Completed La Meridiana 42nd Highlander

[kinggeorges]

Hello,

Some pictures of my completed 54mm highlander from La Meridiana. Any comments, advises etc are more than welcome. I painted the figure using enamel and oils. I think I poorly executed the kilt, and didn't enough shadow his face. More pics on my blog.

Best,
Julien

 

[kansas kid]

Julian: Yes, mate, I agree with your critique of your work.
However, as I see it, there is only one way to improve
regarding this hobby, and especially regarding that very difficult
plaid pattern on the kilt. We do infact learn by doing. We
have to put the time in. Nothing worthwhile is easily achieved,
IMHO. . .
Just keep doing it. . . each one will get better.
Rickster Jayhawk

 

[Colin_Fraser]

I think you are too harsh when you say you poorly executed the kilt. While I agree there is room for improvement, I think the result is really quite good. To focus on the positives, you ground work is really good, you reds are sound and the flesh tones are accurate, although a little too lightly shaded as you noted. Your tartan is good although I think the black lines are a litte too sharp and strong. The beading on the haversack is great! Musket wood look s little too light to me - most brown bess muskets I have seen are a very rich dark brown.

Hope that helps you.

Colin

 

[kinggeorges]

Thanks Colin and Kansas Kid for your feedback ! For the musket let's say it just went out of the musket factory

 

[megroot]

When you don't take the challenge you never know if you can win.
I'm at the moment painting a Gordon Highlander Tartan.
Now I know that it is a hard task, and for the first time you did it very well.

Marc

 

[Edorta]

I think you have made a good work in all the figure, including the face, for me, the tone is very natural.
Great work with the ground and the tartan. I specially like the axe, the weathering is totally real.

Military miniatures painted by Eduardo Garcia

 

[NickM]

I think you're too harsh on yourself as well, Julien. This figure is actually very nice.
As Colin said above, the black lines in the tartan are perhaps slightly too pronounced, but thats all really.
Any figure with tartan is going to be difficult, and you've done a great job on this one.

 

[pte1643]

I can't really offer any proper critique, as I'm still new to the figure world myself.

But I'd like to say I'd be happy to have him on my shelf... I think you've done a good job.

 

[kinggeorges]

Marc, Eduardo, Nick and pte (?), many thanks for your comment.
The lesson I learned from the kilt is that the different color must be close in tone (at least for this motif), and yes lines must be much more subtile than that.

On to the next one !
Julien

 

[Paul Kernan]

Julien
A final step used by some is to apply a serious of glazes over the entire kilt. In this case, Blue Black (sorry I'm an oil guy). This tones down and unifies the various elements of the pattern.

Paul

 

[kinggeorges]

Hi Paul, I'm an oil man too !! But I like to work both oils and enamel together.
I've noticed from the box art that the kilt was very dark and might have been washed with some dark filters/glaze. I tried that with black filters, then I applied matt varnsih and it has been a mess...awfull.. That's why the paint on the tartan is not neat, some kind of dirty, because I ad to scrap everything. But next time I'll try with a very diluted glaze of blue black. Thanks for the tip !
Julien

 

[DEL]

Julien
You've clearly realised what you need to do about the kilt.
The problem is that if anything you've tried too hard on the face and the kilt.
Going for red (ginger) hair is a challenge for anyone when it comes to doing a convincing face.
You've got to keep the skintone pale, which you have, but it just doesn't give you much scope for depth of shading.
If you still feel that the face needs work, it would be worth running some darker shading into the hair, this would let you build up more definition into the face.
That being said much of the figure is very good and a few tweaks will turn it into an excellent one.
Cheers
Derek

 

[kinggeorges]

Derek,
Thanks for your comments. I might exceptionnaly consider redoing some part of it as you suggest.

julien

 

[John Bowery]

Julien,
Nice try and very hard to do. Remember if the lines are to thick you can always thin them down by painting along the line with the other colour. Some time it takes a lot of back and forth on the retouching.
Keep at it
Cheers
John