WIP Pegaso - 54mm Crusader Knight

[phil_h]

Hello Everybody,

This will be the first post in SBS series for Pegaso's 54mm Crusader Knight. It's an older model, but I think it's fantastic. I think it's one of the best 54mm figures for this period. Since my last couple of subjects have been on the Muslim side, I thought it would only be fair to do some Latin subjects too!

Let's take a look at the parts:



As this is a 54mm figure, we can definitely see a decrease in the number of parts and complexity compared to my last project.

Surprisingly enough for an older metal figure, there was very little prep work needed. Hat's off to Pegaso! After the prep work was finished, I then proceeded to prime the figure. The figure was partially assembled - in this case everything but the axe and face guard was glued into place - and then spray primed with Games Workshop's Chaos Black primer. After that dried, I then sprayed their Corax White primer at a (more or less) 45 degree angle onto the figure. The final result was this:



With our little crusader primed, we can give all the elements of the figure an acrylic base coat. Without going to into details (I've discussed this step in more depth in prior SBS postings), it looks like this:




In another SBS I'm doing, I mentioned how reference photos can be very helpful when figuring out where lights and shadows should be placed. It's no different for our baby crusader here. I took a reference photo after the black primer was applied, but before the white. Here is the photo I'll be using for a reference:



Below is the same photo with some of the places circled where I would put some highlights on the cloak:



While I'm painting I have this photo displayed on my laptop screen (or phone), so I can constantly refer to it as I'm going about painting the different elements on the figure. This removes a lot of guesswork .

This concludes our first post on this guy. The next post will cover painting his face.

Thanks for reading!
Regards,
Phil

 

[Nap]

Hi Phil

Nice design to see a classic Pegaso on the bench

As always good explanations, liking the bit about highlighlights ...useful for many

Following with interest

Looking forward to seeing more on this and the bust your working on

https://www.planetfigure.com/threads/young-miniatures-arabian-knight-bust.694685/

Have fun with this

Happy benchtime

Nap

 

[Briggsy]

Another interesting thread to follow.

Cheers Simon

 

[Oda]

Love the subject and the scale.An SBS by you means we are all in for a treat.Following.

Oda.

 

[MalcC]

Following with interest.

Malc

 

[NigelR]

Thanks for sharing more insight. This is very similar to a technique I recently had explained to me by a master figure painter.

 

[phil_h]

Hello Everybody!

Thanks for the comments and interest everybody, I'm definitely looking forward to (hopefully) making this little guy come alive.

In today's post, we're going to tackle painting the figure's face.

(Warning this post is on the longer side... )

The Face

First before we start, a couple of notes in general:

• 54mm face can be tricky because there are a couple of things that need to balanced. On the one hand, because of the small size, the main way to make sure you can properly pick out the volumes on the face is to use an exaggerated contrast between shadows and highlights. On the other this kind of contrast tends to make faces at this scale look more cartoony (the owl/raccoon eyes effect), and less realistic.
• Also, at 54mm there is also a natural tendency to stick with simpler skin tone schemes and less nuances applied to the different facial parts and this again contributes to a less realistic looking face.

Keeping these things in mind, I'm going to try to push myself to try to get as realistic a face as I can at this scale. (Whether or not I succeed is an entirely different story!) This means I'll be constantly checking the contrast and skin tones/nuances at almost every step.

One bit of info that I do already have is my reference photo which will provide me a cheat-sheet to where the lights and shadows should fall. (With that said, the reference photo is just that... a reference. Any change can be made in license to artistic freedom ).

Aside from the goal of trying to do as realistic looking face as possible in this scale, there are a couple of other goals as well:

• The look I want to create is of the crusader squinting at the desert sun, looking off into the distance
• A European who has spent quite some time in the Levant, with the ruddy, tanned, weather beaten (almost bronzed/golden) skin to show for it.

OK, enough blathering... onto the painting!

The paints used for the initial skin tones are:


These are (from left to right):

• Perylene Crimson (Williamsburg Oils). This is a slightly darker and warmer version of the classic Alizarin Crimson. It will be used to mix into deeper shadow tones.
• Red Umber (Michael Harding). A slightly lighter and warmer brown tone which will also be used in shadows.
• Burnt Sienna (Holbein Vernet Oils). This will provide the main reddish tones used in the skin.
• Chrome Green (Holbein Vernet Oils). This will help desaturate the main skin tone and help balance out the reddish values.
• Italian Yellow Ochre (Williamsburg Oils). This will be the main color for our skin tone. Also used in highlights.
• Warm White (Michael Harding). This will be used for highlights.

