The issue of painting leather is something I've wanted to address for some time so this figure really forces the issue because there is no hiding place here - you deal with the leather or it all goes horribly wrong. The great thing is that the figure is incredible, with a level of detail on the flying helmet in particular which looks incredibly realistic. Hopefully the image below does this some justice.
I started with some Vallejo grey primer because I wanted to do some pre-shading, but actually in future I'll probably use black primer. This is surely the point of experimenting though because without taking risks and trying out alternatives you learn nothing. Certainly the grey primer has been fine and I haven't felt that it has held back the build, but with hindsight black primer might have added depth.
The pre-shading was done with Tamiya Flat Black, applied with the Harder and Steenbeck Infinity at low pressure in order to get some control.
On the body this was often done by holding the piece upside down, so getting both lowlights and highlights automatically from the direction of the paint. This was followed by XF-64 Red Brown as a background to the hand painted colours. This is still visible on the ear pieces for the helmet in the image at the top of the page and helped to give both 'grip' for the later colours and depth of coverage, so making the hand-painting process easier.
The real advantage with Vallejo colours when using them for leather is that they have a slight semi-gloss finish which is ideal for the task. This brings us to the issue of painting a realistic leather finish and this has involved a lot of thinking on my part.
The basic point is that while the principles of painting cloth apply to leather, such as lowlights and highlights, leather is a material in its own right and it has various properties which cloth doesn't have so it needs to be dealt with on its merits.
1. Leather surfaces can range from a very high shine gloss finish at one end of the spectrum to quite a rough matt finish at the other. Sometimes these finishes can be juxtaposed, so you might have a leather surface such as a seat where the gloss imparted by the tanning process is further rubbed to an even higher shine through usage, but eventually that usage breaks through the gloss surface to expose the matt, rough finish beneath. Alternatively, you might have matt leather (a medieval jerkin for instance?) for which the higher, raised areas might become polished and smooth but the leather around this might remain matt and rough.
2. Because of the tanning process leather comes in multiple colours and finishes, but it also results in a surface which can range from being quite one-dimensional in colour (especially low quality leather) at one extreme to very rich and varied, with real depth of different colours, at the other extreme.
3. This means that as a painter you're dealing with several different requirements, including juggling highlights and lowlights along with representations of wear and damage in a way which doesn't apply to cloth. This difference between highlights and wear was a light-bulb moment for me in that sometimes they could be represented with the same effect, but sometimes they might require different paints and approaches. For instance, the colours used to represent wear, such as light browns, buff colours, etc, might be different to those used for highlights, such as orange or yellows, or these latter colours could be used to represent wear, especially if using a matt finish for these in contrast to a gloss base colour. Further, colours could be mixed with the base colour, or they could be used on their own to provide contrast. Again the potential for different options is vast.
In addition, I've seen many different solutions to painting leather in different sources. Sometimes people simply paint gloss brown and leave it at that. Alternatively I've seen pink colours used, either on their own or mixed with the base colour, to provide highlights or wear. Another approach is to use different shades of brown, or a combination of all of these approaches.
I really wanted to experiment with the possibilities presented by leather as a subject and it became clear that the key is multiple layers of semi-opaque glazes with different colours, going back and forth between lowlights and highlights in order to blend in the different effects.
I started with lowlights by adding a drop of 822 German Black Brown (and what a useful colour this is) to the Flat Brown, followed by another drop before leaving it to dry. The next day I felt this wasn't dark enough so used some German Black Brown on its own for really deep lowlights.
I then used 985 Hull Red to paint the holster, the top of which is just visible, followed again by lowlights on this area with German Black Brown.
After this I used heavily thinned 876 Brown Sand, 845 Sunny Skin Tone, 911 Light Orange and 874 Tan Earth, sometimes on their own, sometimes mixed with Flat Brown, to give highlights and wear. Sometimes this seemed quite stark but I knew these effects would often be toned down with further glazes of the darker colours, which were then applied. This combination of highlights and weathering effects results in quite a rich leather effect in which the leather looks as though it has been damaged/ worn but in quite subtle ways.
Overall the result is real depth of colour, variety, and above all an effect which looks like leather. The excellent moulding, especially the exquisite helmet, helps with this of course. Above all this is really stimulating stuff and it has been a good learning experience which brings it home that a great deal of modelling is about visualising and thinking about the process rather than just slapping on paint.
Next I'll be getting on with the details such as the ear-pieces, the pistol, the goggles, the shirt, the pistol, the badges and the face.
Zigerastica
0 Yorumlar