A Little Christmas Dry-brushing. . .

A brightened and cropped photograph of the Eureka figures that have given me such painting fits the last year or so. Inching ever closer toward completion now though. But do remind me to stick to Minden, Fife & Drum, and Crann Tara miniatures next time!

The dry-brushing softened the previously painted on 'full strength' highlights very nicely I think while also helping to pick out the manes, tails, and some of the musculature on the horses. In general, I am pleased. Not perfect by any stretch, but we're getting there.

After two separate sessions in the painting chair yesterday (Saturday), the dry-brushing on the 16 nominally "black" horses is just about finished. I have used a bottle of cheap craft paint -- Delta Ceramcoat 'Charcoal' -- to highlight the black areas of my figures -- typically painted with a thinned coat or two of Anita's All Purpose Acrylic Craft Paint -- for a coupla three years or so now, and it occurred to me that dry-brushing the charcoal gray onto horses already undercoated black might yield pleasing results. Of course, the fine steeds show up in the photograph as very dark grays, but we need to apply a bit of artistic license when it comes to our brushwork, right?

Now, some painters apply a dry-brush of dark blue to bring out the highlights on black horses and produce highly convincing results. I tried something similar years ago on 30 Spencer Smith/Holger Eriksson charging dragoons, and was somewhat less than bowled over by my particular results. That could have been the figures, the shade of paint used, my own less experienced painter's hand, or possibly some combination of the three. In any case, I think the current squadron and regimental staff should look reasonably good once finished. See what you think.

Speaking of dry-brushing, I did this with an old, cheap hogs hair brush of some kind, featuring roughly 1/4" squared bristles. But it go me thinking. Have any of you ever tried the more modern dry-brushing tools based on ladies' eye-shadow applicators?

And just in case anyone out there is wondering "How in the hell does he know what those are called??!!" Well, let's just say that yours truly came of age as a young rocker (bassist, guitarist, and singer) during the glam rock revival of the early to mid-1980s and leave it at that. But don't you dare tell my students! ;-)

Kind Christmas Week Regards,

Stokes

Comments

Fitz-Badger said…

Nice work!

I tried some cheap makeup brushes for drybrushing, but they seem too soft for the job. I really only use them for a primer drybrush (after painting a black or gray gesso for primer, I then drybrush with white gesso). For other drybrushing, I want smaller brushes and more control.

9:30 PM

It's Early Days Yet. . .

M aking some early progress with Batch A of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment over the last several days/evenings. Nothing terribly exciting just yet, but the basic black, brown, and flesh areas are done as are the green bases, and gray undercoat. The latter two areas needed some careful retouching early in the week. Next up, the neck stocks. I might just do these in red for the enlisted men although some of my source material suggest they were black, but I always look for an excuse to shake things up a bit. Any errant splotches of red (or black) can be covered with another application of light gray before I move onto the next step. "Giddy up!" as one Cosmo Kramer might have said. -- Stokes

A Little More Brushwork. . .

A little more brushwork on the first batch of (my version of) the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment yesterday (Saturday). Taking a different tack this time and addressing many of the details first before the white coats and other larger areas of uniform. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that I've painted the (dark) red stocks of the enlisted men. Always a difficult and frustrating item to paint, it made sense to paint from the inside out as it were and get that particular detail out of the way first rather than try to paint it in later after much other painting has been accomplished. Trying to reduce the need for later retouching of other items on the figures you understand. Hopefully, I will be able to get back to these later today after a second trip back to the Apple Store for help with a couple of new iPad issues and, following the return home, some revision of Google Slides for tomorrow's meetings with my students. -- Stokes P.S. And according t...

And We're Off!!!

Arrrgh! Gotta go back into camera settings on my iPhone to bring all of the frame into focus. Blast! Painting is underway on the 60 or so Minden Austrians, which are slated to become my version of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment of AWI renown. More or less indistinguishable from Austrians of the era really, right down to the red facings and turnbacks, but the eventual flags (already in my files) will set them apart. I went ahead and based-coated all of them over a couple of days lthe last week of August, using a mix of light gray and white acrylic gesso, before next applying my usual basic alkyd oil flesh tone to the faces and hands. In a day or two, I'll hit that with Army Painter Flesh Wash to tone things down a bit and bring some definition to the faces and hands. As usual, the plan is to focus on about 20 figures at a time, splitting the regiment roughly into thirds along with the color party and regimental staff. Depending on ...

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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