US Tank Crew, 2nd Armoured Div, ETO 1944-45
Took some time over the last two days to finish up the painting double for the filming of Calvin Tan's Basic Guide to Figure Painting DVD. The face and uniform are painted with Vallejo Acrylics and Andrea Colour according to the methods depicted in the DVD.
In this variant, I did not hand paint the the Armoured Division shoulder patch, but instead used the ones made by Archer Transfers. I adopted what I now call a "low depth of field" approach to painting; meaning to only direct the viewer's focus toward a specific point and blurring out the rest. I did so in this particular piece to circumvent the main drawback of injection moulded figures by only raising the tonal contrast of the areas that registers the best definition of details. Regions lacking in definition were rendered with darker analogous colours and low tonal contrast to reduce their visibility. A good example would be the use of Vallejo SS Camouflage Black Brown and Andrea Slate Grey to create the mud stains on the bottom of the overalls. This harmonizes the figure with the ground work to enhance the atmospheric perspective of the entire composition.
