Young Miniatures - British Paratrooper, Northwest Europe, 1944

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Here's a belated update showing the close-up on painting of the details and accessories like the Bren gun ammo pouch, zipper and buckles. Additional highlighting was done on the smock and webbing with chafe effects given to the helmet strap.

Cheers,

Calvin

Young Miniatures - British Paratrooper, Northwest Europe, 1944

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Still on a roll with the painting streak, I've been once again offered another irresistible assignment to paint the box art for Young Miniature's upcoming offering - a WW2 British paratrooper sculpted by Young himself. I am sure that many will agree, that Young deserves kudos for taking up the courageous gamble to abstain the trial and tested commercial viability of WW2 Germans subjects for a WW2 Allied offering instead.

In retrospect, it seems that Young does have a penchant for WW2 airborne troops -with his past releases of Fallschirmjagers, US 82nd and 101st Airborne. It would seem that this upcoming release will complete the full collection of Allied airborne troops operating on D+1. Perhaps he could be so kind as to consider also packaging this British Paratrooper together with his previously released 101st and 82nd Airborne busts as a complete special D-Day anniversary collectors set.

The kit contains 9 parts - including a bonus British airborne badge. It definitely looks the part of a commemorative tribute to the British airborne in WW2 when pieced together as a complete display. Another distinguishing aspect of this portraiture would be Young's recent shift in the depiction of an archetypical "good looking" face to that of slight caricature and character personality. As far as stereotypes goes, one could readily assume that this bloke is a familiar face in one of those English bars chugging down a pint of ale after a rugby match.

Regrettably, I was unable to spare the additional effort to provide a blow by blow pictorial account of the painting process - especially on the camouflage for the Denison smock. Fast forward here is a week's intermittent effort. Jo Sonja paints were used exclusively up to this point and hopefully I'll be able provide some color notes here at my earliest possible free time.

Cheers,

Calvin

Young Miniatures - Unterfeldwebel, Kampfgeschwader 54, 1940

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As a final wrap up to this painting assignment, here are some of my personal shots of the completed bust.

 

 
Cheers,

Calvin

Rendering the Kapok Vest

This installment recounts the wet-on-wet technique employed for a localized rendering of the kapok vest towards the build-up of chroma for the highlights and shadows.

To prevent the greying of the highlights from the dark shadow colors. Only the parts in shadow were moistened with the water and retarder solution and dabbed with small amounts of Storm Blue.

The Storm Blue was blended  downwards. However, sensing a lack of warmth, a small amount of Cadmium Orange was dabbed on and blended upwards to create a transitional gradient between the yellow base color and blue/green shadow.

The same process was repeated using Naples Yellow for the highlights.

Realizing later that the incline of the flared collar and the final attachment of the head would result in a darker appearance, Light Yellow was applied over to darken the highlight.

In summary, this pretty much concludes the techniques applied in the painting of this masterful sculpt by Mike Good. On accounts of the high quality casting, the ease of assembly and beautiful design,  I must say that it has been a fun filled experience tackling this highly refreshing WW2 German subject matter. I do hope that the pick-up for this piece will be encouraging for Young Miniatures to warrant another collaboration with Mike Good in the near future.

Cheers,

Calvin