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.