about being too neat as once I had finished all the squares I redid the green areas to neaten things up.  It’s starting to get there now.  Next is redo (again) all the green shading/highlight and making sure I don’t get any seepage into the recessed squares.

Scabbard done again

I tried doing a diamond pattern on the scabbard but didn’t get it even enough.  So the entire scabbard had to be repainted.  I like the diamond pattern idea but will need to be more careful and accurate next time.  I’m also thinking of using a pattern of four small diamonds to create a larger diamond on the back of the figure.  The large back area needs something on it to fill in the blank space.

New belt

Other bits finished off was the horse hair on the helmet from last week and the waist belt.  For the helmet hair I kept alternating between adding dark blue for shades and shadows and dark brown glazes to keep the dirty animal hair aspect going.  I kept the grey highlighting very muted to avoid the “I dry brushed the heck out of this” look.  The belt I wanted something to break the dark breastplate from the tan of the skirt.  Also I wanted a bridge between the yellow lapels.  I went of a base colour of VMC Light Sand which was highlighted up with VMC Gloss White and down with some brown.

Next week will be finish the green armour, diamond patterns and sandals.  Then the arms can get glued on.  The race to get this done by January is on.

54mm Samurai coat work, leg armour and hair

54mm Samurai

Most of my painting this week was on the kids go-cart painting “go fast flames” on the side with enamel paints and my old Paasche model H airbrush.  I learnt that it is much better to mask an area and then cut out a pattern with a hobby knife (which means you get nice smooth curves) than try and mask out a pattern with tape (which results in odd dead straight sections and wobbly curves).   Enamel paints are lovely in that you have ages for them to dry and can clean up any rough bits with some white spirit and a cloth.

On the samurai front I did some more work on the purple coat and tried to smooth out the transitions a bit more especially around the top of the coat where the highlights get more extreme and go towards white/pink.  I’m happy with the coat but will need to do some more work on it once the arms are attached and I can see where any extra shadows are needed.

The leg armour was next.  Seeing that these are very much in shadow under the armour skirt I started with a base of VMC Hull Red and shaded down with VMC German black/brown and a hint of VMC Midnight Blue.  This is because things get bluer as the light fades at dusk.  So for things in shade you normally add blue to the mix.  This is an area I need a lot more skill in.  I’m still in the simple school of colour mixing.  I notice when watching painting tutorials experienced painters mix a wide range of colours when highlighting and shading.  Half the time I’m questioning why, as the colour added can be totally different from the base colour.  Much learning needed there.

Better blends on the coat

For the leg armour highlights rather than go with the purple I used VMC Flat Yellow to try and give a more sun faded/worn look to the raised vertical slats on the armour.  That worked out ok.

Finally started (again) on the horse hair “hair” on the helmet.  I’m keeping with a brownish shade to keep things away from the land of grey scale that I tend to end up in when painting black/grey items.  I did try and highlight with a bit of yellow but the blue in the grey paint started to make things green.  So I need to try countering this by adding red.

This reminds me of painting books I read where grey is always mixed from colour opposites and black is always mixed from the three primaries instead of a pre-created (i.e. from the tube) grey or black.  I’m starting to see where this could be of value.

54mm Samurai armour and coat work

54mm Samurai

This week I tried working on the green armour pieces at the front of the figure.  I didn’t have much success.  My original shading colours just didn’t work.  The armour is covered in small recessed squares that are throwing me off.  Every glaze ends up running into them and makes a mess of things.  Instead I started to try and shade each square individually.  As I wanted the shadows on the top of the squares (as the recessed nature of the square means the top area is in shadow) I found it was best to paint upside down to stop any running of paint down the figure due to gravity.  Currently it’s all a mess so I think I’ll have to start it again.

54mm Samurai

After putting the green in the too hard basket I worked on the purple coat.  I though this was going to be a bit daunting but it worked out pretty well.  I also figured that the green was all sorted and easy too, wrong both times.  Using VGC Hull Red as the shade worked well but I also took it down a notch further than originally planned right at the base of the coat.  The Hull Red glaze over the purple ends up almost black/brown.  The highlights up with Fluro Magenta worked well but I needed to add some VMC Gloss white to pick up the shoulders to match the tonal levels of the yellow lapels.  I messed up one glaze and ended up with a watermark line which I need to glaze/paint out now too.  Seems to happen when using white and not being super careful.  Maybe it’s just the gloss white, not sure there?

Look mum, no arms

So I need to work on the purple some more but it’s definitely heading in the right direction.  The green, ugh.  Need to experiment and try something different.  I think my colour planning work was ok, but the recessed areas are much trickery than I thought they would be.  Still have the helmet hair, sandals, socks to go.  Also the lower leg armour and yellow leggings need some work too.  But at least I worked out where on the base the figure will go and have drilled out the mounting holes.

54mm Samurai and first Mantic Dungeon Saga figures

Wooden skirt work

Poked along a little bit this week with my Samurai as I only got to do painting on the weekend.  I spent a couple of hours working on what I thought was his hair until it was pointed out to me by the wife that the figure didn’t make sense.  If the top of the head was hair, how did the bottom armour cowl attach?  A quick google search of the original drawing (and reading the painting notes that came with the figure - doh!) pointed out the ‘hair’ was not really hair.  I was part of the helmet and made of horse hair to look like normal hair.  Sigh.  So need to repaint that to look more horse hair and less person hair like.

Helmet detail, sorry bad lighting

The next session was working on the wooden armour on the front skirt and rear of the helmet.  I base coated these in VGC German Pale Brown and shaded down with VMC Earth.  Then I did half a dozen highlight glazes using first VMC Iraqi Sand and then VMC Light Sand.  The problem I was finding is that the armour is sculpted as a series of sticks.  So any glaze quickly runs into the recesses between the sticks making the recessed areas the lightest.  Not what was wanted.  To overcome this I ended up glazing the highlights and then going back and doing a very careful re-shade with VGC Earth.  Finally I did some point highlighting with the VMC Iraqi Sand/Light Sand.  I found that it was much better to do the stroke as very small up/down strokes rather than painting across the edges in one long line.  This was due to the paint building up on the edge only rather than across the whole area and although the amount of paint being put on was the same having the strokes follow the pattern of the wooden armour helped bring out the detail much better.  Or to put another way paint the object as an individual (i.e. paint each armour stick as a stick) rather than a blob.  Which is odd as painting hair is pretty much the other way round to avoid the old school dry brushed hair technique look which results in hair that looks like painted straw, rather than the gentle colour transitions that occur with real hair.

Base together with wall section

On the base I drilled and pinned the wooden core that makes up the wall section.  This is give some extra support so the wall doesn’t get snapped off accidentally.

Dungeon Saga Troll

During the week my first parcel from Mantic of Dungeon Saga arrived.  This was the Orc expansion “Warlord of Galahir”.  The figures are much better than I expected (based on figures I have seen in Doom and “A Touch of Evil”).  They are almost too good of a quick bake base coat and magic dip paint job.  However I don’t have time currently to paint 80 odd figures for a game I’m not going to play that much.  I mainly backed the Kickstarter for the occasion game day with friends and for the kids when they get a bit older.  So I will probably just paint some of the character figures when they arrive for now.

Dungeon Saga Mawbeast