TUTORIAL : Painting 1/35 54mm faces heads etc

Following a few requests to do this, I am going to be doing a tutorial on painting 1/35 & 54mm faces.

Fistly I`ll start with any ideas or questions from the group
Secondly I do not profess to be an expert but just someone thats got the hang of it and Id like to share that with you guys

 

[AndyFettes]

heres a taster of faces that ive done in the past purely for reference

 

[AndyFettes]

One thing you must take into consideration when you commence painting faces is that you can only paint a face or figure in the syle that you are accustomed to
You wont be able to paint a figure like me like I cant paint a figure like Calvin Tan or Jamie Ortis or Doug Cohen or Bill Horan or Joe Hudson.
So the following are to be a guidline to how I paint a face.
if theres one piece of advice I can give you at such an early stage and that is practice practice pratice !!
look in your spares box for any old head or torso or even go and buy a head or Hornet heads and give it a go !

 

[AndyFettes]

Choose your weapons !!!

what I reccomend again at this early stage is to buy a set of dedicated flesh tones and a set of brushes
The brushes do not have to be a set of WN series 7 which will set you back an arm and a leg
the picture below is a set of "rounds" bought from Temu which ive foud are really good and as they are cheap if you ruin some then go back and buy another set.
also in the photo is a set of flesh tones from Scale 75 which I will be using for this tutorial but you can get my favorite which is the Vallejo set and also higher end sets like the ones below.

 

[moon puppy]

I got a set of the Andrea paints. They have been handy for me though it's rare I do paint figures.
Thanks for doing this Andy.

 

[AndyFettes]

I got a set of the Andrea paints. They have been handy for me though it's rare I do paint figures.
Thanks for doing this Andy.

I love Andrea paints too theyre really underated nowdays but I love them because they finish really matt especially on uniforms however if you have them to hand then use them.

you are welcome mate

 

[Impisi]

OHH! Cool! very nice, I'll follow along. I have the LifeColor set but I do lights and darks with oils.

 

[AndyFettes]

Giving you the heads up !

So as you can see i have a stash of heads in varying orders of paint progress but we will start with the Verlinden US tankers as they are bigger than the Hornet heads
as theres are very old heads they are cast in metal rather then the newer resin heads so its time to prime.

Prime suspect !

I use vallejo acrylic primers for my models because you can thin them and thats what we want for the faces ! Please note I am not a fan of this new fad of priming black then highlighting with white !!!
Why well firstly your adding layers that you dont need,
Secondly if you paint yellow then you have a base colour of white to bring the yellow out so why black to base a fleshtone?
So as you can see an thinned grey was applied to the first tanker and in the last photo a dark fleshtone mix was added to a different figure

lastly I will be using Arthur to show in better detail
He is a larger 120mm/1/16th Tamiya face so you can see him better

Why arthur ?
Well hes only got Arthur head

 

[Heavens Eagle]

I was talking to someone at Wonderfest a while back and they were suggesting to use a red primer for flesh tones. I guess it kind of makes sense as everyone IS red inside.

 

[AndyFettes]

I was talking to someone at Wonderfest a while back and they were suggesting to use a red primer for flesh tones. I guess it kind of makes sense as everyone IS red inside.

absolutely and what I forgot to mention is that you can mix the grey primer witha red or flesh tone to make it even better

 

[AndyFettes]

to continue,...
Pic 1 : both figures have now got their base colour but ive had to change up on the paints due to clogging issues with the scale 75 so back to my go to`s vallejo paints
2 3 4 base colour but now with a very fine shadow wash only around the edges and recesses eyes, under nose, and under chin, creases etc
5 6 now applied a very thin black wash to define the edges shadows under the nose and eyes
7 aurther just so you can see a tad better on a larger face but principle is the same

as you can see the face is being defined with hardly any paint applied but you must use a very fine pointed brush and if you have them a pair of optivisors with a 10 lens helps ypou get right in there

 

[AndyFettes]

out of interest is anyone doing their own faces alongside this tutorial effort ?

 

[moon puppy]

out of interest is anyone doing their own faces alongside this tutorial effort ?

I have something that could be done. Just not the time yet.

 

[Greg Kimsey]

.

out of interest is anyone doing their own faces alongside this tutorial effort ?

Not yet. But following along since I have some figures coming up!