Para's Progress 3

It has been nearly two years since the last update on the painting of the Airfix 1/32 scale (54 millimetre) Second World War British Paratrooper figure. I hinted back then that things were about to get rather complicated, and so it is. In terms of the uniform and the equipment, I don't think I could have chosen a more challenging subject. Talk about jumping in at the deep end!

Having done a little bit of Internet research, I soon discovered that one distinctive feature of the British paratrooper is the Denison Smock, which is worn over the standard British issue battle dress. From a model painter's point of view, the difficult bit is that the smock is in three colours -- two of which are a seemingly random camouflage pattern. The base colour of the smock is of light or mid-olive green and it is covered with broad brush strokes of reddish brown and dark green. Getting this to look convincing and avoid equipment and webbing would be the tricky bit.

The photos show my progress to date. I have shied away from completely ruining the figure with the camouflage pattern yet: that will be a later instalment! The larger areas of colour have been painted using a Pro Arte Acrylix No. 4 round brush, and I have started on the more detailed bits such as the scarf, helmet and puttees. There will be more fiddly painting to come, that's for sure. Painting sessions have been limited to about an hour at a time on weekends when time permits (and the motivation holds up).

I already knew about the errant patch of olive green on the figure's right hand, but having examined the photo closely, it looks as though I have also been careless when painting the helmet and have got some green on his nose! So some touching-up will be needed at the end. One of the challenges of this method is that a thin paint layer intensifies in colour once it has dried, and it can be difficult to see a spot of paint in the wrong place while it is still wet.

Paints used recently have been Liquitex Medium Viscosity Raw Umber and Winsor & Newton Galeria Green Gold for khaki; Galeria Yellow Ochre and Ultramarine for olive green; Galeria Olive Green and Yellow Ochre for the green helmet; and Daler-Rowney System 3 Buff Titanium and Galeria Green Gold for the puttees. Incidentally, Galeria Olive Green is much bluer than I expected -- most green olives that I have seen are a yellowish-green, or a brownish-green. (This probably explains why I struggled with the colour of the khaki trousers previously.)

Even at this stage, it is showing that the grisaille technique has been worth the effort, and has brought out the detail in a subtle way. Look at the sculpting of the Denison Smock, especially in the arms -- quite remarkable in something that was sold as an inexpensive toy soldier more than 40 years ago! So this is encouragement for me that I am not wasting my time, and to keep going...

Para's Progress 2

If it is not already obvious, then it should be apparent from these photographs that I am not an expert miniature figure painter! The hobby of miniature figure painting is an absorbing pastime in its own right, and there are a variety of resources available on the internet to provide inspiration and instruction. (Not to mention a number of excellent publications in print.) This however, is another update on my quest to paint an original Airfix 1/32 scale military figure.

Our journeyed figure starts this installment adorned with a grisaille of dry-brushed grey and white over a base coat of black. The next stage is to apply layers of thinned paint that are translucent enough not to cover up the shadow and highlight details. (Some people refer to this technique as Stain Painting; it is essentially the same process as was used to colour Victorian and Edwardian picture postcards.)

Coloured paint will start to bring life to the monochrome figure. General wisdom suggests that it is best to start with the inner layer -- often skin -- and work outwards. So the face and hands were the first things to tackle. I like to start with a pale pink layer (White and Red Ochre), and then glaze that with a pale orange-brown layer (White and Burnt Sienna), possibly finishing off with a glaze of pale milk coffee brown (White and Burnt Umber) to suggest time spent outside.

Using artists' tube paints, I take a small blob of white on the mixing palette and thin it as I see fit with my glazing medium (Galeria matt medium diluted 1:8 by volume with water). To this I add a minute amount of colour to tint it, mixed well, along with a little more glazing medium. I apply the paint sparingly, with a Pro Arte Acrylix size 2 round brush, preferring to wipe it over the surface with the sides of the bristles rather than the tips. If necessary, I will touch the brush to a piece of facial tissue first to ensure that it is not overloaded with paint.

That is the theory anyway. As you can see, I was guilty of (a) using Mixing White (transparent) rather than Titanium White (opaque), and (b) having the brush loaded with too much paint so that it flooded shadow detail and flowed where it was not wanted -- such as on the rifle and between the fingers. The transparent white resulted in poor coverage of the face and hands: I redid the Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber glazes using Titanium White once I had realised my mistake, but it is lacking the pale pink glaze. I am hoping that darker colours will sort out the unwanted white on the rifle later...

