I've been dealing with a lot of work and health related issues these last few weeks, so progress has been slow. I read somewhere, that when your building a diorama or adding figures to a build, to paint the figures first. This way, by time you got to them, you didn't cut corners and lack on the details.
I've watched countless videos on painting figures. And I have yet to be able to minutely master any of the techniques. I majored in art in high school, however i learned early on that I couldn't paint. So i changed the art major to sculpture and jewelry. At least I could still make things from my warped mind.
I had painted the faces on these two five times. As soon as I start with the shading and highlighting, they start looking like oil vintage pieces from the 1700's. I use Vallejo paints. I have the thinner and retarder medium. Even bought a face painting kit of theirs with tutorial to follow.
Even with the multitude of brushes i have, I ran to HL this weekend in search for a very small and pointed brush for the fine details. After finding what i was looking for, I came back and started all over.
The faces this final time around were done with a base of 70.815 Basic Skin Tone. I tried the glazing technique but that is like me trying to win a noble prize! After it was dried, I started some shading with 70.860 Medium Flesh Tone. The I started in with the highlights using 70.928 Light Flesh.
After this was all dried, I did a light wash of 70.859 Black Red. I was trying to darken the recessed areas and give the skin tone a bit of red color to warm it up.
The jackets were done with a base of 70.872 Chocolate Brown. The camo patches were then done with 70.978 Dark Yellow and 70.916 Sand Yellow. The grey is made up of various combinations of 70.830 German Field Grey and 70.951 White. The silver is actually 70.865 Oily Steel.
After everything was done, I decided to stop before I messed them up further. I sealed them with the 70.520 Matte Varnish. To me, the matte varnish has too much a shine to it. I would like to find something to tone down the shine and make it flatter.
I was able to watch some German footage from the Battle of Stoumont. Since the German forces were a combination of a few different Panzer Divisions, there was no actual winter camo pattern present in clothing or armor. The majority of the German soldiers were wearing the heavy outer grey winter jackets. However, the camo pattern I selected does match some of the late '44 patterns.
No pictures yet, but I was able to get the red oxide primer down on the tank. I ran into issues with the airbrush. Seems that I didn't take into consideration that reusing my paint bottles from my previous mixtures for armor would start to flake off inside.
I ended up with some gunk inside the brush. Took it apart, cleaned it out, started to spray again and the issue came back. I was able to lay down a good coat of the base color. It's not 100% even, but I like that. So when I lay down the yellow, it will go over and show variants within the color which should help with the final effects.
This also means that I am going to have to remix my other colors to prevent this from happening again.
