I’m having a weird couple of months; I think the issue is that I’ve got too many projects on the go and so I’m struggling to maintain enthusiasm for any of them individually. As a result I have struggled a little with this project and it’s taken longer than it normally would to complete.
The bust is 3d printed by Scale Collectables (available here: shop link), I have to say their service was fantastic and the bust was with me very quickly. It required almost zero cleanup and is a lovely piece of work, with some great textures and a good look overall. One thing I like about the figure is that he isn’t a chisel jawed hunk – as Chris Meddings has pointed out elsewhere there seems to be a trend for producing busts that look like hollywood stars rather than real people, particularly real people who have made it through the depression and are now fighting in the jungle. This chap wouldn’t look out of place in a photo of a bunch of British soldiers in 1943. On the other hand I get why they do it, apart from anything it is harder to paint more ‘normal’ looking people (as I was to learn on this project).
Assembly posed no problems and I was soon on to priming with Mr Surfacer Mahogany before spraying the face with some basic flesh tones.I then did some work on the eyes, I’ve tended to go with blue on previous busts because it is easier and more striking, in this case I decided to try brown because I thought it would help him look a little more ‘washed out’. I also went over the deepest creases and shadows with dark brown and dark flesh tones.
With that done I started working on the flesh tones, I tried to use more brown/tan tones than I normally would to try to give the sense that he had been in the sun a lot. The face has lots of creases but little structure in terms of cheekbones and jaw which made placing highlights and creating shadows more challenging than it has been on previous projects. Painting in the moustache and hair helped a little with the structure and then I moved into a long period of what I think of as ‘playing around’ – basically adding different shades of flesh in various places until I was reasonably happy, then adding a pink glaze in the cheeks and blue around the beard before repeating the process again until he was where I wanted him to be.
With the face at the 80% mark it was time to work on the rest of the body. I’d already based the uniform using a mix of various green/tan colours to produce something that worked for jungle green. Actually, I repainted it 3 or 4 times because I kept running out of my ‘mix’ before I’d fully covered him and couldn’t mix a decent match. I then added in highlights and shadows and did the same for the webbing. I also painted up the rifle and cap badge.
At this point I thought he was pretty much done, I posted some pictures on the planetfigure forum and several people pointed out that he was very clean for a chindit. They weren’t wrong, I’d been shying away from weathering as I didn’t really know how to approach it on a figure like this. In the end I went with oils on the basis that I could clean up anything I didn’t like. I used some burnt umber applied in dots around the areas where he would be likely to sweat, then blended it in with a stumpy brush. With that done I used some white spirit to clean it up and create some tide lines as one might get with sweat. I did the same with a pale dust colour on the webbing as though he’s sweated through his straps. One of the positives of this is that it brought out the texture of the fabric rather nicely.
After a lot of faffing and cleaning up I managed to get some decent photos of the finished piece. Overall I’m happy with the way it turned out, particularly given the challenges posed by the face. At the same time there are several others painting the same bust on the Planet Figure forum and I’m really looking forward to seeing what really talented figure painters make of it.
Warhammer Adjacent 