One thing in common with these colors is that they are all on the warmer side. (Aside from the green and crimson). We're foregoing a little of the warm/cool contrast for the warmth of being out in the sun in a desert environment.

Here is our palette:



In the first column at the top is our mid-tone and basecoat. It's a mix of the yellow ochre, burnt sienna, a little bit of the chromium green and a touch of white. Right below that is our first shadow color, that consists of the mid-tone and with some Red Umber and a tiny bit of the Perylene Crimson mixed in. Below that is our deeper 2nd shadow which is a mix of Red Umber, Perylene Crimson and a little of the green. Finally the last tone in the first column is a purplish tone made by mixing the Perylene Crimson, Chrome Green and a little bit of the Warm White. This tone was used for things like the bags under the eyes and lips.

The second column starts with our first highlight - this is a mix of our mid-tone with a little more white and yellow mixed into it. The next one down is our 2nd highlight - a mix of white with a little bit of yellow. Directly below that and to the left is a tone that is in between our mid-tone and first highlight - it's the mid-tone with a little bit of white added to it.

Let's basecoat our figure with the mid-tone:


(Until noted, all the work done is wet-in-wet)

For no real rhyme or reason, I'd like to next add our shadows (we could just as well start with highlights - it personal preference). Here is our first shadow blocked out:



It's hard to make out, but they're placed in the bottom corners of the mouth, above and inside the top of the eyes, and in the creases separating the cheeks from the nose and mouth areas. Let's smooth them out:

Things are little neater now. With our first shadows in, let's go ahead and block in our second shadows:

The most prominent areas where this has been applied are the cheeks. Let's blend them in:


With our shadows out of the way (for now), the next area I wanted to tackle were the bags under the eyes. As mentioned there is a more purplish tone that will be used. Let's go ahead and add it to the designated areas:



Its hard to see in the photos, but it gives the face a little more detail and helps accentuate the eyes.

At this point, right before we do the highlights, we'll do some clean up and tweaks. This primarily consists of adding a bit of a darker tone to the shadows in the cheek area, improving some of the blending, and adding a little bit more of a reddish tone to some targeted areas:


(The difference between this photo and the one above should be pretty obvious).

Now we're ready to start our highlights. Let's go ahead and block our first one in:


Here we're more or less following the reference photo shown in the previous post. Unlike the photo however, I did add a small highlight around his left eye. Next we'll blend them in:



OK, with the highlights blended in, we've now successfully managed to blow-out and destroy any of our mid-tones . We also now have a perfect example of the owl/raccoon eye effect I mentioned in the beginning of the post. Fortunately, we have an easy fix. We can just go ahead and add the mid-tone back into a small area in between the shadow and the highlight. When adding this, we do want to cover up a little more to the shadow area than the highlight area. With our mid-tones back in place we get this:


Much better. For now that completes the highlights and shadows. Let's work on some of the smaller details such as eyelids, lips, etc.



Alright, let's take a much closer look at what we've got:


This is blown up to about 275%. So far I think it's coming along. We're going to let all this dry, and then come back and fix some important issues.

(The next morning...)

The biggest issue that needs adjustment is the overall skin-tone of the face. The face reads a little too red, and I want to adjust this to more tan/bronze/golden. Now that everything is dry, I'm going to glaze in some yellow/orange/brown-ish tones in targeted areas, to completely re-adjust the skin-tone. Here is the new look:

And here is the 275% blown up close up:



Quite a difference between this and where we left off the night before. I also took this time to further clean up some highlights and shadows by adjusting their placement a little bit. Believe it or not, the hardest part so far was painting around the eyes in such a way as to make him look like he's squinting.

With all the adjustments made to the skin and face, the next and last step is the beard. He's going to have a grey/white beard on the warm side. The colors used were a grey tone made form the Warm White, Lamp Black (Holbein Vernet Oils), and the Yellow Ochre that used in the skin tones. This was applied to the beard areas as a basecoat. Then a shadow was applied to selected areas using a the basecoat tone with a a little bit more black mixed into it. The final highlights were made with the pure Warm White. Here is the beard:


And here is our finished face, once again blown up to 275% (which is kind of scary to look at it that close - every imperfection stands out, lol ).


So I'm happy with where we're at with the face based on the goals and potential pitfalls I discussed at the beginning of the post. (Although ultimately you guys will have to judge...)

Next we'll tackle his red tabard...

Thanks for reading!

Regards,
Phil

 

[Briggsy]

Very nice Phil, I forgot how many tones and hues one can add to a face with oils, very informative.

Cheers Simon

 

[NigelR]

Very nice work indeed Phil, especially given there is so little flesh to work with on a 54mm figure with a huge beard!

