My second figure attempt - Alpine German officer

[NK919]

Hi everyone,
I present to you my second figure attempt, which is a German Officer from Alpine Miniatures. This project took about 4 or 5 weeks, including the groundwork. Ill be including something for his left hand to lean on, because now it looks quite limp.

Regards,
Lee

 

[NK919]

Whoops, forgot attachements They will come in later

 

[NK919]

Im having some problems uploading the photos. Apparently the file is too big. But here are the links to my photobucket
http://s1182.photobucket.com/albums/x451/veenie5/?action=view&current=P6030423.jpg
http://s1182.photobucket.com/albums/x451/veenie5/?action=view&current=P6030410.jpg
http://s1182.photobucket.com/albums/x451/veenie5/?action=view&current=P6030419.jpg

 

[T50]

Nice work!

Post some pics after you add something for the figure to lean on.

 

[NK919]

Thank you Sir, Ive always been a fan of Alpine Miniatures! Sure, Ill post some pics when I get the arm to rest on something

 

[NK919]

Ive added a small wooden post for him to rest his hand on, so now the pose looks slightly better. Some more highlights on the helmet and MP40 after this! Sorry for the noobish photography, took this with my samsung galaxy, the camera is not good.
http://s1182.photobucket.com/albums/x451/veenie5/?action=view&current=2012-06-05162358.jpg
http://s1182.photobucket.com/albums/x451/veenie5/?action=view&current=2012-06-05162437.jpg
http://s1182.photobucket.com/albums/x451/veenie5/?action=view&current=2012-06-05162418.jpg

 

[LVM]

For a second attempt this is a nice work !

Keep up posting

Laurent

 

[megroot]

good work for your second.

marc

 

[Einion]

Come on guys, this is the Brutal Honesty section - people don't want to be told it's good work and nothing more! Plenty of places here already for that.

On to your paintwork Lee, I'd say from the texture visible in some areas that you need to thin your paint a little; more thinner layers are better than fewer thicker layers nearly all the time.

Your edges look neat enough for this stage in your development so you're doing okay on that front. You'll get better at this with practice anyway but adding shadows and highlights will give you the opportunity to refine these further.

Highlighting and shading need to be increased, for this small scale in particular you need to exaggerate the contrast a bit. The general rule of thumb is the smaller the figure the higher the contrast, for larger stuff (busts in particular) you can use much less contrast and things will still look right.

To begin with you'll want to use at least four colour mixtures - lightest highlight, light, midtone, shadow - but many people use more mixtures than this; five wouldn't be unusual, adding a mid-shadow colour to the above. But seven or more (smaller steps between colours) are sometimes used, depending on the painter and the colour they're working on.

Einion

 

[Einion]

On your photography, got to try to sort this out if you want to get critique of your work; in the second set of pics it's hard to see anything properly. And it would be a really good idea to include pics within your post, some people won't bother to look at off-site links so you're reducing what is already a small number of potential commenters even further.

Since you're using Photobucket anyway, you can use it without having to manually reduce the photos or crop them (although you'll want to do both of these and some basic tweaks in due course). The link for the forum will look like this:

[IMG]http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/aXXX/MyName/Sample.jpg[/IMG]

To get it, hover your mouse over a thumbnail in your gallery, wait for the menu to pop open, then click on the IMG code option which should automatically copy it to your clipboard. Then just paste it into the body of your post and you get an in-line pic like this.

Einion

 

[housecarl]

I've taken the liberty of uploading the images for you.
I have to agree with Einion with regards to the figure,
I think the groundwork is very well done.
Carl.

 

[NK919]

Thanks for the comments everyone especially Mr Einon! Ive worked on the fig a bit more, increasing the highlights and shadows, and this is what Ive come up with. I somehow cant replicate the photography done the last time, so the pics are not as good as those in the first post.

 

[Jon Fitzgerald]

Hi Lee, I'm a new member here, and I'm hardly an expert myself... but in my humble opinion here are some comments on your figure.

Good things first, I agree with Einion. Your painting is tidy, and the details are picked out well. I actually think that one of the strongest areas of this figure is the face. You've done a good job with the skin tones in my opinion, which for me at least was always the hardest part of figure painting when I first started. Figures are much more unforgiving than tanks!

I also think that the ground work is very good too. You've got a nice mixture of mediums there, foliage, helmet, stone. It makes for a nice scene.

I also think that maybe thinning your paint more is a good idea. In the highlights you've done so far on the coat, it seems a little thick, and comes across a little chalky. Are you dabbing the excess paint off your brush onto a bit of paper or tissue before applying it to the surface of the model? I found that really helped me. Originally coming from a fantasy model background I was used to extreme highlighting and strong bold colours. When I moved over to historical subjects I tried a lot to tone things down and be subtle. So for me thinning the paint very heavily to a milk like consistency, and then unloading the excess onto some tissue really helped. I learnt on a personal level, that less really is more, and that building up succesive layers of colour could give really great results.

 

[Jon Fitzgerald]

On a side note, I forgot to say, it seems here at least (perhaps its the photo), but it seems that a little of your flesh tone has gone onto the collar of the jacket. If you went back over this area with the base colour of the coat, I think it would really tidy the area up and give a great finish.