First face - Need feedback

[moparmadness]

Good afternoon. I’m just going to throw this out there. This is my first 1/16 face. I painted two 1/35 figures a while back but they were just blobs of flesh color paint slapped on haphazardly. I want to get serious with this. I painted this with Vallejo acrylics using their face painting guidelines. My question is, would I get more subtlety between tones if I went with oils? I included a zoomed in photo, and one zoomed out for reference.

[keavdog]

Very awesome Chad! There's so much goodness here with shades and what not. Steve will be the master here, but I'd say yes - a bit more blending would take that to a new level. I've worked with oils over enamels (ages ago) as oils give you so much time to work and can be blended like no other medium I have worked with. One of the most difficult things folks have issues with is eyes and yours look very good. And I feel you always under represent eyebrows and add hillites on the cheek bones and lighten the lips. Keep on painting! Better than most out of the gate.

[406 Silverado]

Man......your first attempt is so much better than what I could pull off here Chad. My hat goes off to you for tackling a figure. WOW. Steve Zuleski is going to be one of the experts among us to give some feedback on this. Far be it from me to try to give you any as I haven't tried this area of modeling as of yet. 

[moparmadness]

Apr 26, 2024 18:03:10 GMT -5 keavdog said:

Very awesome Chad! There's so much goodness here with shades and what not. Steve will be the master here, but I'd say yes - a bit more blending would take that to a new level. I've worked with oils over enamels (ages ago) as oils give you so much time to work and can be blended like no other medium I have worked with. One of the most difficult things folks have issues with is eyes and yours look very good. And I feel you always under represent eyebrows and add hillites on the cheek bones and lighten the lips. Keep on painting! Better than most out of the gate.

Thank you very much! Can I ask what brand of oil paint you use?

[moparmadness]

Apr 26, 2024 18:07:19 GMT -5 406 Silverado said:

Man......your first attempt is so much better than what I could pull off here Chad. My hat goes off to you for tackling a figure. WOW. Steve Zuleski is going to be one of the experts among us to give some feedback on this. Far be it from me to try to give you any as I haven't tried this area of modeling as of yet. 

Thank you brother. Like I said, I really want to get serious with my figures. Bring a little life to my armor & aircraft.

[keavdog]

Windsor & Newton thinned with turpenoid.   

[keavdog]

Apr 26, 2024 18:48:24 GMT -5 moparmadness said:

Apr 26, 2024 18:07:19 GMT -5 406 Silverado said:

Man......your first attempt is so much better than what I could pull off here Chad. My hat goes off to you for tackling a figure. WOW. Steve Zuleski is going to be one of the experts among us to give some feedback on this. Far be it from me to try to give you any as I haven't tried this area of modeling as of yet. 

Thank you brother. Like I said, I really want to get serious with my figures. Bring a little life to my armor & aircraft.

That's exactly why I started.  Then I dove into the 120mm stuff for a while.  Haven't done a big scale figure in years but it was a steep but gratifying learning curve.

[moparmadness]

Apr 26, 2024 18:50:47 GMT -5 keavdog said:

Windsor & Newton thinned with turpenoid.   

I appreciate it

[stuartv]

You can bend with Vallejo acrylics, you will need to use Vallejo Glaze Medium



This is the same medium that is in the Vallejo paint, so by adding this it make the paint more opaque. The more medium you add the more the colour below shows through. You then add layers coat by coat, the great thing with acrylic is each coat dries in about 10 minutes so you can do a lot in one session.

There are lots of tutorials online. This is very good for fantasy figures but equally applies to any figure www.youtube.com/watch?v=A13JfFJxtIg

Happy to help you through this as I think acrylics are easier to use than oils.

[stuartv]

Forgot to say you made a great start as that face doesn't need a lot more work, just some additional blending/glazing.

[moparmadness]

Apr 27, 2024 4:40:44 GMT -5 stuartv said:

You can bend with Vallejo acrylics, you will need to use Vallejo Glaze Medium



This is the same medium that is in the Vallejo paint, so by adding this it make the paint more opaque. The more medium you add the more the colour below shows through. You then add layers coat by coat, the great thing with acrylic is each coat dries in about 10 minutes so you can do a lot in one session.

There are lots of tutorials online. This is very good for fantasy figures but equally applies to any figure www.youtube.com/watch?v=A13JfFJxtIg

Happy to help you through this as I think acrylics are easier to use than oils.

Makes sense. I’ve never seen this, I’ll pick up a bottle for my next try. Another concern I had was the fact that I felt like I had to apply more paint to get more blending which ultimately gives the skin a rough uneven texture, almost chunky. Thanks!