A simple method to test the covering power of the paint, is to use a piece of unwanted printed paper (black type on a white background), and brush over a word of print with the mix first. If the outline of letters can barely be seen, then the mix is too thick and needs to be thinned. Conversely, if the letters are still distinct after a layer of paint, then the mix is too thin and needs more paint. It should be possible to get a paint mix to cover adequately with one application, but achieving the right consistency is easier said than done. It is better to err on the side of too thin and apply at least two layers for even coverage.

The figure's lips were carefully painted with a glaze of dark purplish-pink (Titanium White, Red Ochre and a touch of Ultramarine) using a size 0 Acrylix round brush. I ducked out of doing anything fiddly with the eyes as they are just below the line of the helmet, and are mostly in shadow anyway... A couple of glazes of Burnt Umber with a dash of Titanium White helped suggest brown hair below the back of the helmet.

The battledress trousers are supposed to be British Army WW2 khaki, which is actually a woven blend of green and brown threads, and explains why sometimes it looks green, and sometimes brown. I struggled to mix a satisfactory colour, and tried four different thin layers, applied with an Acrylix size 4 round brush. The last glaze was a slightly thicker mix of Galeria Olive Green and Liquitex Raw Umber, which seemed closest to what I had in mind. But of course the earlier layers will influence it too. I am not going to lose sleep if the colour is not spot-on: it is the impression that I am after.

Things will only get more complicated from here on, as a later installment will reveal...

Para's Progress

A brief update on the painting of the Airfix 1/32 scale Second World War British paratrooper figure unearthed nearly four decades ago...

As mentioned in an earlier blog posting, the single primer coat of Ronseal Quick Drying Woodstain was left to dry for at least a week. It was very glossy. It was followed up with a single coat of matt black acrylic car paint from an aerosol can, and left to dry for a further week. (This was sprayed outside in a well-ventilated garage: not a good thing to do inside a house.) Despite being matt black, this also turned out glossy! This was the base coat, forming the shadows. So far, so good, none of the paint had shown signs of cracking or flaking off.

The next stage would be a more challenging test. Using a 1/4 inch flat Pro Arte Acrylix brush, Warm Grey from the Daler Rowney System 3 artists' acrylic paint range was dry-brushed from the head downwards over the entire figure. This formed the mid-tones. The following day, grey was replaced by Titanium White from the same range, and dry-brushing was repeated more lightly to produce the highlights. The figure should now be reminiscent of a black and white photograph.

As noted above, the glossy black shadow finish made adding the grey and white layers more difficult with less of a key to work with, but remarkably the black undercoat remained intact! So the use of quick-drying woodstain as a primer on this polythene-like plastic seems to have been a success (so far).

One downside of the dry-brushing technique is that it shows up any blemishes in the figure -- mould lines, flash, and moulding defects.

A well-travelled miniature figure

People of a certain age might recognise this fellow as being part of the range of Airfix 1/32 scale military miniature figures (model soldiers). They were sold in boxed sets of around two dozen pieces, although several poses were repeated. This example was from the British Paratroops set. Being moulded in a polythene-like plastic, they seemed practically indestructible, and would stand up to all sorts of abuse from the likes of small boys!

My subject was discovered by my mother in the late 1970s, in a flower bed of the family home in a suburb of Quebec City, Canada, of all places! I can only guess how it got there. (It wasn't me.) Given a scrub to get rid of any soil, it was almost as good as new. At some point it ended up in my toolbox and travelled with me to Montreal, and ended up in the U.K. in the early 1990s.

Coincidentally, I owned this very same set of figures -- I think I still have it packed away somewhere, in company with German Infantry and British Commandos. The Commandos set reminded me of youthful enthusiasm in the mid-1970s, when I attempted to paint a couple of these figures with Airfix Enamels. Alas, I soon discovered that this combination of paint and plastic did not mix, and the coat of brittle paint cracked and then flaked off to my dismay. Many years later, I learnt that the trick is to coat the figure with diluted white glue (PVA) first and let it dry before applying any paint...

More recently, I came across the idea of using quick-drying wood stain rather than dilute PVA; so having a couple of tins of the former, I though I would give it a try. I started by scraping off any flash I could find with a small, sharp craft knife. Then the figure was scrubbed with an old toothbrush in warm water and shower gel, and left 24 hours to dry. The second photo shows the paratrooper after a coat of Ronseal Satin Dark Oak quick-drying wood stain. Hoping to save a bit of time, I dipped the figure head-first into the stain up to his knees. However, after removing excess stain, I think it would have been quicker to apply the stain with a small brush! Hopefully, future blog posts will show whether this method is a success, and document progress using my glazing technique for miniature figures...