Watching a stream of end of year posts with people showing all the cool stuff they’ve made and then the obligatory conversations about new years resolutions has set me thinking about the last year and what has changed in my ‘model sphere’ (thanks Plastic Model Mojo) and where I would like things to go in the future. 2022 has been an odd year, I’ve had lots going on in my family, caught covid and work has been a bit more demanding so I’ve sacrificed blogging time and focused on modelling instead. Looking back that’s a shame because I think writing this is a really good way to focus my mind, review progress and explore new ideas. Writing that down I’ve realised that as the year came to an end I had a bit of a downer on the hobby, I was starting to feel as though I haven’t been improving or making progress. I think this is partly because I was unwell in December and so reflected my general sense of ennui but it’s possible that by not writing I missed out what I’d actually achieved. Well, there you go, blog proving it’s value already. I’ll try to write more this year.
Anyway, for the last couple of years I’ve set myself a modelling goal, to improve at a particular skill and in 2022 I decided I wanted to get better at figure painting. I’m realistic, I wasn’t hoping to become Calvin Tan or produce competition winning work, I just wanted to be able to paint figures that I wasn’t ashamed to place alongside a model. I didn’t have any particular approach I wanted to take to this and so I began by watching tutorials and seeing what I could find online that would help. In fact the first really useful thing to happen was that I listened to an episode of the Sprue Cutters Union Podcast with David Parker in which he talked about his book ‘Crew School’ which is focused on making figures to go on armour models. My memory is a little hazy but I seem to recall the team on the podcast talking about simplicity, that actually it isn’t necessary to have a perfect scale replica of a human face (in fact that can clash with the model itself) but rather to aim for something a little more simple that created the impression of a person and helped tell the story of the vehicle. That interested me and, along with a recommendation from a friend, persuaded me to pick up Crew School.
It’s a good book. The techniques are explained clearly and are pretty simple, at least in theory. I think the advantage of a book over a youtube tutorial is that you can have the whole technique laid out in front of you and you can keep looking back to it without breaking your stride as you work. It’s a bit like a cook book in that regard and I’m reassuring myself that, like a cook book, modelling books should be well thumbed and a bit mucky. Mine are anyway. Crew school was a game changer and helped me to produce figures that, for the first time, I was happy with. I wouldn’t say they were good necessarily, but they were good enough for me and I wasn’t ashamed to show them to others. Encouraged by early experiments I produced a small diorama of a model T ford parked up in Palestine with three soldiers around it. Intended to represent a lost supply vehicle of the East Riding Yeomanry in 1917 I’m pretty pleased with it and think it’s a good representation of where I was in May of 2022 in terms of figure painting technique. Simple, but not bad.
During that time I also attended a couple of meetings of the White Rose Military Modelling Club in Leeds. They are a great group and if you’re in the area well worth visiting. At the first meeting I attended a couple of things happen that I think would prove to be important. Firstly I bought a 1/12th scale bust of an Aussie which I painted up over the next few weeks using techniques from Crew School and a couple of YouTube tutorials. Secondly I met Lester Plaskitt, he’s a fantastic modeller and it was a real privilege to see some of his work ‘in the flesh’. He is also a lovely bloke who is very generous with his time and knowledge. One of the handy things about our meeting was that it gave me a chance to look at the figures he puts on his vehicles. For all the time I’d spent looking at books and the internet, there was something really useful about seeing an example of what I was trying to achieve ‘in the flesh.’ It also allowed me to compare his figures to the other work on display; many of the WRMMC are very skilled figure painters and it was interesting to see how his style and techniques differed from the way they approached stand alone figures. It’s interesting isn’t it – modelling is a hobby and we do it for fun, there are no rules, it’s my stuff and I can do whatever I want with it and yet seeing a real expert do something in a particular way felt strangely like permission to approach figure painting in different way from most of the tutorials etc that I’d been looking at.
I enjoyed painting my Anzac, not least because of the challenge of painting eyes which I hadn’t bothered with on other figures. It also encouraged me to pick up some stand alone figures including one from Tommy’s War. A friend had made some bits and pieces for me as a favour and I wanted to give him something in return and thought maybe a WW1 soldier from his former regiment would be an appropriate gift. I went for a figure of a soldier throwing a grenade which I painted up and mounted on a plinth. Looking at it now I think the ‘crew school’ approach is clear. The clothing and so on works well but the face is lacking detail for a stand alone figure. This and a couple of other projects motivated me to try to up my game a little.
Around this time I picked up a copy of ‘Modelling and Painting WW1 Figures’ by Mike Butler which is an outstanding book and provided some serious inspiration. Mike is an incredible painter and his approach his book lays out some useful techniques and steps that helped me to re-think what I was doing. Based on this I started to add more detail to my figures, picking out facial features, adding eyes and experimenting with stippling to give texture to clothing. The first figure I tried this on was a Troop54 figure of a Crimean War Coldstream Guard that I converted to a Grenadier and I thought it worked well as a way to add a little more interest to his clothing. Around the same time I was working on some Copper State Models armoured car crew and a Tommy’s War figure of a highlander. These were really the first time I was able to apply everything I’ve learned to a good quality figure and I must say I was pleased with the result. I wouldn’t claim any great level of proficiency but at the moment I can look at them and feel satisfied, which really should be enough for any modeller.
What did I learn from this? Looking back I genuinely disliked painting figures at the beginning of the year, I put it off and only really bothered out of a sense that I had to. Now I pretty much always have a figure at some stage of completion and this week I’ve finished 3 back to back, really enjoying each one. I think it’s fair to say I learned to love figure painting and will undoubtedly be looking to broaden my repertoire this year (probably into sci-fi and fantasy figures) as well as learning new skills and techniques. I think I also learned something about the importance of having an overall goal. I’ve not devoted all my time to this but having decided that I wanted to get better all of my efforts felt like they were working towards something, even if they didn’t succeed. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I learned this: thin the paint more than you think you need to. No figure was ever ruined by the paint being too thin.
Warhammer Adjacent 