Sheila Figs - Finished Pit Fiend

I painted for about 6 hours yesterday and finished two figures! I really got hung up on this Pit Fiend - he was a devil (pun intended) to do!

Larger figures are a lot more complicated than small ones. For one thing, there's a bunch of pieces involved. This is the Pit Fiend just how he came out of the box: no head, wings or tail attached. The fire ball is also a separate piece:

I decided to paint him assembled. With some figs, you have to paint them in sections - sometimes you can't paint an area if it's completely glued together first, but I was lucky with this guy. Here he is glued together:

All the flash and rough casting lines have been filed down. Because of the amount of gluing, I needed to fill in the gaps with putty. We use modelling putty - it's really smelly. I push it into the crevices then smooth it out with my fingers, then sand it when it dries. Here's the back of the head, the wing joins and the tail seam:
My least favourite part: primering. I always use white primer so that I can see all the details property before I start putting paint on.

The first paint is applied! Pit Fiends are primarily red, but we already have two really red ones that L did. I started with a burgundy wash base and bright yellow for the wing membranes, teeth/eyes and fireball.
A shot of the back. There are a couple of layers of orange on over top of the yellow here.

Progress: several more layers of red and orange added to the burgundy base, and more layers of successively darker orange on the wings, toning to red.
And in a long session, he's finished! Top brush coats of dark orange, ivory on the teeth and claws. The base was painted, then I glued a black hobby sand to it.
Some extra ivory was added to the creases on the wings to make them stand out more. It's also been fully black-lines to emphasize the muscles and to add definition and depth.
A close up of the arms and the fireball. You can also see his eyes - I gave him slit pupils.
A close-up of the head. He's a nasty piece of business.
Grrr!

Comments - Floor Polish

James has a question!

Ok, could I make a photo request? It's kind of creepy. Could you take a shot of the floor polish so I buy the right stuff? I'd like to pick some up and try it. I have at least 30 figs awaiting paint. I haven't picked up a brush in over 5 years, but you're giving me the bug again.

Here you go, James:
This is the stuff we use. We both have little bottles (shown) that we put a bit into so that it doesn't dry up on us (dollar store is a good place for mini bottles), and I use a palette (also dollar store) for mixing up my paint, water and floor polish. You use up a lot less paint this way, so it's a good method for preserving some of those really old paints.

I used to love some of the TSR lines (I think they were TSR anyway) - the humans had an almost cartoon feel. I hate overt realism in figs. It's much more fun to paint and look at caricatures.

We have some of the old TSR ones (mostly L's as he's been painting a lot longer than me).

I always use Testors metallics and then wash them with inks. I used to keep brass, gold, silver and an even brighter one (aluminum?) on hand (and often blend brass over a base coat of gold - really makes it pop). Their white is pretty much indispensable. There's something about the light pigments (white & yellow especially) that just doesn't work with water-based paint. They dry up in no time and tend to be 'grainy.'

We use their white for our primer - we both primer by hand (meaning with a brush, as opposed to spray primer, which tends to sink into the fig and obscure the details). Primering by hand is also great for really noticing the details in your fig.

I've never found a yellow I really like, either in Testors, Partha Paints, or Citadel/Games Workshop.

I have some paints that are ~15 years old myself - these giant glass bottles of citadel paints. I loved them. There was a hobby store that went tits up and was selling them for $.25 each, so I bought one of everything they had. Super smooth but not thick, a slight satin sheen to some of the hues, but still very nice (a spray coat of matte varnish takes care of that). I think I have two of those left.

My art teacher says you can just buy acrylic paints in the art supply stores - all acrylics are basically the same thing: liquid plastic with pigment. Only the consistency varies. But I'd never use one of those giant tubes up.

When our friend's gaming store closed down, we bought tons of the old Reaper Miniatures paints so we wouldn't ever run out.

I see you also have posts about fashion... they frighten me.

It's okay, you don't have to look at those. Just click on the "Sheila Figs" or "L Figs" link at the bottom of the post and you'll only have to look at the painting posts.

