Taking it to the next level

This figure is "Capt. Nee Sun", a 28mm scale resin master from Hasslefree Miniatures. IMO, Kev White sculpts the best human figures in 28mm scale. His "resin master castings", though more expensive than Hasslefree's regular resin or metal models, are extremely cleanly cast, and capture most of the detail of the original, epoxy putty sculpt.

I started this thing 18 months ago, and worked on her face during a 2015 painting seminar with Rick Taylor.

I decided to finish her after recently leafing through Angel Giraldez' book, "Painting Miniatures from A to Z: Masterclass Vol. 2". Angel's painting method uses both airbrush and bristle brushes to accomplish prodigious feats of painting. His style is marked by very high contrast between highloights and shadows, and pure white highlights and catch-points to emphasize cast light. Sometimes there's not even a lot of blending, but rather bold slashes of colour. I find the style very painterly, like old Dutch masters such as Peter Paul Ruebens.

I started as always with zenithal highlighting, using an airbrush to blow Testors Acryl flat white at a downward angle over P3 black primer.

Below, I used the Vallejo face painting set to lay in the basic colours for the face. Note the photo of British actress Natalie Dormer, with her head shaved for the role of Cressida from the Hunger Games movies, used as a photo reference.



Here's the full shot of Ms. Dormer:

Below, oils laid in. Note that I cannot seem to paint eyes with just acrylics. Contrast is a little less, since this is a female figure and I wanted to soften some of her features.



The stubble effect on her shaved head was done with very thin dots of Winsor and Newton indigo oil paint mixed with Liquin, kinda patted and pushed around the flesh of her head with a clean brush.



Details of the face. The face had been "done" since last year. Last week, I used  Weber's Pro Mix colour system to slightly lighten her cheeks below her eyes. I also went back in and with tiny amounts of alizirian crimson, burnt sienna, peach black, and titanium white, added more contrast, respectively, to the lips, right eye, nose, and left upper eyelid,



Her hair was painted with various tones, mixing titanium white, gold ochre, and burnt sienna oil paints.



The visor was highlighted shaded with mixes of indigo and titanium white oils. A couple of white catchpoints were added, showing reflections off the visor.



Her weapon,interestingly, is described by Hasslefree as a rifle firing either 10mm depleted uranium slugs, or flechette rounds. I used a Nuln Oil wash to darken the rifle, used the Vallejo NMM set's  Turquoise acrylic to show some reflections,  and picked out edges and tiny details with titanium white oil.



The 25mm resin base is from Studio Mcvey's Sedition Wars line. The base was glazed with Vallejo Stone wash, and weathered with various oils and Vallejo powders. Details again picked out with titanium white.



I used several glazes of Citadel Thrakka Green over the armour, just enough to tint the armour in highlighted areas, with more layers for shadowed areas. I lined around the armour plates with Winsor and Newton Greensih Umber, and picked out some catch points in pure titanium white. Various scratches were added to the armour, using Sennelier Peach Black oil paint, highlighted generally at the bottom of the scratches with titanium white. I weathered the armour with oils and Vallejo weathering powders.



I painted a similar Hasslfree resin master almost two years ago. The techniques I used back then are very similar. However, for the present fig I have used much more contrast, used more catch points of pure white, and weathered the armour and base.