FeBIGuary Roundup
Welcome back, and let’s jump right into it! In February, I wanted to paint some BIG models, and I started off with my biggest model so far, Liberty Prime.
Liberty Prime: Online.
I even filmed a tutorial for painting Liberty Prime, and also introduce using oils on the channel. I’ve used them on a few things in my collection, but never brought them into a video, but a model like this was just begging for weathering with them, plus working with oils is actually a bit more forgiving, since we can reactivate the oil after it cures by using thinners, and the working time is a lot more than acrylics, so we can take our time and get the look we want. I highly recommend giving them a try!
I have some photos here of Liberty Prime alongside a couple of the big models I’ve previously painted, like the Shard of the Void Dragon C’Tan from Warhammer 40K and the Morgraur from Carnevale. Then some more recognisable model sizes, like a Noise Marine (he was nearer to hand than a standard Space Marine), Lucy MacLean and Frank Horrigan, who himself is a pretty large model for a single unit.
And on the base, I added a little easter egg in the way of green blood leading to the cave opening on the back of the base, as a nod to the crashed Zetan ship.
Mary Read Bust
Scale75 make some amazing busts, and I while ago, I bought this Mary Read bust along with a full set of the ScaleColor Artist paints, because I had used a few of them before and I absolutely loved how they painted. The pigment is nice and strong, they thin nicely, and don’t separate on the wet palette, because whatever medium they use isn’t a watery one like you find in regular model paints.
My First Bust
I had been spying some cools busts for a while, and this one was a must-get when I saw it. It has a lot of different materials and textures to try my hand at, skin, hair, cloth, leather, wood, metal and feathers.
I knew right away that I would be using just the ScaleColor Artist paints, which don’t contain metallics (well… at the time - they have just funded a Kickstarter for them!) so I would be using Non-Metallic Metals, which always seems very daunting at first, but I’ll get to that later. I also knew that I wanted the different leathers to look different, with the leather belt being a rich red-brown leather, and the leather straps on the corset a black leather.
For the skin, I wanted to try and get a natural skin tone, so I implemented some stippling layers between tone shifts, to build up a slight texture and get me closer to that natural look. I also got the chance to try my hand at painting her eye makeup, like the eyeshadow and eyeliner.
The little parrot was important to add a little pop of colour, but not be too distracting. I went with the Masked Lovebird like on the box art, and I think I got the colour transition spot on, from red to orange and yellow, to green, then transitioning to black for the rest of the body, and dark green on the back of the body and wings.
When it came to painting the NMM areas, I broke it down into gold and silvers. I found I would be happier with the gold NMM at an earlier stage than I was with the silvers. Starting from the darkest colour for each of the colours, I would steadily build up to the highlight, then top highlight of white on both. On the pistol, the gold area has a pattern embossed, which adds a lot of surface to change how the NMM looks on that panel, and I think it turned out really well. I also loved how the buckles and loops turned out on the corset. With the silvers, they didn’t look right until I got the White highlight on, and it just suddenly popped! My brain just realised what it was looking at, and it just looked right. The large buckle, I think turned out fantastic, again the pattern on the buckle helps to add nice, hard colour changes. But my favourite is the skull on the pistol, which you’ll see below.
I am so proud of how this piece turned out, and can honestly say this is my favourite piece I’ve ever painted. And that skull on the pistol just turned out exactly how I wanted it to look. I would definitely pick up more busts to paint, because it was such a nice change from painting 28-32mm models.
Marusha Of The Red Army
I’ve had this model for a while, too. It’s a 54mm scale model of a pinup style woman dressed in Red Army uniform, complete with Ppsh-41 submachine gun slung on her back and Mishka, the little bear, by her side. The model is made by Wargamer UK, who are a company in Edinburgh, Scotland, and they make these awesome 54mm models, but also 28mm versions of them, if you wanted to add models into your armies!
Marusha was also painted completely with ScaleColor Artist paints, and I learned a lot during this project.
Painting dark green over black is hard. Those crates took a lot of coats to get a noticeable colour change.
painting realistic glass is a real challenge.
Painting freckles is easier than I expected to make look good
Painting blonde hair without relying on my usual recipe is actually really easy on larger scales.
So a little bit about painting the glass bottle, no one has a video that I found about painting realistic glass on miniatures. To get the effect I got, I painted the bottle grey, then glazed the colours that were behind the bottles, mainly the green from the jacket and the skin from her thigh. For the vodka, I then glazed a light grey, to give the effect of light refracting in the clear liquid, reflecting off the glass as it curves. I then glazed white to create the hotspot highlights, and the top of the vodka line. Also around the mouth of the bottle, where the glass is thicker. I think it turned out well, and gives a realistic look. To get the idea of where the light reflects on the glass, I looked at how glass is painted in 2D art, where the shape of the glass is created using just the highlights, and the darker areas reflected by the glass, rather than creating an outline of the bottle or glass. Obviously, it’s not a 1-to-1 comparison when compared to a 3D model, but there are techniques we can transfer across.
Painting Marusha was an absolute pleasure, and allowed me to try some new things, like the painting glass as mentioned before, but painting blonde hair without using washes proved a success. Making sure to use paints which weren’t too yellow, and gradually build up naturally were the main aspects I focused on, and looked at references of 1950s style blonde pinup girls to get a comparison of how the hair takes the light and shadows.
For her boots, I really liked how the volumetric painting looked, but thought it needed a little bit of colour to it, rather than a monochrome look. Using a glaze of a dark brown, I managed to give the boots a nice dark leather look really easily.
On the Ppsh-41 I wanted to have the stock look like a nice Birch wood, so I knew the red tones in the brown needed to come through without being too overpowered, and I think the green surrounding it compliments it nicely, but also the dark brown of the bear, too.
I wanted to use NMM on the Ppsh-41 barrel and magazine, but I wanted the metal to be darker than the metal I did on the Mary Read bust, so I kept to using dark blue/grey tones to give it a gunmetal look. I did the same on the lock and latch on the crate, and the metal on the gun’s sling.
Mishka is wearing a little handkerchief bandana, and I wanted to add a little pop of colour to it, so I freehanded a Soviet star onto it, and to give it a little further interest, I added shading to make the star look 3D, like the star badge on Marusha’s Ushanka hat.
A Good Habit To Form
The Mary Read bust was actually began a couple years ago, but then she was sat on the shelf watching me paint other stuff. However, I had been keeping a journal for what I had painted up until then. I would make a swatch of paints used, record the names of the paints and what was used in any mixes, plus any notes I may need for the colours. Each session I would write anything I needed to remember for the future, and in future projects, and sometimes I would also make a note of what I was wanting to accomplish, or things I want to keep in mind, like in the Marusha notes, I have a note to look at the painting Portrait Of An Unknown Woman, by Ivan Kramskoi as a reference for painting the skin tone on the model.
I’m fortunate to make videos of how I paint models, so I have references for recipes there, but using a journal to keep swatches and notes allows me to keep more personal details, like things I found difficult or easy, which may not be the case for everyone. I would suggest you get a little notebook and make notes on your painting projects!, and it’s a tip that was also encouraged by the guys on the Siege Studios podcast, Painting Perspective.
In February I painted some big models! And that’s not just meaning large ones, but also bigger scales! I learned a lot this past month, and I want to share that with you here!