SPA Modeler

What a great detail !

Figures and the paintwork is really a science of its own...

You pilot looks very very good, you must have used many different skin-shades in the face to make so it vivid ?

- Kari

KSaarni wrote:What a great detail !

Figures and the paintwork is really a science of its own...

You pilot looks very very good, you must have used many different skin-shades in the face to make so it vivid ?

- Kari

So good, John! The textures / colors and truly the flesh tones are amazingly spot on; what I appreciate is the way the colors are true to life as well as feeling true to the time period. Which colors specifically did you use?

Thank you! I didn't have any skin tones available so I mixed a small batch of flesh color using Tamiya White, Red, Red Brown, and Desert Yellow. I sprayed this with an airbrush onto the hands and face. I then put a couple drops of my flesh color into a plastic spoon and put a drop of Red Brown next to it. I connected the two drops in the spoons with the tip of the brush, and added a bit of iso alcohol creating a partial mix, which I then used as a variable palette for my shadow colors (around the eyes, under the chin, under the nose, the back of ears, along the jawbone, etc). I did the same with a drop of white to create a lighter highlight to accent the ridge of the nose, the cheekbones, etc. The iso alcohol helped diffuse the application color into the base color. It was an iterative process, adding too much shadow or highlight and dialing those back with the base flesh. You can't really see it but brown for the lips looked really zombie-ish so I changed that to a more pinkish hue. There is also a tiny strip of white on the teeth, a bit of white within the eyes, highlighted with a black spot for the pupils.

Very nice work on the pilot figure. And double kudos for being able to get such fine results with Tamiya and Gunze. Neither one is ideal or easy to work with for figures.

Thanks guys! Tamiya acrylics are probably not the best for brush painting but that's what I have. For me, the key to use thinner or retarder.

A couple of view of the head in better lighting.



And here's the painted head attached to the partially painted body.

That's really a fantastic figure!

Now the "big" question is... Will he have a cigarrette or a cigar in between his fingers!

- Kari

speedgraflex wrote:Incredible! Absolutely perfect. You brought him to life. What a pose, too! Everything fits. Now I noticed in an earlier workbench shot a reference photo... is that helping to define the coloration of the uniform as well?

Wow.

Just.

Really really really well done.

Thanks Bruce! I scrounged up some photos of Luftwaffe uniforms from the internet to serve as reference. There isn't much detail on the uniform, besides the cap, so I just needed some general guidelines of likely colors (intermediate blue for the pants and cap... brown or black for the jacket and boots... metallic flares.

KSaarni wrote:That's really a fantastic figure!

Now the "big" question is... Will he have a cigarrette or a cigar in between his fingers!

- Kari

Thanks Kari! Good question. I think I'm going with the cigarette. The resin set has a tiny stick supplied to represent a cigarette and I think it better represents the late war situation than a celebratory cigar.

Here's the completed chair. I used the Silhouette Portrait for the US Army stencil.




And the completed figure in the chair.