[stuartv]

The key is thin coats, don't try and get too much coverage in one go. Build the layers the first few will be very see through, then as you add more the colour becomes more solid. It is really tempting to try get get the colour straight away but if you accept that acrylic is best in thin layers then you don't get that build up of too much paint.

[stuartv]

If you find the paint dries too quickly then add a drop or two of this retarder, meant for airbrushing Vallejo paints but works for brushing also.

[moparmadness]

Yeah, I use that for my airbrush and it works wonders!

[406 Silverado]

Apr 27, 2024 8:49:07 GMT -5 stuartv said:

The key is thin coats, don't try and get too much coverage in one go. Build the layers the first few will be very see through, then as you add more the colour becomes more solid. It is really tempting to try get get the colour straight away but if you accept that acrylic is best in thin layers then you don't get that build up of too much paint.

  You're giving some good help there Stuart and I'm taking notes along the way myself. 

+1 Karma to you for helping out bro. 

[Steve Zuleski]

Hey, Mo.

Since you're using acrylics I'm not going to be much help, but if you do decide to switch over to oils you can use this link and most of mark's articles to give you a good understanding of how the oils work.

www.missing-lynx.com/articles/figures/mbheads/mbheads.htm

This link has all of mark's articles, click and go.

www.missing-lynx.com/articles/articles_figures.htm

Hope this helps, Mo!

[moparmadness]

Apr 27, 2024 11:53:00 GMT -5 Steve Zuleski said:

Hey, Mo.

Since you're using acrylics I'm not going to be much help, but if you do decide to switch over to oils you can use this link and most of mark's articles to give you a good understanding of how the oils work.

www.missing-lynx.com/articles/figures/mbheads/mbheads.htm

This link has all of mark's articles, click and go.

www.missing-lynx.com/articles/articles_figures.htm

Hope this helps, Mo!

Thank you brother!

[stuartv]

In my Flak 37 crew thread it took me at least painting 4 faces before I felt I understood how to paint with acrylics. So if you have spare heads practice with them, Vallejo airbrush thinner can be used to remove old paint.

[keavdog]

I picked up some DML 1/35 figure sets cheap way back and ruined a lot of faces lol but lots of practice. I thought I remember seeing a set of 120mm heads somewhere. Now that would be a good application of 3d printers!

[moparmadness]

Thanks guys. I didn’t think about it, but now that you mention it, I do have resin heads in the spare parts box that I’ll probably never use. Looks like I have have my test mules.

[buddho]

Hi Chad
Very impressive first face painting, here.
I use acrylics as well, and normally use Citadel and Vallejo brands. I echo others on here about thin coats. I also dry brush highlights on the eyelid edges, nose and lips. I use Vallejo panzer grey for the stubble shadows. It took quite a few washes to get it where I liked it. The more subtle the details, the more realistic the face will look. You are on the right track.

Cropped photo of a Dragon 1/16 scale soldier
I painted with acrylics:

[moparmadness]

Apr 27, 2024 21:18:30 GMT -5 buddho said:

Hi Chad
Very impressive first face painting, here.
I use acrylics as well, and normally use Citadel and Vallejo brands. I echo others on here about thin coats. I also dry brush highlights on the eyelid edges, nose and lips. I use Vallejo panzer grey for the stubble shadows. It took quite a few washes to get it where I liked it. The more subtle the details, the more realistic the face will look. You are on the right track.

Cropped photo of a Dragon 1/16 scale soldier
I painted with acrylics:

I love it! Do you allow the acrylics time to completely dry between each light coat? Or does the subtle blending happen best when the layers are wet?

[stuartv]

If you use glaze medium then you will need to let each coat dry. You can use wet blending but you’ll need the retarder to slow the drying down to do that. My preference is the glazing method, but experiment and see works best for you?

[buddho]

Apr 28, 2024 16:03:20 GMT -5 moparmadness said:

Apr 27, 2024 21:18:30 GMT -5 buddho said:

Hi Chad
Very impressive first face painting, here.
I use acrylics as well, and normally use Citadel and Vallejo brands. I echo others on here about thin coats. I also dry brush highlights on the eyelid edges, nose and lips. I use Vallejo panzer grey for the stubble shadows. It took quite a few washes to get it where I liked it. The more subtle the details, the more realistic the face will look. You are on the right track.

Cropped photo of a Dragon 1/16 scale soldier
I painted with acrylics:

I love it! Do you allow the acrylics time to completely dry between each light coat? Or does the subtle blending happen best when the layers are wet?

Thank you. I do both methods. The skin I allowed to dry longer, but the stubble was practically wet on wet. I forgot to add that I have used Citadel ink washes as well, to add shadows , or to tone the skin color down.