WIP Critique Templar

[Bailey]

Updates below - April 16th, 2012
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I'm painting this 54mm figure from Andrea as a retirement gift for a coworker (shhhhh... it's a surprise!). The Andrea box art has him painted as a Hospitaller, but I'm going to make him a Templar instead. Only the head is complete. I might give the shaved area on the top of his head a slight brown tint so it looks like there is stubble (thoughts?). What you see is about a day's worth of painting, all done with acrylics.

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It's a little hard to see the eyes in the above pictures, so here's a zoomed in version. Adding the pupils was a pain but I think the end result is nice (even if most people will never look close enough to notice... sigh).​

 

[Meehan34]

great start on an excellent and thoughtful gift.

 

[BRIAN HOWARD]

What a great gift! Also a very nice figure.
It looks as if you have a little shadow of hair behind the ears and upper neck. You may want to do the upper scalp to add more symmetry to the 3 day shadow. Just a thought.

 

[megroot]

Great gift. And it's a great start on it.

Marc

 

[davidmitchell]

Looking good so far David.


Cheers David

 

[Bailey]

I had a chance over the last few days to work on my Templar. I've seen a few threads recently discussing the difficulties in painting white, so I thought I'd share what I have done. All of the white is done with Vallejo Model Color acrylics.

Deepest Shadow: German Cam Black Brown (822) and German Cam Beige (821)
Shadow: German Cam Beige (821) and Deck Tan (986)
Base: Deck Tan (986)
Highlight: White Grey (993) and Deck Tan (986)

The deepest shadows are used very sparingly, the majority of the shadows are the beige and deck tan mix. I was going for more of a worn off white finish, so I toned down the highlights with deck tan. If I was going for a brighter white, I might have made my base a mix of deck tan and white grey, then used white grey alone or even a mix with pure white (951) for the highlights. The main point I have gotten from all the wisdom here on PlanetFigure is that shading whites should not be done with just white - grey - black mixes.

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[Bailey]

After finishing the white I added the Templar cross. The design was done free hand.

 

[lespauljames]

very nice painting.

 

[BRIAN HOWARD]

Hi Bailey
The whites look really nice. Your friend is going to love this piece.

 

[Mariner]

This is really coming along, David...it will be a beautiful gift when done

Mary

 

[megroot]

That is gonna be a great gift.
Like the white, and a bit more symmetry on the cross will do the job.. On the picture it seems that the left horizontal bar is a bit lower then the right one.

 

[Bailey]

Thanks everyone. I've been pleasantly surprised at how much fun this little figure is to paint.

Marc, I'll take another look at the cross in person. The knight has a slight twist to his torso, so I painted the vertical part of the cross at an angle. So the difference between left and right horizontal are caused by that. I'll give it a more critical look and see if I think it needs to be tweaked.

 

[Bailey]

Finished this guy a little while ago but I've been slow in uploading the pictures. Overall this was a fun little project and all the white didn't give me nearly as much trouble as I was expecting. My only complaint was the sculpting on the chain mail left a little to be desired. Hope you enjoy the final result. Thanks for taking a look!