WIP Young Miniatures Arabian Knight bust

[phil_h]

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:

• 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

 

[Nap]

Hi Phil

You are a busy benchbloke , a fine subject and another good start , explaining the basic but important beginnings

Liking the choice of green for the cape

Following this and the Pegaso Figure https://www.planetfigure.com/threads/pegaso-54mm-crusader-knight.694689/

Look forward to seeing more on this

Have fun @ the bench

Nap

 

[Briggsy]

A good looking bust Phil, it will be interesting watching him come to life.

Cheers Simon

 

[MalcC]

I'm following this one too.

Malc

 

[Nap]

Hi Phil

Any updates on this nice bust

Looking forward to seeing more when you can

Have fun at the bench

Nap

 

[phil_h]

Hi Nap!

Yep - I'm trying to get a big update out on painting the face within the next couple of days!

Oh by the way, is there any way we can get the ordered/unordered list formatting button back?

Thanks,
-Phil

 

[NigelR]

Excellent info there Phil. I had another master figure painter show me recently how to use the penumbra cast by a modelling lamp to get this reference for shading/highlighting. This is the kind of thing that is very helpful for improvers like me.

 

[Canterbury Coxswain]

Hi Phil, just seen this and it's another 'project' that will help consolidate what I have been told and shown in the last few years, by fellow FMMG members and Planeteers. Thanks.
It's looks a fine start.
Kim

P.S. - FMMG = Faversham Military Modelling Group

 

[phil_h]

Hello everybody!

First off, thanks everybody for the interest and kind words ! (And a big thank you to Nap for button the list button back in!!) I hope at the very least you'll find something helpful and informative...

In today's post we're going to attempt to paint our bust's face. I find if I'm happy with how the face turns out, the rest of the bust will follow suit. Hopefully we'll do it justice...

Let's get started!

The Face Pt. 1

Let's talk about skin tones... As this is a bust we can get a little more sophisticated compared to something like the face on a 54mm figure, so instead of using some of the usual "go-to" skin tone palettes that I usually use, I decided to take a look at the palettes used in the book, "Color Mixing Recipes For Portraits" by William F. Powell. First off, if you don't own it, buy it now... you can thank me later . It's just about one of the most comprehensive books on skin tone mixes and the theory behind them for portrait painting - this also includes hair, eyes, and other facial details. It's primarily used by fine artists, but it's a treasure trove of information about painting human skin and a ton of it can directly translate to painting figures. I like that it has several palettes broken down by skin tone types and a very straight ahead method for creating mid-tones, warm/cool shadows, highlights, graying tones, etc. All the different kind of tones we'd need in our face painting.

Of course, you can always use these palettes as they are literally from the book, but I prefer to think of them all as jumping off points, or as a way to help get a decent background/point of reference for coming up with your own skin tone palettes.

For this bust, I went with the "Olive Tones" palette. Here are the paints used:


From left to right we have:

• French Burnt Umber from Williamsburg
• Burnt Sienna from Holbein
• Chromium Oxide Green from Holbein
• French Yellow Ochre Deep from Williamsburg
• Cadmium Red Light from Michael Harding
• Cadmium Red Vermillion from Williamsburg
• Titanium White from Old Holland
• Perylene Crimson from Williamsburg (Not pictured)

A few notes on a few of the paints above:

• I love Burnt Umber... I feel it's one of the most versatile colors you can have on the palette. It can help shadow anything from skin tones to fabrics of almost any color, you can use it for black lining, it can help desaturate just about any color, it can easily go warmer/cooler from simple mixing... the list goes on. One of my favorite colors by far. Also, for an oil color, it is relatively quick drying and dries matte. However, as dark as it is, I always wished it was slightly darker. I also wished it was just a tad bit more opaque too. Well, it turns out I've had exactly that paint laying around in a container in my closet! French Burnt Umber is just that - a Burnt Umber that is darker and a little bit more opaque. It's also a little warmer than regular Burnt Umber too. Being that I want this guy's skin tones to be on the darker, warmer side of things, I decided to swap this in for the regular Burnt Umber that was called for.
• In a similar vein, and for the same reasons above, I decided to swap out the regular Yellow Ochre with French Yellow Ochre Deep. This color is a little bit more closer to Raw Sienna than regular Yellow Ochre and is also slightly more transparent (This is nice, because we can make sure our skin tone doesn't get too yellow).
• Perylene Crimson - as with the two colors above, is a darker version of Alizarin Crimson. It's also a bit warmer. Like Alizarin Crimson though, it would be considered to transparent from an opacity point of view.

