Painting a 1:72 Scale Infantryman Part 1: Proper Prior Preparation (by Nate)

Hello, everyone! After an unacceptably long absence, I am back with a quick "How-To". Or rather, a "How I And Others Sometimes Do." That's better.

I am starting with a 1:72 scale infantryman, as that is the scale I will be using for one of my next projects, a Crusades-themed diorama/wargame. I expect to enlist the services of some six to seven hundred of these little chaps, so I need a quick painting method that provides lots of nice highlights and shades. As it turns out, I know just such a method, which I used to paint the following 'Test Figure." This method is by no means my own, it's just one I've picked up over the years, and I like the results a lot. This is aimed at beginners or intermediate painters, or those with similar goals to the aforementioned.

 

The Materials.

Paints: I used the following Vallejo Model Color(VMC), Vallejo Game Color(VGC), Privateer Press(P3), Citadel(CIT), and Daler & Rowney(DR) paints:

-VMC Tan-Earth

-VMC Pale Sand

-VMC Saddle Brown

-VMC Oily Steel

-VMC Smoke

-VMC Beige Red

-VMC White

-VMC Sunny Skintone

-VGC Gunmetal Metal

-VGC Chainmail Silver
-VGC Falcon Turquoise
-VGC Glorious Gold

-P3 Armor Wash

 -CIT Reikland Fleshshade

-DR Acrylic Ink - Sepia

Brushes:

-Windsor & Newton Cotman III, Sizes 0 and 2

-da Vinci Series 10, Sizes 0 and 1
-Grumbacher Academy multimedia, Size 1
-Master's Touch cheapo cut into a drybrush, size 1

Others:

I thinned my paints with distilled water spiked with a little flow improver (ratio is 10 water to 1 Flow Improver, if you want to know), as my tap water is a little, shall we say, funky. I also used Pledge Floor Care to thin the ink. This used to be caller Pledge with Future Shine, Future Floor Care, and a host of others. They keep changing the name!

The Figure:

The victim, erm, figure in question is a HaT Industrie Archer, from their Imperial Roman Auxiliaries set. He is fairly nicely detailed. I know he's not a Crusader or an Ayyubid, but he and his friends have been waiting for a lick of paint for a few years now.

 

Let's Get Started!

I first scraped away all the mold lines (Of which there were precious few--my "HaT" goes off to the manufacturer) with the edge of a nice sharp hobby knife.

There was still a mold line on the underside of his left arm, which was dealt with after the photo was taken.

I then got out my trusty mitre box and cut a base for him--A 3/4" square of 1/8" thick balsa, to which I stuck him with superglue. I always cut my own bases if I can.

For ease of handling, he was attached to the top of an old paint pot with some white glue.
He then got a coat of Armory gray spray primer out of a rattle-can.

 

After waiting fifteen minutes or so for the primer to dry, I then began...

Blocking In

I used the following colors to block in the basecoat:

-Shoes: VMC Tan-Earth

-Tunic, Bow, Arrows, Sword Hilt: VMC Pale Sand

-Leather Parts: VMC Saddle Brown

-Fleshy Bits: VMC Beige Red

-Mail: VMC Oily Steel

-Helmet: VGC Gunmetal Metal

Here is what he looked like at this stage:

I stopped for the night at this point. I will bring you the next steps in the process in the next article, where we will get to the fun part: highlighting and shading.

See you next time! -Nate