Painting Figures

Posted by Keith Hayes on Jul 02, 2022; 11:50pm
URL: http://c-sng-discussion-forum.254.s1.nabble.com/Painting-Figures-tp17851.html

There are an abundance of figures on the market these days and the Arttista, PBL and Aspen people have been supplemented with a host of new folks available on ETSY and Shapeways. These are not generally painted, though. I have been watching some videos by military modelers, so follow along while I paint some people.

I bought 3-4 folks from Aspen, one fellow is a 3d print from Shapeways. The stove and horse are also Aspen. I cleaned all the parts with a hobby knife and followed with a bath in alcohol to clean the surface.

Once the figures were air dry, they got a coat of Tamiya Primer.


The military guys follow the Primer with a coat of black for shadows. I was talking with Pat Student about this, and he suggested blue, as shadows have a blue cast. The Vallejo French Blue is pretty bright,  so I opted for 3 drops of black to one drop of French Blue.



Next I dusted the figures from above with white to create highlights.



The idea is that the blue-black sits in the crevices and bottom surfaces and now the white highlights the top edges


This is the big idea: the shadows are done now, so follow with glazes to build up the colors. Glazes are simply watered-down paint that are more transparent and this will let the shadows and highlights show through.


I start with the flesh color on faces and hands. These have 3-4 thin coats. I also used some tan on one vest and another pair of pants.

Aspen figures are well sculptured to start, and this method is an easy way to bring out the folds and details.

I have wanted to do a spotted pinto horse, so the horse got a couple coats of white.

More to come!