Little by little, the figures take shape. Still lots to do though. Next up? Shoulder belts and straps.
Another two or three fairly brief session in the painting chair yesterday afternoon and evening (Thursday), working primarily on adding some highlights to coats, breeches, the tips of toes, insteps, and the upper half of the right rear calves on all of the figures. Areas that would catch the light on a a typical sunny day in this particular pose. This part of the painting process is, for me at least, slow work as I take care not to get any errant splotches of paint where they should not be. It's better to minimize later touch-up work whenever possible.
At the same time, I must make sure to let enough of the darker undercoat show through, in this case a very dark Ral Partha blue, a midnight navy really, to give some depth to everything. It looks weird up close under the painting lights during the actual painting, but once everything is dry at arm's length, or so -- standard wargaming distance -- the end effect doesn't look too far off the mark.
The trick here, I have found, is using a rather inexact combination of damp-brushing, washes, and then pure pigment on high areas like shoulders, upper arms, and/or upper backs (where visible). All of which seems to yield nicer blending rather than cartoonish, stark color pops more worthy of fantasy or sci-fi figures. It's not really easy to explain, and is something I have sort of stumbled on, in at least a few senses, over the year. But if everything works right, you end up with a group of figures that each have a very slight, even subtle difference between them though their overall appearance is nevertheless still uniform.
And of course, a brush with a good point helps immeasurably in the application.
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Today is filled with errands of one kind, or another. These include a haircut for The Young Master, mowing the front and back (if it does not rain), weeding part of a flower bed, and talking to gutter installer this evening after dinner. Sadly, it will be evening before I can get back to these to wrap up basing highlights and move on to the shoulder belts. If I'm not too tired from the day. Summertime is not all fun and games!
-- Stokes
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