This figure is one of Sabot Miniatures’ designs, the medieval soldier. It’s a solid one. The amazingly talented Jim Rice used it as the subject for a recent painting workshop arranged by Lionheart Hobby. It was a great time! Here’s the rundown of how I painted this bust!

Base coating
Jim showed us how to use a technique from the old masters: Verdaccio painting. This is a greenish underpainting technique used by early Italian fresco painters. The artist lays down the various greenish tones in the underpainting technique, properly outlining the various light/dark values. Then transparent over paintings are then applied to achieve a realistic skin tone. (Think of the vehicle black and white pre-shading, but for figures and used for centuries).

I’m still trying to decide how much I really liked this technique and whether I’d do it again, but it was fun to try! Here’s a few shows of the green state.

Then applying the skin tones

More skin tone blocking.

Now we’re starting to see skin tones look like skin! (And now with 100% more eyeballs!)

Then it was time for details like 5 o’clock shadow, lips, hair. This was about the point where the class ended and I’d just started to play with the leather strap. That ended up getting totally repainted for ease when I was working on the shirt and tunic.

Tunic and cape

Now that the face was done and I was back home after the workshop, painting began on the cape and tunic. Since this 1/10 scale bust was kinda huge for this 1/35 scale guy, I wanted to use my airbrush to lay down as much base coating and shading as I could on as much of the figure as I dared. So I started with the tunic and sprayed it a dull reddish color. My story I was working off of was this was a lowly soldier who’d been in the field a while. He wasn’t going to have fancy clothing… totally functional. And worn down.

After the reddish tone was sprayed on, I used my tasty new(ish) Mr Hobby Creos PS771 airbrush (love this thing) to apply highlights and shadows, mixing in a bit of wood base for highlights and leather brown for shadows to the base mix. (See paint colors at the end). I used the AK3Gen paints in order to ensure it was easy to go back and touch things up with the paintbrush after the airbrushing.

Once the base coat was fully in place, I used the airbrush stippling technique (VERY VERY low pressure, very thin paint) to add some stippled cloth texture in both pure wood base and pure leather brown.

The same process was repeated for the cape but with brownish/tanish colors. Again, trying to achieve a more realistic, less vibrant color palette of a line warrior in medieval times.

Leather strap

Once the shirt and tunic were done, it was time for the leather strap. Lots of browns, tans, oranges, inks, and gloss coat touches were added to create a great leather feel. Since the shirt and tunic were purposefully drab, I wanted to add some pop via the leather strap.

Shield

I had a lot of fun with the shield, even though I ended up stripping it and repainting it after a chipping issue.

I started with an airbrushed base coat of a pale yellow tone. Then used a number of ScaleColor Artist Acrylics in various wood tones to create a woodgrain pattern. I did this on both sides, laughing the entire time about how hard it is to keep it the same basic look on both sides.

I wanted to do some pattern that was unique to my shield rather than copy the other common patterns you might see on this figure. My first idea was to painting it in the same scheme as one of the LEGO Castle patterns from the years. But with the metal nub in the middle of the shield, none of those would work very well. So I decided instead to paint it as an homage to my era’s LEGO Castle shield:

I was a huge, huge LEGO kid growing up and some of my earliest sets were LEGO Castle sets. Including these two, one of which included this iconic LEGO Castle shield design.

At first I tried a triple stripe pattern, but it ended up looking completely like a French flag and not at all like a LEGO homage.

So I started over from scratch and opted for red and white stripes with a blue border, much more like the original LEGO shield. Some basic taping off one half, then the other, spraying the colors and then applying the chipping. But the hairspray chipping on the first go round didn’t turn out well. So started over. Again.

This time around the design turned out really nice and chipping was much more subdued.

The chipping much better this time.

Disaster! 

While hand painting the hood, I got some wet fluid on my finger and touched the tunic. No clue what, no clue how since I wasn’t doing anything at the time with liquids. But hey, it happened. So I had to mask up everywhere on the tunic, do my best to match colors again (it’d been a while since I originally mixed the tunic colors… but even if it was the day before, getting the right exact color match is near impossible). I matched well enough, blended in the patch, then shaded and stippled to get everything back in order. Then came several solid coats of Mr Color GX114 to hopefully lock this thing down and protect it from further foolishness. And removing the Tamiya tape caused no additional damage. Thank god.

Leather hood

The last big component was the leather hood. I started with a base coat of light brown and worked in a number of other brown and orange tones. Here’s the base coating an a few bits of sponged on leather tones.

Here’s the final product. I wanted it rough, worn, and color distinct from the other elements.

Finalizing the bust

The last bits were painted, from the fur cape lining to the gold buckle on the belt to the silver chain on his cape. I also applied some magnets to the base I wanted to use. These magnets help me affix the models to my carrying case (a repurposed upright wargaming figure transport bag) which has metal shelves inside I built with threaded rod, nuts, lock washers, and steel sheet.

Funny side story… the rare earth magnets I 5-minute epoxied into the base after drilling some inset holes with a forstner bit all glued fine. Except one… who was magnetically pulled out of place by one of the other magnets. Not sure what happened there.

Final images (and one more homage)

Here’s the final figure. I call him Kjeld Kirk. Get the reference? The third generation family owner of LEGO is named Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. So of course, I had to name the figure Kjeld Kirk!

Paint Notes

• Shirt
  • AK3Gen 11110 Leather Brown
  • AK3Gen 11007 Rock Grey
  • AK3Gen 11107 Dark Rust
  • AK3Gen 11118 Ochre
• Cape
  • AK3Gen 11110 Leather Brown
  • AK3Gen 11351 Wood Base
  • AK3Gen 11407 Uniform Black
• Leather hood
  • AK3Gen 11121 Tan Earth
  • AK3Gen 11009  Ochre Orange
  • AK3Gen 11115 Light Earth
  • AK3Gen 11100 Light Brown
• Belt buckle
  • Scalecolor SC-74 Elven Gold