Minor Surgery

Having finished painting the 10HP I thought it really needed a driver figure adding to help give a sense of scale. After a thorough search through the Dart Castings website I settled on using model MSV71 which is described as Industrial or Narrow Gauge Locomotive Driver. Interestingly Phil Parker bought and painted the exact same figure for one of his models recently; I think he probably made a better job of the painting, but I'm happy with how mine turned out.

I made some slight adjustments to the figure to make him a better fit. The least painfull change was to tweak his left arm so that it was resting on the brake wheel. The more painful surgery involved removing the toes on his left foot otherwise he fouled the worm gear which protrudes into the cab! Close up photos such as this are very cruel and in real life I'm more than happy with how he looks, and more importantly he really does help convay just how tiny the locomotive really is.

Figure Painting

So in the previous post I mentioned I'd used a new painting method. Technically it's not new, but it's not something I'd tried before and that is stain painting to colour the figures.

All the figure painting I've done in the past (either recently or when painting Games Workshop figures in my misspent youth) has followed the same approach of block painting colours and then either picking out the highlights with dry brushing or emphasizing creases using thin washes. The problem is that this can be quite time consuming and more importantly finding complimentary colours for highlights and washes can be tricky. This new, for me, approach inverts this process. If you want lots of details then I followed the suggestions on this web page, but essentially you can see the whole process in these four photos.

The first step is simply to paint the entire figure black. This is followed by dry brushing with white to pick out the highlights. Colours are then added using paint diluted with water (to a consistency like milk). Rather than completely covering the underlying areas this essentially stains the lower layers allowing the creases and highlights to show through. A quick waft of matt varnish to helps tie everything together to give...

This is of course a rather cruel close up being many times life size, but you get the general idea. As I said at the start it's not a new idea, but was something I've never tried before, but from this brief test will be something I'll be doing a lot more in the future.

White or Black Underwear?

In the comments to yesterdays post, Paul mentioned that he uses a white undercoat when painting figures to avoid overly darkening the topcoat of paint. As I had a few spare figures laying around I thought I'd paint one in exactly the same way as yesterday but with a white undercoat.

On the left is the figure from yesterday while the one on the right started with a white undercoat. I think the difference is most obvious on the faces of the figures with the white undercoat giving a lighter skin tone. One thing I did find was that I had to use more paint for the topcoat as the white showed through a lot more than the black did, and any spots I missed were very obvious.

At the end of the day I don't think there is much to choose between the two approaches but I think I'll probably stick with the black undercoat as I found it ever so slightly easier.

Figure Painting

As I've mentioned before I prefer painting things that are simple block colours, although I am now happy with my approach to painting weathered wood. Painting figures to look realistic is something I'm still not entirely happy with though.

Over the years I've actually painted quite a lot of figures, but these have been the slightly larger Warhammer miniatures from Games Workshop and I focused on painting Orcs and Goblins. While I learnt a number of useful techniques they don't necessarily help with painting human figures. Fortunately there are a myriad of tutorials on the web which I've now read through to come up with an approach that is fairly easy and seems to work reasonably well.

The main point many of the tutorials stress is that you are aiming for something that looks right from a sensible viewing distance, rather than something that looks good in a close up photo. This means that you can often leave out details such as eyes and lips etc. as they would be so small as to be invisible. This is very different from when I painted orcs and goblins where I deliberately painted large eyes to add that slightly demented look I was after. So as you can see the close up photo does make the painting look rather crude but when viewed from even just a foot or so away the effect seems to work. The main idea is to use block colours and then a brown wash (not black interestingly) to add shadows and some dry brushing for highlights.

For this specific model I went with a blue overalls effect and used Model Color acrylics throughout, except for his shoes which were painted with RailMatch weathered black (#2412). I started by painting the whole figure black (#70.950) I then painted the overalls with flat blue (#70.962), the shirt ivory (#70.918) and the exposed skin was painted with dark flesh (#70.927). I then made a thin wash of burnt umber (#70.941) and ran this over the entire model to help add shadows. I then tried lightly dry brushing with dark sand (#70.847), which is a creamy colour, to add some highlights but I felt this looked a bit unnatural so touched some bits back in with their original colours and then applied another wash of burnt umber. Once dry a light wafting of matt varnish sealed everything nicely.

As I said before the close up photo is very unflattering but when viewed from a sensible distance I think he looks quite good. Now I just have to paint a locomotive for him to drive around in.

Hudson-Hunslet Mockup

Given that it will be a while until there is any more progress to show on the Hudson-Hunslet diesel build (I need to update the 3D models and then order some more prints) I thought I'd post a couple more mockup photos to give a slightly better idea how the final model might look; the cabless variety at least. I managed to pull the motor of the chassis so that it would fit into the body again and added a whitemetal driver figure (item number MNV8 from Dart Castings) to give this...

You may notice that a) the driver is held on with blutak and b) he only has one leg! Given I wasn't sure on which figure would be suitable or fit, I designed the chair without the seat cushion pad. The idea being that you'd use a piece of miliput or DAS clay to form the cushion to suit the figure. As for only having one leg, well I was trying to bend the leg of the figure to see if both feet would fit in the footwell when the leg snapped off, and I couldn't be bothered trying to glue it back in place for this mockup.