120mm Verlinden 5th Hussar Sapper, pt2

Well, I put a hit counter on this blog a couple of days ago and to my pleasant surprise, I'm not the only one who looks at this page. So thank you for stopping by and I hope you're finding this blog useful/entertaining.

This past week I've been working on the breeches/overalls. My first attempt did not work out so hot - they looked more like blue jeans. So I overpainted the breeches with a thin coat of Electric Blue and limited my pallet to Ultramarines Blue, Electric Blue and Skull White

Starting with Ultramarines Blue in the deepest shadows I gently blended it out in thin layers. Following this I mixed Ultramarines and Electric Blue making a subtle tonal change and blended this in. I like to work with the paint fairly thinned. I call it wet brushing, where I thin the paint down to a milky consistancy then dab off the access on a cloth. I'll often use the index finger of my opposite hand too. What I don't want is a wash but the paint still flows so you're still in control of where it goes. In this way I keep adding Electric Blue until I have a gradual change. Often during this process I have to work back and forth from shadow to light and light to shadow until I get the look I want. For the final highlights I added a touch of Skull White to Electric Blue and blended in the same way.

The leather reinforcements and boots are both black but I didn't want them to look the same so the boots are highlighted with greys while the inserts are highlighted with browns. The leather reinforcements where given a solid coat of Chaos Black. I then mixed Graveyard Earth into the Chaos Black creating a subtle brown-black. This was thinned and worked onto the raised creases blending down to pure black. Next I added a little more Graveyard Earth and blended this in staying higher on the creases. For the highest highlights I mixed Bronzed Flesh and Chaos Black which makes a sort of browny-grey. Finally I went back over the deepest creases with Chaos Black.

For the boots I started out with a light grey (I don't know the actual name beacuse this is from the old old Citadel range and I've lost the label). This made the boots look too shiney so I washed the entire area with Chaos Black. This toned down the highlights. From there I started out with my brown-black mix but added the light grey to lighten further. I think the boots still need some work but I'm waiting until I base the figure to work in some of the groundwork colours.

For the photos below I just placed the torso on breaking the plume off in the process. You can kind of see the taper look of the legs that I mentioned in my last post. It makes the figure look top-heavy.

GB