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.