So, the pattern here is that a bunch of colors were swapped out for darker, warmer variants. It's little things like that that can help make a difference before we even get our paint on the model, and that also make our skin tone palette uniquely ours. Let's take a look at our palette and mixes:


In the picture above, the palette is broken down into two sections ( I always do this). At the top, we can see two rows of all our colors laid out straight from the tubes. Below, in a slightly messier fashion and roughly broken into two columns, we can see the mixes that were used to paint our skin. Let's focus on the mixes.

In the first column, at the top, we have what would be called the master skin tone mix from which most of our highlights, shadows, etc. Will be mixed from. It is a medium, warmish brown tone. One thing to mention is that this is not a mid-tone. The mid-tone will be mixed using this as a base. Our master tone is a mix of:

• Majority of the French Yellow Ochre Deep
• About half as much Burnt Sienna
• About half as much Chromium Green Oxide
• A tad of the Cadmium Red Light - I would add enough of this to the point where its just on the verge of going from red to reddish-brown (I know that's a very scientific and rigorous way of explaining it, but you'll know it when you see it. )

With our master recipe mixed, we can mix our mid-tone. This is going to consist of the master recipe with a small amount of Titanium White mixed into it. This will give us a nice light brown tone. This would be the second color down in the first column.

Directly below that would be our first shadow tone which is a mix of the master recipe plus a small amount of our French Burnt Umber. And below that is a deeper shadow mix that is a 50/50 mix (more or less) of the French Burnt Umber and Perylene Crimson.

At the top of the second column we have a mix of Titanium White and a very small amount of Cadmium Red Vermillion. This will be mixed with our mid-tone as appropriate to get the highlights we need. The three mixes in the second column below that are the for the beard and hair. They are:

• Pure Lamp Black (Holbein)
• A 50/50 mix of the Lamp Black and Brownish Grey 1 (Schmincke Mussini)
• Pure Brownish Grey 1

Between the two columns, we have a mid-high tone, a tone used for the bags under the eyes and lips, a high-highlight color, and some other utility tones. (well get to those as they're used).


With all that out of the way, we can finally get onto the painting! As with many of the prior SBS, we'll start by covering the entire face with the mid-tone, and then wipe off all the excess paint with a dry brush. I should mention, that unless otherwise stated, all work is done while the paint is still wet, using a "wet-in-wet" method. Here is the mid-tone applied:



(Clicking on the photos will give you a much larger version).
Here we can get a much better idea of what our mid-tone looks like. For this step, we just want to make sure we have smooth and even coverage, and that we've wiped off any excess. For those new to oils, wiping off excess paint with a dry brush is an easy way to make sure we don't have any visible brush strokes in our work too!

Next we'll block in our shadows. We'll use the reference photo from the prior post to help guide us where we should put them. In addition, keep in mind, based on our light source, the face's left side is going to be in more shadow than than the right. Let's go ahead and block them in:


Once we get things blocked in where we like them, we can then go ahead and blend them into our mid-tone:


With that done, we can now put in our first highlights:


(I forgot to take a photo where they were blocked in prior to blending). The one thing we can start to see now is how we're tying our shadows/highlights back to the reference photo that we're using. We can start to see how the right side of the face is much lighter than the left. While we now have our main shadows and highlights in, we unfortunately, obliterated our mid-tones . Let's go ahead and put them back in where they belong, and clean up/tweak a few things along the way:


Next we'll increase the contrast by adding a second set of more targeted highlights. Let's block them in:


We can see, that we are only going to add these to primarily the right side of the face, where the majority of the light is according to our reference photo. In addition, I blended in a more reddish tone into the sides and bottom of the nose. Let's blend in those highlights:


Unfortunately it seems that you can now only upload 10 photos, and we've reached our limit. We'll continue on directly in the next post!

Thanks for reading,
Phil

 

[Briggsy]

Great work Phil, I really need to stop reading your posts as you're making me miss oils. I don't really want to spend another ten years relearning what I have forgotten!

Cheers Simon

 

[phil_h]

Hello Everybody,

Continuing on...

