Model Armour

Just finished this guy off yesterday.

120mm US Tank crew by S & T Products. Sculpted by John Rosengrant.

Painted with Vallejo acrylics and weathered with Migments !

Hope you like

I've always had a good eye for proportions, and can often spot something 'out' on a resin figure, but John's work looks dead spot on. Brilliant figure...you're not doing a bad job of painting it too Ian!

Vinnie

Exellent work mate!The face is brilliant

Hi Spearhead, that is a cool piece of figure work there. In my opinion it is spot on. Your shading and highlighting is awesome!
Tell me, how do you find the Vallejo paints to work with. I have never used them before and am buying a few very shortly (finally found a shop in Oz that sells them!). I have heard great things about Vallejo Acrylics and have seen some awesome results, a prime example being your tanker figure.
My biggest short fall is painting skin tones so i am hoping i can get some good results out of the Vallejo paints. I have the Vallejo tutorial on their website and am keen to have a go.
One question, do you use the Vallejo Retarder? Some say it is better and others say it is not needed. The shop i am buying it from couldn't really give me a decisive opinion either. So i hope to get an opinion from one who has obviously mastered the Vallejo paints..

Woody...

Excellent painting. Love the skin tones. I've tried using acrylics for flesh and haven't had much luck so moved over to oils but mega downside is drying time.

If you don't mind me asking, which colours do you use for your flesh base, h/light and shading?

Jay

Woody / Jay

Thanks for the kind words.

Woody . I do not use the retarder at all. I prime my figures in grey either Vallejo primer or good old Halfords . I guess you wont get that in OZ..
A base coat will consist of probably 6 or 7 really thin coats, gradually building up the colour. Doing it this way you will get a matt finish, otherwise the acrylics will tend to dry glossy. Then its a matter of building up the highlights adding various lighter hues to the base colour. I try to vary this all over otherwise you can end up with a zebra look if you get my meaning. I may have to add 10 or 15 coats on each highlight depending what i need to achieve, but remeber the paint is so thin its really like coloured water and just needs to be built up. There is no short cut. The good thing of this is that it dries instantly especially under a daylight bulb !!

The same is then repeated on the shadows , using darker colours

I never use black or white to highlight or shade as they tend to change the colour rather than tint it.

I hope thats useful info Woody. (hope it makes sense)

Jay

For flesh I use a base usually of brown sand then highlight with various others like salmon pink , basic fleshtone etc etc.

For the shadows i use cadmium red and black red, but I have no set routine . For example on this one i used violet in the base mix to try and get the face to look cold. (not sure how succesful that was )

Ian

Spearhead, just what i wanted to hear. Thanks for the simple and no beating around the bush description.

The colours i have picked out to buy are....i will add a couple of the colours you mentioned too...

Light Flesh (928)
Dark Flesh (927)
Flesh Tone (815)
Sunny Skintone (845)
Golden Yellow (948)
Vermillion (909)
Red (944)
Salmon Rose (835)
Cadmium Red (814)

Can you suggest any others? Many thanks....

Woody...

Woody

Its entirely up to you , but i dont really use any of their fleshtones. For example sunny skin tone you will not see anyone with that colour !!

I sometimes use saddle brown to shade .
As previosly mentioned

Cadmium red
Red Black
i use light grey for eyeballs.
but other than that not really

Ian

Thanks Spearhead for all your good advice. I appreciate it. I think i will just grab a heap of colours that i think i will 'need'..... and just work at it and experiment. Your advice has been helpful though. If i can come up with half the job you have done here i will be stoked!!

Woody...