Bravo 6 French para : un mauvais pressentiment III

Hi folks,

Back on the blog. I've just finished my french para and I must say I'm very pleased with the result.
My first try on the ventral bag was just a catastroph : shiny as hell, thick coat of paint etc.. So I decided to strip off the paint on it with nail polish remover (thank you darling). Long and painful process. You better off carefully chose your paint before starting applying the brush !
the shiny bag

After some striping

So I repainted the famous bag. Ang guess what : the second try was as shiny (not glossy) as the first try :(
All that work (and smell, because nail polish remover do smell a lot !) for nuts !
So I resigned myself to use the matt varnish. I don't like matt varnish. You usually use it when you failed your paint. Matt varnish do ternish and melt the different tones. In this particlar case it wasn't so bad as it create a convincing blending effect.

At that point I started to work on both hands. In his left hand he holds a strap, certainly the one that hang to the central line within the plane. Whereas he holds his helmet in the other hand. Bravo 6 did not include the straps, so I did them with putty and white metal stripes. I also started the paint of his musette and carbin.

I first assemb his arms. I was reluctant to add the musette and carbine as it would cover what I estimate as the best painting part of the figure :l upper part of the legs. That's why I took pictures before final stage : I could still remind this part through pictures. I notice one fact when I added the arms, specially the right one : it was much clearer than the camo on the body. I guess it's a natural tendacy for painters. The more the surface gets small the more when want details on it. The final result on this kind of camo is that the overall tones  got darker. I think it's very important to regularky check the overall coherence of your figure. So again I had to take the beige I used as a base and cover many part of the torso to get it clearer. It partly worked.

Finally I reworked the face. I thought the contrast were too high, so I smoothed the different part of the face. I might have let the face as is, but hey, at some point you need to stop changing your mind ! 

I finaly convinced myself to finish Mister Reno.

Navy Seals completed

Hello dear readers,

I finally foudnt he time to compte this little vignette. I had quite a lot of fun in doing the building and the groundwork. I learn a lot there, like don't use enamel diluted with white spirit on polyester, or that replicating natural foliage is everything but simple.

I didn't want to represent deep and tick jungle, but still some nice vegetation. I used only natural stuff, from moss to spices etc. One advise : go on getty or similar images bank and try to replicate what's existing, or it will look odd. Another advice, vary the tones of green you will use by mixing different tones, but always use a similar tone in each of those. It will give unity to the whole.

The earth has been reproduce with white glue and naturak earth, painted in enamel, and finally covered sporadically with different pigment. For having seen such groundwork in Vietnam by myslef, they are everything but uniform and monochrome.

Here are few pics, I will try to take better one this week end.

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