Hello Everybody...

My new project I'm starting is this lovely 90mm sculpt from Alexandros models, Guan Yu. The sculpt itself is amazing - I absolutely love it. The casting is phenomenal. Every single piece dry-fitted flawlessly together, and almost no prep work was required. There were a few mould lines that needed to be sanded out and that was about it. There is an incredible amount of detail - and all of it is very crisply sculpted. This is one of the highest quality kits I've come across in quite some time.

Actually, almost exactly a year ago I posted a very, very detailed step by step of Pegaso's 54mm Chinese general (can be seen here); I think that was good practice for tackling this much larger and more detailed figure. I am definitely looking forward to painting this guy.

Here is the kit, cleaned prepped and ready for assembly




And here he is assembled primed and ready for painting



Next step is the face. If there is enough interest, I'd be more than happy to do a detailed step by step of this guy too...

Regards,
Phil

The Far East being my most favourite topic for modelling,I have always felt that China,one of the most ancient civilised countries in the world with a vast and colourful history,has been neglected by companies and modellers alike.So it should be no surprise that I already love this project and being favourably prejudiced towards you ('cause of all your previous SBS tutorials) I will follow this with enthusiasm knowing that you'll probably grace us with another fantastic miniature.

Oda.

another lovely piece for you to work your magic on.
an sbs would be great again.

tony

Hi Phil,
i agree with the comments before. Please give us this SBS. I would follow with pleasure.

Big Challenge on this great sculpt. I wish a lot of fun at work and I will watch closely ...

Cheers Borek

Hello Everybody...

First off, thanks for all the kind words everybody. They're much appreciated. . It's also nice to see an interest in the SBS. So let's get started!

1. The face

I always start with the face, and I see no reason to stop doing that now. For this guy, the approach was roughly as follows:

1. Basecoat the face
2. Do the eyes. I like doing the eyes very early in the process, because if you mess them up (and I always do), making corrections are very, very simple do to.
3. Block in shadows and highlights
4. Smooth things out a little bit, and glaze in some colors.
5. Small details - wrinkles, lips, nose, ears, etc...
6. Hair (and facial hair).

That sounds far more organized than what actually happens in reality, but that's the gist of how the face got painted. It's hard to paint something without paints and brushes, so let's see what we got...

These are Raphael 8404 brushes in sizes 0 and 000 respectively. I love these brushes, and am using them more frequently at the expense of my Winsor & Newton Series 7 brushes. I would definitely recommend you try them out. (Their sizes are a little larger than the same number in the Series 7 brushes). If you've seen the last project I just finished (the bust of Ioannis Makriyannis), I used the 000 to do all the freehand patterns on his jacket.
Lets see what paints we got:

As always for me, they're Golden Artist acrylics. Not pictured is Phthalo Turquois. With our paints selected, we should put them on a palette of some sort:

To make sense of this mess we have:

1. Midtone - this is Naples Yellow, with slightly smaller amounts of Yellow Ochre and Raw Sienna. A very, very small amount of Naphthol Red Medium is also added.
2. Highlights - Midtone with varying degrees of Titanium White mixed in. You can see the various highlight tones in a gradient fashion above.
3. Shadows - Midtone with a Burnt Umber/Violet Oxide mix gradually added. Again, you can see the various shadow tones above.
4. Glazes - You can see various glazes in the palette above. They're serving two functions. One, to provide some color/tonal variation in the face, and Two, to help smooth out the shadows/highlights.

We can now go ahead and basecoat the face:

Simple enough. Now we can move onto the eyes. I like to block in the eyeballs with a dark color (Burnt Umber in this case), just so I can get a feel for how they're shaped and what they look like. I can also use this step to see if I need to compensate for anything in the sculpting. It turns out that in this case one is sculpted larger than the other, so I tried to mitigate that a little bit. Here they are blocked in:

Next we can now paint the actual eyeball in. This is a little tricky as we want to keep a very thin outline of the Burnt Umber we used in the step above:

We'll adjust the outlines as needed as we go through the process; we just want something to start with.
Next come the pupils. With eye sockets this small, there is no need to go into super detail here. He's going to have brown eyes, so we'll just dot in some Burnt Umber:

Obviously, the things to keep in mind here are to maintain (relatively) the same size and orientation of the eyeballs. They also need to be positioned in a fashion that helps convey the look you're going for. Due to the nature of the sculpt and subject, all I know is that I want something pretty dramatic. Despite the small size of the pupils, I think we still have some room for a little extra detail, so let's go ahead and add some points of light in them:

With the eyes done, we can now focus on the face proper. Keep in mind, we'll be adjusting the eyes as well; we'll be getting a better idea of where we want the overall look to go as we make more progress. Also, due to the fairly random approach here, I don't really have pics of each "step".
Here is a pic at some point smoothing out the left side of the face. I also blocked out the hair on that side as well:

After a bout of smoothing and shading, glazing and highlighting; here are some larger shots of the finished face:




Despite being "finished", I already got in mind a few super small tweaks I already want to make as I go along. Next steps are the eyebrows, hair and (rather large) beard. In terms of overall approach to the figure, we're going to work top down, inside out.
Please feel free to ask any questions as we go along. I hope you enjoyed the first part!
Regards,
Phil

Another fantastic SBS!!! The general already looks good and I will have a lot of fun watching you work your magic again Phil.

Oda.

love the sbs, a great start phil.

tony

Very nice skintone start. And thanks for the extensive introduction, especially the information about the brushes is interesting ... Thanks for sharing ...

Cheers Borek

Great start Phil.
Will be following with interest.

I'm really liking the looks of this sculpt along with the start of your work and SBS......

Wayne

Thanks Oda - it's funny, how in a completely unplanned fashioned, here we are again in exactly the same place we were exactly a year ago... doing an SBS of a Chinese general!
Regarding your last comment, I agree completely - I do think it's quite a shame at how under represented historical Chinese subjects are. I would love to see more of them...

Regards,
Phil

Thank you very much Tony

Regards,
Phil

Thanks so much Nap! I know you're a "Bust Man", but I'll do my best to keep you interested!

Regards,
Phil

Thanks Borek. One of my favorite parts of painting is mixing up the skin tones, so I am glad you like them!
Regards,
Phil

Thanks a lot Ralph!
Regards,
Phil

Thanks Wayne - much appreciated. This sculpt is killer, and I'm very surprised that its not more popular...

Regards,
Phil

I'm busy at the moment but so glad I caught up on this one. Excellent work and thansk for sharing it.

Cheers

Huw