Thursday 26 March 2009

Alpine Miniatures - SS-Unterscharführer, SSPzAbt 101, 1944

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After a week of anticipation, here's the final box art with the revised heads after a visit to the shrink. :P
Ok, bad jokes aside, overall this was generally a very nice and straightforward figure to paint. I highly recommend it to the beginner whose main struggle would be the head and there will be two in the kit to practice on. The leather suit lends itself an aura of stylish class in contrast to most conventional combat uniforms. Its rendering too was not a complex issue as I soon got hold of how. The secret lies essentially in manipulating with both the satin and matt finishes.
A satin finish when compared to a matt one will have a deeper appearance. This attribute greatly enhances the illusion of depth when strategically applied within the deepest shadows. The satin finish was also extended to the mid-tones, creating the sheen of leather. This could be achieved by glazes of both oil paints and acrylic inks.
With the mid tones and shadows addressed, the highlights were rendered with glazes of matt acrylic black. Though most of my acrylic paints are tainted with Tamiya Flat Base I choose to incorporate with a little more than my usual dose into the black, producing a black chalky mixture. As a result, I do not lose any of the colour's properties and still get a tone light enough to contrast against the shadows.
Adding more dimension to the leather suit, effects of chafe and wear were applied along the edges of the suit. This lends itself more contrast to the suit, enhancing the crisp details of the sculpt.

I would have much preferred to have more insignia such as the runes and rank tabs of the inner tunic. Despite this, its simplicity does inspire the obvious potential to convert him to an U-boat crewman or even a solid basis for ambitious conversions.


.
Calvin



11 comments:

Andreas said...

Great calvin,
the new head looks much better.

just on question do you taint your paints in the bottles or do you add flat base on the palette?

regards from Germany

Andreas

Curt-EYE said...

Wow! What more can be said. Love the leather. You make it look so real!!!!

LBM said...

hi my friend
this is an other spot on figure
better with accurate head lol
love it
best
Laurent

Rudi Richardson said...

Looks much better with the new head! Who sculpted it (the head I mean)? The Master himself?

Rudi :-)

CALVIN TAN said...

Thanks again guys for the kind words. The whole figure now looks much better with the revision.

Andreas,
I taint the paints directly in the bottle.

Rudi,
the heads were sculpted by Mike Good himself but were slightly revised by Taesung to match the proportion of the body.

Calvin

Anonymous said...

Hello

Great leather.

Regards
Pedro

Anonymous said...

Oh I do like this one this guy could also be 12 th SS Hitlerjugend . OPr like Calvin Said U Boat crew ,even S boat ? .
Weldone sir for the painting on this your skill has made this Black figure come alive and seem more colourfull
Joel

Magpie said...

Calvin, once again your ability to paint a figure knows no bounds. The leather looks like... leather! Very hard to pull off convincingly on such a large area, truly impressive.

Regards,
Gary D.

Anonymous said...

Brilliant!!

So much better with the adjusted head.
...and yes, I agree with the other comments about the leather. Your painting is really amazing!!

Congratulations to you and Taesung for another amazing figure!

Anonymous said...

Fantastic work on the leather. The "new" head looks just perfect.

Great work Calvin (and Taesung!)

Unknown said...

Hi Calvin!

Marvellous maestro!

He reminds me of Obersturmfuhrer Helmut Wendorff, I am going to need a 'small army' or perhaps a company of these chaps to populate my planned projects.
Excellent stuff as always Calvin.

Cheers Phil.