Prussian Knight
The first one is a 15th Century Purssian knight. He is a 120mm (or 1/16th scale) figurine and it is actually my first real attempt at painting a figure. He was actually quite cheap at the time costing me only $25!
So for the screw ups... I painted this about 3 years ago when I was 14 and I didn't quite understand what primer was, so I got out some good old black Humbrol enamel paint and just laquered it on there. I then went over the enamel with acrylics, which is a really bad idea. Sticking water based paints on top of oil based paints is the biggest no-no... It just doesn't stick! That was lesson no.1 that I learnt.
Anyway, I used to frequent a website called planetfigure.com and it had a really great community! It had some really really bad painters and in constrast some of the world best miniature painters contributed alot on there. I found that some guy was making some Prussian/German eagle stencils so I thought that I'd buy a sheet. After literally 6 months of waiting I finally got the stencil all mangled up and I actually got to paint on the eagle you can see on the chest.
On a positive note, I really learnt how to blend acrylic paints togther nicely. It is pretty rough on this mini but even now, I am happy with how he has turned out. It just shows that I have improved a bit from back then :)
Aside from all of the embarrasing mistakes that I did to the figure, it hasn't turned out all that badly. All it needs is a base and a shield which I still haven't painted. I will finish both of those one day!
Imperial Guard Officier
I started getting into what alot of historical figure painters call the 'dark side' of painting. For me, I wanted to try something a bit differet. I did this miniature about 2 years ago now when I was 15 and out of all honesty, it is the only 1 out of the 30 or so guardsmen I have laying around in my display cabinet. Anyway, he is 32mm tall (not sure about scale but roughly 1/40 scale?) and was a real joy to paint. He originally was meant to be made for a diorama with an impressive looking aeroplane/helicopter hybrid vehicle on it. This figure in particular is supposed to be a 'not so happy' officer hailing down the transport vehicle, pistol ready.
I attempted some 'freehand' painting on the top of his helmet by painting a white arrow. I also restricted my paint pallete to around 6 - 8 colours (the number is a bit hazy). I think he turned out really well. Oh yea, once again I painted him using acrylic paints (Vallejo Model Colour and Citadels paints in particular).
Adolf Hitler's 'Last Stand'
Oh this miniature was really a fun piece (although a fair few people may be offended by it but I think all of those princesses need to toughen up... it's just a piece of painted plastic and metal). This miniature is 90mm tall (about 1/18 - 1/20th scale). I painted him up during my 20 - 30 minute breaks from study and was very entertaining since I was studing Nazi Germany for history, in particular, Hitlers regime.
I spent literally about 200 hours of work on his face alone. I painted his face up with the usual acrylic paints and when I was happy with it, I put on a quick matt cote and started painting in some extra highlights and smoother blends using some windsor and newton artists oil paints. I really had no idea what I was doing with oils but I used them exactly the same way as I used acrylics and it seemed to work! I had to get the face right so that anybody and everybody who looked at him could almost immediatley say, "Isn't that Hitler?". The paints were really good to work with because if I made a mistake, I could just wipe it off with a white-spirits filled tissue and do that section again.
As for the trench coat, I spent a fair few less hours on it using mixtures of a light bone colour and black (acrylic paints used here again). I swear to god that I wasted about a litre of water thinning down the paint for the coat but I think in the end it was worth it.
Oh yea, I also did some sculpting! I lost the folded coat collar that originally came with the kit, so I sculpted a new one using some 'green stuff' (that's what it's called) which is a 2-part expoxy resin material. Suprise suprise, green stuff is green and for some reason smells like cheesy doritos chips. It took about three hours to get the collar cut to the right size, shaped correctly and put the imprint to indicate seams. However, the new collar looks about 200 times better than the original!
The basework was probably the best bit of this miniature, although I am still not 100% happy with it. The base that came with the miniature was a very small scene which just had literally pieces of rubble everywhere. All I did was is expand the metal base to fit onto the black.. base which Hitler stand on now using minced up pieces of cork and also some sand. A bit of paint and weathering pigments made it look all nice and destroyed.
My parents also went over to Melbourne in about May this year and entered him into the Melbourne model expo. (largest model expo. in Australia) The picture below shows the result ;)
Because of first place, my figure got printed into a magazine and I got to write a little bit about him! Oh yea, I forgot to mention that my brother actually bought this figure for about $100 and as I saw it gaining dust, I hijacked it and painted it >:D
Conclusion
I am definatley not a real good figure painter but I have improved a but over the years. Only problem at the moment is that I haven't really done squat latley and need to fix up my over the place time management to get something done!
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