Great start, Chris. As always practice counts. It’s easier to get better faces, on quality, resin heads. That’s why so many of us replace the plastic with Hornet or Alpine heads. I also rely on Archer transfers for unit patches, rank and collar tabs (on Germans).
Your figures and the base really make that great M18 look better…
2 Likes
Thank you for being nice about the figures . I am aware that they look pretty bad in these pictures. I intend to replace the heads on future figures and probably just get better figures.
Kind of hooked now in the whole figure thing . I dont think there will be figures on most builds but some will have them
1 Like
If you are serious about improving your figure painting, the only path is study, practice, and deliberate self-criticism. Analyze your results and identify SPECIFIC areas for improvement. Then concentrate on the SPECIFIC skills and techniques to needed to make those improvements.
Don’t fall into the trap of simply generalizing the overall standard of your figures, and don’t accept or believe that you can’t make major improvements. Sure, figure painting is one of the harder things to do in modeling, but getting good at it is one of the most satisfying things you can achieve. Well done figures are what bring life, plausibility, believability and credibility to your work. Viewers instantly and intuitively identify with the figures they see, and the better those figures look (i.e. the more realistically human they appear), the better the viewer is able to suspend his or her disbelief in order to see your work as a “realistic” presentation of your subject.
Generally, there are two basic areas to be concerned with. There are technical skills, like: brush control to achieve sharp lines and color demarcations; blending to achieve gradual transitions in tones; and paint management. There there are conceptual skills, like: understanding where to place shadows and highlights and how to blend and mix colors. All of this has to also be understood within the context of the medium that you’re painting with.
If your detail painting is “rough” and your lines are not sharp and clean, then you need to concentrate on improving your brush control. If your faces and skin tones look “pasty,” or “doughy,” or too uniform from one figure to the next, then you need to study and learn variations on skin colors and how to mix them. However, both of these things, brush control (technical skill) and color theory (conceptual skill) have variations depending on the kind of medium you’re using (artist oils, hobby enamels, or hobby acrylics).
You also need to deliberately look at and study your tools and materials, especially your paint brushes. Again, these things vary considerably depending on medium and your specific painting task at hand (detail painting, blocking in colors, blending, the size of the area that your working in, etc.).
Don’t be fooled into thinking or believing that there are any great short-cuts to achieving high standards. Sure, washes and dry-brushing (or similar processes using wash “dips” etc.) might be fast and technically easy to learn, but all of the short-cuts and “production” methods have limitations. In the end, no matter how well they’re done, they can only produce results that appear superficially realistic. Close study and examination always leaves these figures looking like toys. If you don’t accept that standard of realism on your other models, why would you accept it on your figures displayed right alongside of them?
Finally, there are “schools” or “styles” of figure painting that deserve your attention and study. Much of this is tied to the scale of the figures, but there are other influences on painting styles besides just scale.
Ultimately, you will discover that you have combined your technical and conceptual skills and medium into your own unique style that works for you. However, before you get there, you need to be deliberate and disciplined in making conscious improvements and… practice, practice, practice.
4 Likes
Very well said Mike-all of it !
2 Likes
Thanks, Richard!
I should probably add that the technical and conceptual skills that are used in figure painting also translate back to other modeling genres, so improving one’s figure painting can also have very positive benefits on on other projects.
For instance, detail painting with sharp, clean lines of demarcation is a skill that is not practiced a lot with modeling vehicles. Sure, there may be detail parts to be painted, but they are usually a small percentage of the over all finishing job.
Figure painting, on the other hand, is all about brush control and details.
Guys who are good, solid figure painters almost always display correspondingly good, sharp and clean detail painting on their vehicles. However, the opposite is often observed. Poor figure painters very often display pretty poor detail painting skills on their other projects.
Having said, that, though, a modeler who has well developed detail painting skills as displayed on his or her other works, usually progresses quite rapidly as a figure painter, at least to basic levels of competency.
Conceptual figure painter skills also translate to vehicles and other subjects, too. Mixing colors and understanding how painting can be used to “push” and “pull” shadows and highlights to create and emphasize contrasts can be applied to all modeling subjects. Figure painting can really help a modeler to “see” and “visualize” how techniques like color modulation, and pre-/post shading work and how to improve their results on vehicles, etc.
Finally, modelers who are comfortable and competent with color mixing for figure painting are also the ones who are least tied down to slavishly adhering to or searching for some paint manufacturer’s proprietary color mixes. Experience with figure painting can liberate a modeler’s approach to color pallets and the infinite variations that prototype colors actually take in the real world.
1 Like
That is all very good advice. Thank you for taking the time to do that. I have identified the areas that I need to work on. I also intend to keep working at this due to the fact that I believe that my models and bases are not bad at all but figures would really bring it to life. Everything that you have said here needs to be studied and I will be doing as well once again thank you for taking the time to State all that
1 Like
Cheers, Chris! When I decided myself to improve my own figure painting, I took a very deliberate approach like I described here.
I thought I was a pretty competent painter before I started, and I was never embarrassed by my figures. However, I knew there was a lot of room for improvement (and there still is!). I looked at my overall modeling competency, and my figure painting at the time was just not in the same league as the rest of my work. I really wanted to improve it.
The two most important things that I did were to slow down and take more time and to really make an effort to master my medium of choice (artist oil paints). There were also a number of technical improvements that I made, but the fundamental changes were putting in the time needed and learning the finer points of my medium.
Achieving a significant improvement in my figure painting also took a couple of years. I know that I can still improve (or at least that there is still lots of room for me to improve, whether I can get there or not is another matter! LOL!). However, I also know the areas that I need to work on now mostly concern matters of “style,” and that change in that regard is more difficult (because I’m not entirely sure that I want to make changes in that regard).
At any rate, my personal experience is that just like the other skills, knowledge and abilities around modeling, figure painting is a lifelong journey as long as you want to improve towards the illusive “perfect” built.
1 Like