Green Cleric - Completed

I started this guy a couple of weeks ago. Here he is with just the white primer and the base skin tone and green tabard & shield. The primer gives the paint something to stick to - if you just paint on the metal, the paint will wear off. This is my least favourite stage. I hate blocking all the colours in - it takes a long time, it's finicky (although easy to fix up later), and I usually don't have a clear idea of what I want the figure to look like.

Here he is with some black, leather and dark steel based in. I start with the "base colour" then gradually lighten, either by brushing or by building up colour with the floor polish method (applying thin layers of successively lighter paint). I usually don't do a darker shade than the base colour - it muddies the look of it to overly wash. I find you don't need to do too much to give a colour depth other than "lift" the colour.

I'm using an alligator clip at this stage to hang onto him. If you use your fingers, you'll wear the paint off from handling the figure. Ha, there's my sample fleur-de-lis on the cardboard - I was showing L how to paint one. He's got some musketeers coming up next.

And here is the green cleric all done! I painted for about 6 hours yesterday - I just wanted to finish him.

I gave him a kilt, and I'm quite happy with his very blonde hair (usually blonde ends up looking too yellow) - it started out as some leftover wash from the pages of his book. Back view:
The shield was glued on last because I had to paint all the stuff under it (his arm, the leather straps and a couple of pouches). The final touch: matte finish spray to protect him and he's ready for battle.

Mummy

Another entry in the Egytian theme:This was one of the first pieces I did using floor polish. Yes, floor polish. We add it to the paint (plus a bit of water) on a palette before applying it to the fig. It thins the paint down but suspends the colour evenly, whereas with just water, the pigment tends to settle which results in an uneven wash.

Base colour is laid on, then thin layers of paint are applied (making each successive layer lighter) to "lift" the colour and give depth. You can see this on the bandages and on his loincloth. As opposed to drybrushing (where most of the paint is wiped off the brush before you drag the brush across a high texture (see L's Elf for an example), the floor polish method gives you a bit more control with the paint as well.

Painting

Usually, when people first see our figs, it's when they are all done - if they are interested, we show them our painting area in the den, where there are always a few pieces in progress.
L and I have been painting together since we first moved in together (about 12.5 years ago) - we started out on a little rickety desk that barely held all of our paints, brushes and other stuff. When we painted at the same time, it got pretty crowded.

A couple of years ago, we bought a big U-shaped desk for the computer & printer; we use one arm of the U to set up all of our painting equipment. It's a nice relaxing hobby - we put on some music and just sit and work on our figs. The cats visit us (they always want to sit on us, but their fur gets in the paint and they tend to move around & jostle us). Today, we listened to Leonard Cohen and The Cure. The hours pass pleasantly.These are our paints. They are a mix of Testors model paints, Partha Paints, Citadel Colour (Games Workshop) and Reaper Miniatures. Some of them are pretty old - we keep them from drying up by just using the colour from the lids and adding water when needed to thin them out a bit. There aren't many places in town to buy paints anymore, so we try to conserve what we've got.
The tubs of what looks like sand are our modelling materials: dirt, sand, grass, pebbles. All different shades and sizes. These are great when a piece doesn't have a very interesting base, or when working on a larger grouping on a big base. Equipment
From the top: Zap-A-Gap (best glue out there for glueing figs together), a pen (for scale), 2-ended blade for poking putty into tricky spots, Xacto knife for carving moulding flash off, 2 needle files (flat, triangle and round) for sanding down rough spots prior to primering, primer brush (the red one), and my brushes from biggest to smallest: a 2/0, two 3/0s, two 4/0s, a 5/0 and a 10/0 (that one's for doing eyes and fine detail). The putty is for filling in gaps when glueing a larger piece together. A close-up of my brushes (L has his own set):

New Figure

This is what figures look like when we buy them:This will be a Pit Fiend with a ball of fire in his right hand. That's his head and the ball of fire on a piece of metal on right. My next job here is to sand all the pieces down, glue him all together, fill any cracks with putty and then primer him. He's going to be a big job, but will look great when he's done. The big pieces like this tend to make people ooh and ah, but the small figs are actually harder to do.

I'll post the Pit Fiend's progress as I work on him.