The Face Pt. 2

We ended our first post on the face with the addition of some extra highlights. In order to make the face look more dramatic and aggressive, we're also going to add some deeper shadows too - let's go ahead and block those in:


Just as we concentrated the second highlights on the right side of the face, we're concentrating our deeper shadows in the left side of the face. This is really going to help with the drama and lighting. Let's blend them in:


With this step finished, we now have all of our main shadows/highlights sketched in and placed. We're now going to let everything dry, and proceed with some of the detail areas.

(Later the next morning)

OK, lots to talk about. I spent pretty much the whole of the next day working on the facial details. Unfortunately, there was a lot of back and forth between various facial elements and adjusting highlights and shadows. Eventually we got to this:


Let's talk about what we've worked on:

• Yet more cleaning up of shadows and highlights. Also, a 3rd final highlight was added in a small triangular region just below the right eye.
• The lips where done. This consisted of adding some purple that was mixed via a little bit of Cobalt Blue and Perylene Crimson into the mid-tone skin color. After that was mixed in, I also added a just a tad more of the Perylene Crimson. This mixture was then applied to the lower lip. Then a touch of Titanium White was added to the mixture and a subtle highlight was added to the right side of the lower lip. To complete the lower lip, some fine lines of a mix of Titanium White and Perylene crimson were added to give it some texture. The upper lip was painted using the mid-tone with a little bit of Perylene Crimson mixed into it.
• The eye bags and area under and around the eyes. Wrinkles and lines were painted in using a mix of the mid-tone with some French Burnt Umber mixed into it. Stronger lines were painted in using just Pure French Umber. After all the lines/wrinkles were in, I waited for them to dry. Once dry, I glazed over the entire area using the same purple tone I used above for the lips.
• Some areas around the nose were tightened up, cleaned up, and tweaked some.
• A little bit of the forehead was cleaned up as well. It looks a little darker than it should be in the photos - but that's because he's wearing a helmet that will cover most of those areas and cast a shadow.
• The beard and eyebrows were painted. This was done via:
  • A basecoat of pure Lamp Black
  • A general highlight around all the areas using a mix of Lamp Black and Brownish Grey 1
  • Further specific highlights on the right side of the face consisting of pure Brownish Grey 1 and keeping us inline with our reference photo for our lighting scheme.
• The whites of the eyes where painted in as well, but we'll talk more about them in a moment.

With all the details done, now is the time I like to focus on the eyes. We can see in the photo above that the whites are in, but, directly before that, I noticed something very upsetting:


It seems that I either had a crappy casting or the sculptor forgot to sculpt the left and right areas of the left eyeball. There are literally two huge gaps on each side of the eyeball - these can be seen inside the black squares. I'm not sure what happened, but most of the eyeball seems to be missing . Eyes are a pain in the ass to paint as it is, and this is not helping... sigh. I suppose if I caught it during the prep phase, I could've filled them in, but we're in way too deep now... Also, as great as this bust is, the eye socket sculpting in general is probably not one of its finer moments.

Bravely carrying on, we're going to paint some eyes and they are going to be looking to the figure's left. (Which coincidently would mean we'd have to paint them right over the gap in his left eye). So, using some freehand and the subtle placement of the rest of the eye elements, we'll do the best we can...

As mentioned in the photo above the last, the whites were painted in. The whites were painted using a mix of Blueish Grey 1 (Schmincke Mussini) and Titanium White. Once they were dry, we focus next on the iris. When painting the iris, it's far more important than to get it placed properly than the color. So let's place them in - we're going to go for a dark brown/amber eye color, so we're going to use pure Mars Yellow. Here is this initial step:

(Please click to see the larger version of the eye stuff - they were very hard to capture)

With the base irises placed, I then using pure French Umber, outlined the outsides of each iris (I don't have a photo of this)

Next, I added a shade color to the top half of each iris. This was done by mixing a little bit of the French Umber into the Mars Yellow. You can also see the outlines I just mentioned:


For this step, it's no big deal if the shading isn't blended in that smoothly. Most of it will be covered by the pupil, and these are so small that's it's very, very difficult to tell anyway with the naked eye. After the shadows were in, I added the pupils - this was done using pure Lamp Black:


After the pupils were in, I added black eyeliner to the top and bottom eyelids. Unfortunately, this was really difficult to get a photo of:


To finish off the eyes (and face), I added a light reflex of pure Titanium White in the top, right part of each eye:


Here are the eyes blown up to 400%


With the blow up photo, you can also better see some of the details painted in around the eyes too.

That does it for the face! I think next we'll tackle the shirt he's wearing.

Thanks for reading!!

Regards,
-Phil