Wednesday 20 February 2013

And now for something completely different...

A 120mm Twelfth Century Samurai by Pegaso...!

I have had this model on my pile of unpainted toy soldiers for a very long time. I am pretty sure I bought him way back in 2002/3 so 10 years ago... A model this large can be quite a daunting task and I have already started painting him once and given up. But now he is firmly on my mind, I am painting him as a present for my dad.

When I first started painting him I was pretty much copying the cover photo, and failing miserable. He is wearing bright pink/orange and I really struggled with the colour. Once I stripped him I decided to try a different approach. Toosh has painted a few large scale Samurai many moons ago and has an Osprey book (or 2) detailing the arms and armour of Samurai from the 10th to the 16th Century. This model fits into that date range nicely and I flicked through the book in eager anticipation. Lo and behold, I found a pic which had obviously been used by the cover artist for Pegaso - orange and purple, fitting the exact time frame of the kit. But I had already decided to avoid that colour scheme so I started looking at other Samurai on the page.

There were some nice dark green colour schemes, but the artwork which really stood out for me was on the opposing page - an interesting mustard and duck-egg with orange silk braidwork and a really bold black and white silk cover to the do-maru (breastplate). The period is a little out, but I think I will get away with it as there are a LOT of similarities between the two.

I have spent most of my time so far studying the patterns and painting the head of the model. Getting this right is very important to me. Here are a couple of photos with his head shot against the reference page showing how I want the whole piece to look.

Talk about a challenge - lots of big firsts here... first historical piece, first large scale full figure, first samurai... Wish me luck!

Tuesday 5 February 2013

On the workbench - Figone Orc Bust

Whats next on the table?

An orc bust by French company Figone - he has been thoroughly enjoyable to paint so far, and I have some ideas for the rest of him to try and get some different textures on there. Thick, worn leather apron and a white pin striped shirt.

Not very Orc-like? It'll fit a lot more when I have attached his brass and steel goggles. I wanted to take the sci-fi orc and make him a little more steampunky. I have attached these two pics... the first one is much sharper (from my actual camera) but the second one is definitely a better colour match - its all a lot richer.


Friday 1 February 2013

Poppy Come Lately

Deadlines... such a double edged sword! In all my years of painting (and life for that matter) I can't seem to get past the whole 'finish at the last minute' thing! The same thing happened with this most recent model - I left it very late to start and got my montage image sorted and sent in right on the stroke of midnight... what a rush! (but not necessarily in a good way)

However, I am really pleased with what I managed to achieve in the timeframe that I gave myself, and I feel that I have painted the best face on a 30mm figure that I've done. Taking the photos on the other hand, has been a bit of a bind - I always seem to have issues with reds on my camera. I either need to work out how to fix the issue or stop painting red ;^)

If any of you CoolMiniOrNot'ers want to pop over and give me a vote, head over here and do your duty :o)

psssst: she's also on Putty & Paint... take your pic!

Anyhow, on to the photos: