Hello everybody,
After finishing off the Islamic Warrior, I thought I'd do another middle eastern subject - this time it's a 200mm bust from Young Miniatures.
Let's take a look at all the parts after they've been cleaned and prepped:
After my last beast of a project, it's nice to work on something with a few less parts
.
After the parts were cleaned, sanded, etc. I assembled as much as could for priming. (To Young Miniature's credit, there was very, very little preparation needed.) The parts that weren't glued in place were fixed into place using some blue-tak, so I could still spray prime them.
The priming was done using Games Workshop's Chaos Black spray primer, and then once dry, a dusting of their Corax White primer was sprayed around the bust at a 45 degree angle. Here's the bust all primed and ready for our next step...
Elements that could not be attached such as the sword, some of the helmet decorations, part of the turban, etc. Where primed using Grey Surface Primer from Vallejo.
After priming, the next step for our bust is to base coat all the elements using acrylic paints. This will serve as the foundation for all of our actual painting with oils. I've discussed this many times, and as always there are two key things to remember here:
And here we are after our acrylic base:
The other nice thing is that we can see if our colors are going to work or not without investing too much effort on our part... this makes our choices really easy to correct if we don't like them.
There is another step that I skipped above that I should mention. After I primed the bust using the black, but before I primed it with the white, I put the bust under my painting lamp and took some photos. The black primer is much, much more reflective under the light than the white (hence doing this before spraying the white on), and when held under the light, it gives a great reference for where the lights and shadows would go according to the lighting scheme I have in mind. Here is the reference photo taken from our main angle:
In the photo above, we can see quite clearly where most of our highlights and shadows would be placed. For example, in the version of the same photo below, I've circled exactly where the brightest and highest lights would be going in the face of the bust:
By using reference photos like this, we can keep our shadows and highlights consistent with how our figure is lit. This is especially helpful if you plan on doing something different from the box art, if you'd like to do some other sort of alternate lighting scheme, or you don't have any other types of references available.
That's it for this relatively short post. Our next post will cover painting the face.
In addition to this bust, I will also be simultaneously posting a SBS of a 54mm crusader knight I am doing as well, so if interested, be on the lookout!
Thanks for reading!
Regards,
-Phil
After finishing off the Islamic Warrior, I thought I'd do another middle eastern subject - this time it's a 200mm bust from Young Miniatures.
Let's take a look at all the parts after they've been cleaned and prepped:
After my last beast of a project, it's nice to work on something with a few less parts
.After the parts were cleaned, sanded, etc. I assembled as much as could for priming. (To Young Miniature's credit, there was very, very little preparation needed.) The parts that weren't glued in place were fixed into place using some blue-tak, so I could still spray prime them.
The priming was done using Games Workshop's Chaos Black spray primer, and then once dry, a dusting of their Corax White primer was sprayed around the bust at a 45 degree angle. Here's the bust all primed and ready for our next step...
Elements that could not be attached such as the sword, some of the helmet decorations, part of the turban, etc. Where primed using Grey Surface Primer from Vallejo.
After priming, the next step for our bust is to base coat all the elements using acrylic paints. This will serve as the foundation for all of our actual painting with oils. I've discussed this many times, and as always there are two key things to remember here:
- No need to be fussy at this step, as long as you get relatively even coverage of paint for each element you're good to go. If it's not too neat, that's fine - it's all going to be covered up anyway.
- The acrylic base coat colors should be a little darker than the oils you'll be using for each element, respectively.
And here we are after our acrylic base:
The other nice thing is that we can see if our colors are going to work or not without investing too much effort on our part... this makes our choices really easy to correct if we don't like them.
There is another step that I skipped above that I should mention. After I primed the bust using the black, but before I primed it with the white, I put the bust under my painting lamp and took some photos. The black primer is much, much more reflective under the light than the white (hence doing this before spraying the white on), and when held under the light, it gives a great reference for where the lights and shadows would go according to the lighting scheme I have in mind. Here is the reference photo taken from our main angle:
In the photo above, we can see quite clearly where most of our highlights and shadows would be placed. For example, in the version of the same photo below, I've circled exactly where the brightest and highest lights would be going in the face of the bust:
By using reference photos like this, we can keep our shadows and highlights consistent with how our figure is lit. This is especially helpful if you plan on doing something different from the box art, if you'd like to do some other sort of alternate lighting scheme, or you don't have any other types of references available.
That's it for this relatively short post. Our next post will cover painting the face.
In addition to this bust, I will also be simultaneously posting a SBS of a 54mm crusader knight I am doing as well, so if interested, be on the lookout!
Thanks for reading!
Regards,
-Phil
