November’s Work in Progress

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Sail away – working on female skinton

Here’s a look at what a number of us have been up to this past month.  We’ve also got a new team member to
introduce you to: Joe Joseph May!

JASON ‘REDRUM’ MARTIN

This month has seen all sorts of things happening on my desk and at the laptop! I’m in the process of interviewing the master that is Alfonso Giraldes aka Banshee, I’m finalising some collaborative articles with some truly big names in the hobby too.

Last month saw the release of my own Patreon page and so I have been busy creating and photographing a scenic base build, the step by step process is written and the PDF design and layout is currently being done by my good friend and fellow figure painter Steve Cornish!

Painting wise I have been tackling my first ever, proper female skintone on the “sail away” bust soon to be released by BrokenToad. This will act as a female skintone colour guide also for the Patreon.

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wolf warrior – gift to benny sa (nutsplanet)

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scratch built scenery

Lastly when I painted the Berserk bust from Nuts Planet it was with the intention of entering it at Euromilitaire 2016 and subsequently presenting it to Benny Sa as a gift. My photos of this bust were diabolical so I never published it on Putty and Paint, a turn of fate meant Benny was unable to take all his luggage back with him and my bust was left with Fernando Ruiz, who took a dozen pictures or so for me and here is one of them. I’m really happy with how it turned out!

Once “sailing away” is finished I think I will be focusing on an historical piece as I seem to have caught that particular bust. See you next time! Jay!!

JOE JOSEPH MAY

Hi there! My name is Joe, I’m a university student from West Sussex, UK. I have been modelling on and off for around ten years with my first ever projects starting out as Tamiya and Airfix kits.

I have recently moved onto figure painting ranging from 54mm up to 75mm in scale.  Like most, I am always looking to develop and improve my skills in this fantastic hobby.

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highlander bust – speed painting exercise

I have always found blogs, websites and publications excellent sources for inspiration, and I hope that my contributions to figurementors.com can help to spread the passion for our excellent hobby and all it has to offer.

MATTY PEARCE

So this month hasn’t been the most productive month for me hobby wise, but that’s ok as it’s for the best reason possible, the safe arrival of my son Reuben. Some have said my best miniature project yet ! So I’m happy! 

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baby Reuben

I have managed to get a little bit of hobby done here and there and made a start on my first tutorial for figurementors. The tutorial will be based on creating simple but realistic
water effects so keep an eye out for that over the coming
month.

You may remember last month that I was working on 2 projects along side each other, well the historical bust has had to take a back seat for this month so I can get the hobbit piece finished and I have to say it’s been a lot of fun.

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a water effects exercise

This month I have detailed the piece a lot more and finished the actual figure , the base still needs a lot of work but as you can see the water has already started. Hopefully by next month’s update I will be able to say I’ve finished this piece and have something new to show you all.

DAVID ‘BAILEY’ POWELL 

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SCAHMS in LA – a presentation

I haven’t been able to do much painting in the past month, but I did spend some time on painting-related stuff.  I’m part of a local figure painting club in LA, SCAHMS, and gave a presentation at this month’s meeting.

The topic was how to do freehand designs on figures.  I think it was pretty well received and I’ll hopefully turn it into a tutorial article on this site in the next month or two (so keep an eye out for it!).

As far as painting goes, I just began work on this 70mm Celt from Art Girona. The work is still in the very very early stages, but I think this is a good point to talk about contrast.

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close up of face skintone

One thing I had trouble understanding when I was just starting out in this hobby was how much of the light-dark contrast on a mini is from painting and how much is just from actual lighting on the figure? I’d see stuff online and it was hard for me to know what was painted and what may have been created by a strong overhead light.

When I started attending shows and competitions,  I could view the pieces in person and see what the artists were really doing. That was extremely helpful to see and understand as I tried to improve my painting.

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work so far

What’s that have to do with this piece? Well, the face has been shaded and highlighted, but the body just has a simple rough base coat on it. So the contrast on the body is what the actual light does, but the contrast on the face is what was done with the paint.

The paint and the lighting do work together, but the more you do with paint, the more the figure will stand out and the more interesting it will look to the viewer.