I haven’t written for a long time, sorry. There was supposed to be a beautiful tutorial about the figures, but there won’t be. Although the figures are, somehow they even came out. Why, what, and how about that in a moment.
I’m not a figure artist, no question 🙂 I create armored models and dioramas for them, which works well for me. Figures were promised; unfortunately, the only thing that matched the theme was the lack of competition. Only Scibor Miniatures sells (as far as I know) a Polish crew for FT 17 from 1919-20. It is an officer and soldier in a rather distinctive pose, a well-known photo from (presumably) a training ground. Full of optimism that it is resin, I ordered it without hesitation.
I fell for the first time. Casting quality.
In view of the lack of finesse and the oddly cast and spaced face parts, my idea at first was to paint the figures with a brush, although I wanted to show airbrush painting. That was the idea behind the video. Because this is how I painted my second-ever set of heads in 1:35, and it came out even tolerably 🙂 You can see it on our old Facebook post.
https://www.facebook.com/modellers.world/videos/332169277303418
However, this film, created on a face kit from Vallejo, is already 5 years old, and that’s how old my copies of these paints were. It turned out that there were already dried pivots of pigment and not paint. Nonetheless, I tried to paint with the remaining liquid. Still, it no longer had quite the properties of Vallejo’s velvet paint. However, the attempt was made, so the figures had to be washed off, and the whole process of filling and priming with Surfacer Black 1500 was done from scratch. So I decided to paint the figures with an airbrush, especially since I found in a drawer an interesting Mr. Hobby lacquer set I once bought, designed for painting the body of figures.
This set is a really basic, basically for mixing any shades yourself, a collection of basic colors. I mean really basic.
Which I also frankly do not recommend. The result is so-so; they are glossy paints and do not paint well because of it. It would be best if you also forgot about any brush undertones because any touch of the brush with caustic paint immediately dissolves and makes a mess on the figure. So it came out as such – I achieved a not-very romantic, cold skin tone in winter conditions. Having neither the strength nor the time, I leave it that way. Alternatively, I’ll paint it up a bit with washes.
I also painted the uniforms similarly, with Tamiya paints – black for the leather jackets and some khaki, lightened with yellow for the pants. I gently reinforced the contours and edges of the coat with a light gray from Ammo. The wash: Modellers World: Oil Wash Earthy Grime saved the whole job. The fine grime covered up some of the miserable looks of these figures. I didn’t clean anything; the wash is very delicate, so in the cleaner areas went one coat (including the faces), the pants at the bottom, and jackets at the back, a few coats each applied randomly. I don’t know if they will make it to the final diorama; we’ll see. Probably, they will.
I do not do the video, however – it wastes my time and yours to watch. I also know I do not want to present such a poor painting to the world because they will grill me. 🙂 I took shots on a very large macro where it looks much worse than in the photos because you can see every shortcoming. I promise to apply myself to painting more figures for the next project. I have already purchased some really cosseting resin figures for various future projects. I’m not and am unlikely to ever be a strict figure modeler, so I prefer to continue honing my airbrush painting technique. Still, it would help if you had figures that have finesse enough to catch the shadows exactly where they need to be. And not where they don’t need to be 😉
So, instead of a video for the world, I prefer to share this short description with you on the blog. I’m moving on with FT dirt; the next episode will be the final one.
