Step-by-step…. painting Roy

So Roy is the
first miniature from Wave 2 which I decided to paint. Such a lovely sculpt and
a lot of fun while painting.
Here is a step-by-step for how I tried
to make Roy come to life:
1) Started off with a base of Green
Brown (MC879) and Green Ochre (MC914). Mixed in Khaki (MC988) for lights and English Uniform (MC921) for
shadows (and some Black for rough darklining):
Same stage as previous picture.
Nothing has to be perfect at this point. Just a general placement of light and
shadow:
2) Starting on the camo, I used
Reflective Green (MC890) and Bronze Green (MC897) for painting the green patches:
Painted them first with heavily
thinned paint putting many small streaks next to each other. Then went on to
less dilution to carefully intensify the patches with more, veeery thin lines:
3) Using the same technique for adding
brown patches: Flat Brown (MC984)  and Mahagony Brown (MC846):
4) Created a very thin mix of the
browns and greens used so far and added a tiny bit of black. Using this to
intensify shadows overall on the jacket:
5) Painted more lights with Buff (MC976) and
more shadows with dark brownish tones. Also started mixing in Yellow Ink and
glazed over light and mid-tone areas with a yellowish-brownish-light tone.
Doing this only in some areas in order to make the whole camo look more
interesting with a few warm-colored parts now. Using Blue Ink and previous dark
brown tones, I am doing the same for some of the shadow areas:
Same status as previous pic… To get
to this stage, I went back and forth between intensifying lights and shadows
with thinned down paints, glazing over mid-tones where I think it’s a good idea
and glazing in warm and cold tones to increase contrast a little:
6) With Flat Brown, Mahagoni Brown,
English Uniform and Buff I alread have everything on my palette that I need to
get the face started. I mixed the above colors together, so that I had a nice
reddish dark brown. I thinned this down quite a bit and put on two layers into
all shadow and mid-tone areas. Then I mixed a very light color with Buff and Flat
Brown and blocked in the lights on forehead, nose, cheekbones, etc.:
Different angle:
7) Well, after the last picture I kind
of got lost while painting and forgot to take more pictures of the face
painting process. 🙁 As you can see, some magic happened along the way. 😉 I
used Flat Brown, Mahagony Brown, Buff and White to paint the general lights and
shadows of the face. Then I used Yellow, Red and Blue Ink to add different
tones to the face. Usually I go back and forth a bit between building out lights
and shadows, glazing some areas with different colors and then going adding
mid-tones and lights, etc….:
Different angle:
8) Painted the beret with Red (MC947), Dark
Red, (MC946), Flat Brown (MC984) and Black. I also blocked in the dark-grey base color for his
hair. I love this moment when you paint a miniature and the face starts popping
out really nicely as you put on color in the areas around it. 🙂
9) To paint the insignia on the beret,
I painted the whole insignia black. Following a simple method for painting
golden insignia from Ruben Torregrosa, I chose Golden Brown (MC877) as a base color.
For lights I simply added white and for the shadows I used Flat Brown (MC984):
10) Next, I moved on to working on the
trousers. I started by intensifying the shadow areas with English Uniform. I
also started mixing Blue Ink in to get darker shadows in a cold tone. I then
started building out the lights using Green Ochre (MC914) mixed with white. Pure Green
Ochre to help balance out the mid-tones. I also painted a few semi-transparent
layers of red in some of the mid-tone and light areas. This did a few tricks at
the same time: It introduced yet another color tone to break monotony AND it
contrasts really nicely with the cold shadows that I painted previously:
11) Painted the anklets with Green
Grey (MC886), Iraqui Sand (MC819) and Dark Sand (MC847) (in that order working towards lighter areas).
Then used English Uniform (MC921) for shadows.
For the boots, I simply thinned down
black very heavily and before the thin mix can dry on the miniature, I swipe
the boot caps with my finger. Then I do a few more passes with the thin black
paint, but only on the sides and at the back. In the lighter front part of each
boot, I place a few irregular small dots in a light color (whatever is on the
palette at that point).
I have to admit that I absolutely hate
painting feet. No one ever looks at feet… well, maybe some people do, but
that is not the point. The point is that I just hate painting feet! 🙂
12) Painted the webbing incl. some of
the small bags, etc. with a base of Green Grey (MC886). Applied a controlled wash with
Russian Green (MC894) and then built up mid-tones and highlights with Green Grey and
another very light pastel green color (MC971):
13) Blocked out the pistol and Sten
gun with black and painted the leather strap of the sten with German Camo Black
Brown (MC822). Painted highlights with the same pastel green color that I used for the
webbing highlights (MC971), added in highlight dots and tiny scratches with Bone White.
Finally used Blue Ink and the brown base color in a mix and well diluted to
glaze in shadows where I wanted the strap to look darker:
14) Painted the Pistol and the Sten
Gun with Black and Bonewhite first. Starting from a dark grey – almost black
base – and building up highlight by mixing more and more Bonewhite into the
mix. Finally added Silver Metallic dots and lines in some places. Also used
Black with random Greens and Browns mixed in (whatever is on the palette) to do
darklining on the whole miniature:
15) For the base, I mixed together
some of the brown, green and yellow tones that I still had on my palette and
created a base where I blended all of them wet-in-wet. Next, I dry-brushed with
Bonewhite and a bit of Golden Brown. Once that was all dry, I used thinned-down
wood glue on parts of the base and sprinkled on my “homegrown”
grass-and-stuff mix (contains different sizes and colors of grass, flock and
old tobacco). After that, I also glued on a couple of grass tufts from
MiniNatur. Finally, I applied a few washes with very thinned down browns and
greens and finished it up by putting on some brown dry pigments, which I rubbed
into some parts of the base and over the boots:
And done:
If you have questions or comments,
fire away.

7 Replies to “Step-by-step…. painting Roy”

  1. Really nice and helpful tutorial (and a very good looking miniature too), thank you!

  2. F**king ace work!!!

  3. That looks great especially the face , but was not the Brit Paras trousers a brown colour – English Uniform IIRC?

    1. Thanks! Yes and no… 🙂 When I was looking for reference pictures, I came across various illustrations with slightly different browns. Some more in the direction of English Uniform, others more in the direction of a camo beige. I think I will use slightly different tones for painting a unit anyway as I like it when they all don't look exactly the same.

  4. Awesome paintjob.
    Really love the base, well done!


    Cheers
    Tariq

  5. Gorgeous work! I'd really appreciate a more detailed guide on how you do skin tones. Your aproach certainly makes for tremendous results.

    1. Thanks! I am currently painting the next miniature and I am trying to document the face painting process in more detail this time. The problem is that I don't really have a fixed approach for painting faces… With the one that I am currently painting, I started off completely different compared to Roy. :S It's not so much a matter of following a recipe. It's more a matter of introducing lots of different color tonalities (yellow, red, green, blue, etc.) to make the face look interesting. And, of course, a matter of placing the lights and shadows correctly. 😉

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