Showcase: Hector, prince of Troy

Hello everyone!

In this article, I want to showcase my version of Hector by Young Miniatures.

I spend a lot of time on the face and eyes, only by them being barely visible on the pictures due to how the helmet covers the face from any source of light. The inside of the shield is also painted to look like real wood. Sadly the body covers most of it so you can't really see it on the photos.

I hope you like him! If you do, feel free to head over to Putty&Paint and leave me a vote. 👍

Showcase: Achilles

Hello everyone! 

In this article, I want to showcase my version of Achilles by Young Miniatures. I'm not sure if I made the right choice making the photographs on a black background, but it looked better than on a white background.

I painted the armor to look like hammered bronze, trying to get close to the reference snapshots I took from the movie. The shirt underneath is painted as a black, semi-reflective leather.

I hope you like him! If you do, feel free to head over to Putty&Paint and leave me a vote. 👍

How to quickly paint faces

Hi guys (and girls)

It's been way too long since I've posted anything. Reasons for this are family stuff, work stress, changing jobs etc... I just really hope I can post more frequently from now on.

In this article, I would like to cover a trick I recently learned/discovered for painting faces.

It has to do with subdermal colors in the skin. I'll show the pictures first, and explain the reason why later on.

I began by pre-shading the head with black and white paint. This will give you a good indication of where your shadows and highlights should be. If you paint transparently enough, the shadows and highlights will shine through your paint job, but even if you paint more opaque, making a picture of this step will be a good reference!

I loaded my airbrush up with some red paint and sprayed the top half of the face. Make sure to cover the cheekbones, nostrils and the tip of the nose. 

After that, I got the blue paint ready. I used this to spray the bottom half of the face. I also sprayed a little blue over the red in the eye sockets, creating a dark purple. 

With the red and blue colors in place, I continued to paint the face as I usually would. I used the Scale75 skin colors for this. 

You can see that the cheeks and the nose bleed through some of the red color and that the chin has a light blue tone. This gives the illusion of rosy cheeks a five'o'clock shadow. After the skin tones, paint the lips with a red-ish/pink-ish color and paint a little bit of texture on the lower lip. Also highlight the eyelids, nose, upper lip and any wrinkles if they are present on the model, and the face is pretty much done!

Now onto the reasons why...

The central part of a face has fine blood vessels carrying oxidized (red) blood to the surface of the skin. The chin, especially on a black-bearded man, appears blueish due to microscopic hairs. Women and children don't have a five'o'clock shadow but in the area around the lips are relatively more veins carrying deoxidized blood to the surface. Some artists paint this as a green color to compliment the color of the lips. 

Traditionally, there is also a yellow or white zone of the face. This is the forehead that doesn't have as many muscles and blood vessels and thus doesn't have as many red blood cells. 

I hope you liked this little tutorial and that it helps you. If you have any questions feel free to post them in the comment section below.

Thank you for reading and until next time! Peace ✌

Katsumoto - by Mitches Military Models

Hi everybody,

I want to apologize for my lack of recent posts but I've been busy with everything except painting. I did paint a few small project or made very little progress on current projects but nothing worth posting or writing about.

At the moment, my hobby seems more to be a collector of models and busts instead of being a painter.

My most recent purchase is a bust portraying Katsumoto from the movie The Last Samurai by Mitches Military Models. They have a large assortment of 120mm, 200mm resin figures, and busts. They range from historical models to modern day soldiers.

Some of the movie inspired pieces immediately caught my eye, and some of them were on sale as well! Lucky me!

The bust comes in 3 pieces. the head
and body, and 2 pieces that might be
ornamental or added armor

The bust is cast in light, yellowish resin. I believe this resin is toxic when inhaled so be sure to wear a dust mask when sanding or sawing! That being said, it is good practice to always wear a dust mask when sanding resin, to prevent Pneumoconiosis.

The model does require some cleanup, there is a pretty nasty mold line on the back of the model, running across the back and the back of his head. There are also some little blobs of resin between his collar and neck. The obvious flash should also be removed.

The blue-green dot is a part of the
silicon mold

Okay so it's obvious that this bust needs some serious cleaning up, but I'm still pretty excited about it! The bust is a perfect resemblance of the actor and character in the movie and it has some beautiful details! I'm definitely adding this one a little higher on the to do list for future projects!

A comparison between the bust and the original

So we have reached the end of this article. I will try to write more in the coming months. I have some interesting projects on the shelf so I hope I can find the time to start and finish them and write about it.

Thank you for reading and until next time!