 

[Nap]

Hi Phil

That’s a great description of flesh painting...really appreciated

Nice result as well .....so small even without that bushy beard !

Looking forward to seeing more

Have fun at the bench

Nap

 

[phil_h]

Hello Everybody,

Thanks for the comments, guys... much appreciated!

With the face out of the way (for the time being), we're next going to paint the tabard. Not seeing any reason to deviate from the box art reference, we'll paint it red. (As a reminder, you can click on the photos to see larger versions.)

The Tabard
To start with we'll be painting this red (as just mentioned ). Also, in order to add interest (which is important for 54mm figures), we'll add some texture to the fabric. Let's take a look at the paints used:


We have:

• Raw Umber from Williamsburg Oils - This is a nice earth tone with a slightly greenish. undertone. The greenish undertone is precisely why I think it's a great color for shading reds.
• Cadmium Red from Williamsburg Oils - This pretty much as classic a red as it gets. This will be the base mid-tone for our tabard.
• Cadmium Red Light from Michael Harding Oils - This is just a little bit higher in value than the regular Cadmium Red above, and it will make a nice subtle first highlight color.
• Rousseau Green Extra Pale from Vasari Oils - This is a new color - a very, very pale green tone. It's almost white with a tad of yellow and an even smaller amount of green. This will be used as the basis for our highlight color. (I'll have a bit more to say about this color below.)
• Warm White from Michael Harding Oils - Another color used for our highest highlights.

Let's talk about our game plan here... Our guy is out in the desert and probably has been for some time. With this in mind, I want our fabric to be slightly washed out looking - this is a result of being out in the sun for an extended period of time. The highlights should be even more so. I (again) also want the fabric to have a strong sense of texture. Hopefully we'll accomplish exactly what we're looking for!

Normally, we'd start by base coating the entire tabard with our mid-tone, but today, we're going to start with just blocking in our shadows like so:


After placing them, we blend them in (unfortunately I don't have a pic of this step). Once blended out, I now put in my mid-tone - in this case it's Cadmium Red with a slight touch of the Raw Umber mixed in. Here is the mid-tone applied:

Looks pretty choppy and very harsh prior to blending. Let's blend it in with the shadows:


Now we can see things starting to take shape and taking on a more softer look.
With the base shadow and mid-tone laid out, we can now start our work on creating our garment's texture. We'll build the texture up over successive application of highlight tones. Our first highlight will be pure Cadmium Red Light, applied using a stippling technique:

It's hard to see, but if you look towards the bottom of the tabard, you can see a very subtle highlight and some texture starting to show.

For our next highlight, we're going to jump up in value quite a bit. This highlight is going to be a mix of Cadmium Red Light and the Rousseau Green Extra Pale. Because this green is much, much higher in value than the red, and because it's also a complementary color, it's going to both desaturate and raise the color value. This will give us a very natural highlight color without getting into pinkish or orange territory, and it will very much help create a more washed out look for us. Let's stipple some of this on:
This highlight application has certainly helped us start to get that washed out look, and we can see more texture being built up as well - especially in his top left chest and bottom right leg areas. Let's push our highlights further though. We'll create a mix of a small amount of Cadmium Red Light, a larger part of our green, and then a bit of our Warm White. Let's see how this looks:


By the time I took the photo above, I finished for night and let everything dry. However, I noticed some of the shadows we're still a little too stark for me, and I still wanted to push the high lights some more. Here is our guy after softening out some selected shadows and pushing the highlights a bit more:

There is quite a difference between this photo and the last one... and for the better .
The last thing to paint is the cross on the top left of his chest. This will be done by:

• Making a warm grey tone that consists of Yellow Ochre, Warm White and a little bit of Lamp Black mixed together and then base coating the entire cross.
• Highlighting the top right part of the cross with pure Warm White
• Black lining the cross with pure Raw Umber.

In addition to the cross, I also black lined some other elements and did a little bit more cleanup. Here is our tabard all finished:


Hope you enjoyed this installment - the next post will cover some of the leatherwork.

Thanks for reading,
-Phil

 

[Oda]

Mighty interesting and informative,as usual.

Oda.

 

[Nap]

Mighty interesting and informative,as usual.

Oda.

Fully agree there Aris

Phil’s updates are a pleasure to read and easy to follow with a nice result so far

The work he puts into the V Bench is much appreciated

Looking forward to seeing more

Happy benchtime

Nap

 

[JH Figures]

Ah, another treasure SBS, go on Phil, do not stop the flow lol. I am still figuring out how to achieve a less shiny finish with oils. I had to give 3 coats of AK ultra matte varnish to this one (also a Pegaso oldie):

 

[NigelR]

More lovely work, keep going!