Time to get back on the brushes and roll up my sleeves.

Hello dear modelers,

I glad to write that I finally organised my schedule and fought my laziness to come back on the bench. We settled my little fmaily and I one year ago in BCN and we just found our normal family pace in this new city.

I'm quite disappointed because I missed the paiting seminar organised by FER and Nuts Planets, which seemed to be very fun and educating. Maybe next year.

So for my return in the paint smells, backhakes (don't know if that word exists) and long apneas to limit the brush shakes' world, I decided to give it a try again with acrylic, because looking at the work in fantasy section at Putty and Paint I told myslef I should definitively be able to improve my skills with this so promising easy to use and dead matt medium. It went all the contrary. I messed up everything (2 Alpine figures are good to go to the trashbin, even after several stripping). The figures end up very shiny, the layers were everything else than opaque. It looked like a talented 8 years old figure. At some point I really believed I forgot how to paint, or that I became blind since my last figure. Scary. I used Vallejo (which very easy to find here in Spain). Maybe it's linked to this brand. Maybve scale 75 is better. Don't know. I decided though to give it a last try. I know some very good painters use the Jo Sonja acrylci range. It was a pain to find them but I've ordered them and I'll give a try on the ICM french infantry 1916, because their bleu horizon uniforms will be the perfect surface to try them.

Not only I fucked up the bodies of 2 figures from Alpine with acrylics, but when I turned to enamels, I did started with the faces of such figures. And the first two faces I started went absolutely wrong. Could you imagine how desperated I was: I was expecting great results from acrylic, which turned awful. Back in my safe zone, I painted two monsters face. I thought it was the end of my figure painting hobby.

I decided based on those multiple failures to rool up my sleeves and try hard. It woeks as I'm happy with the face I just completed and the body of one Alpine Gi (the guy with the radio). I only have poor Iphone pictures for the moment I won't publish here, but I promess I'll publish soon pics of the Bad, the good, and the uglies. As a teaser, I'm talking of those 2 guys:

Stay tuned, this time I'm back for good !

Kinggeorges

alpine 1/35 GI finished

Hello,

The first one the pair is now finished. I had great fun with him, playing with all the textures such a leather boots, wood grain, entrenching tool, helmet cover etc.
I hope you like it.
Best,
Julien

Chris Taylor

Hi,
Another Bravo 6 excellent figure that gave me good time. He's the miniman of Charlie Sheen role in Platoon, Chris Taylor. I painted him in Humbrol, and applied some oil filters after the light and shade work. The history of the patch on his eye came from some nervous breakdown that could happen in figure painting. I was on the tenth try to correctly paint his right eye. At every try something was going badly wrong : the eyebrow, the pupil, the size of the eye etc..and each additional layer makes him look like more and more to Martin Feldman (the famous figurinist reference :)). Then, as it often happens to me, before implosing and hammer this tiny guy, and on the hedge of desperation (the whole figure was already painted), I tought that this poor grunt must have been  hit by some giant mosquito. And the magic sculpt patch just follows.

Ciao
Kinggeorges