While I'm waiting for my next Napoleonic figure to arrive I decided to start on this little guy from Figone. It's Arthur as a boy in 1/35 scale (though a bit smaller than 54mm as he's a child). The 5th Dimension, a painting blog, did a contest earlier this year and this guy was one of the prizes I received.

I made a few minor modifications. I had some photo etch accessories from Etch Master, so I added a shield and shoulder strap so I could paint a few more details. I also switched out the sword blade. The one that came with him isn't that big and I really wanted it to look like a child holding an adult's sword. The scene I'm trying to create is Arthur right after he's pulled the sword from the stone.

The face was a bit of a challenge. I needed to downplay the details as too many shadows or dark lines would ruin the youthful look. Still, I tried to build up some contrast around the cheeks and under the chin. I tried to keep the clothing simple so I stuck with primary colors: red, blue, and yellow. For a little more detail I did a checkerboard pattern on his pants. I've done this on a number of figures so it's something I feel pretty comfortable doing. I started with a base coat of yellow and then took a medium blue and sketched in the squares. Try to keep the squares uniform and follow the lines of the pants. At this stage it's still pretty rough. Take a step back to evaluate the lines and square sizes. I then make a variety of tweaks to get it to look a bit better (adjust the squares to line are parallel, fix the sizes as needed, etc). Now I go back in with the yellow and do all of my shading and highlighting, followed by the blue. It's at this stage that I try to clean up the lines and sharpen the corners. Finally I do a number of passes back and forth between yellow and blue cleaning up whatever needs to be fixed. If you're trying this for the first time, pick a surface that is relatively flat (not too many folds and bends). And you might find larger squares are easier to begin with than smaller ones. On a relatively simple figure like this one those extra details can really help. I also plan to add some heraldry to the shield, but haven't gotten that far yet.



And here's the original figure before my minor additions.

Very nice, great flesh for a young kid.

What a beaut David!
Nice way to end the year.

You've beautifully captured the youthfulness of this little guy.
Thanks for sharing this inspiration as well as your useful tips to help is learn from your techniques.
Look forward to next steps.

Stay safe,
Mike

Excellent painting!

That is very spiffy and looks great. The SBS on squares is also very handy
Steve

very nice indeed well done so far.

Ian

Beautiful cannot believe that this is 1/35. Looks fantastic.
SBS on the squares will come in useful at some point I'm sure.

Peter.

Coming along wonderfully.

By the way what is your next napoleonic subject?

Ciao Franco

absolutly nice

Great work - really like the youthful flesh tones.

Very well done. I really like the face. Very youthful looking which is a look that is very difficult to achieve, at least for me.

Stunning mate so far

yes incredible flesh.

Great work, simple yet effective.
You managed to capture the face of a saucy little brat to a tee.

Looking forward to completion

Colin

A bit different - very nice

Cheers

Huw

Thanks, everyone. Franco, my next big project is Pegaso's Captain ADC to Marshal Suchet. That figure arrived just the other day, so I'm getting him prepped to paint.

I'm almost finished with Arthur. Well, the figure at least... I have yet to begin on the base. I took care of the highlighting on the hair and the cloth around his lower legs. I'd done the basic metal on the sword, but it still needed a little something. So I took some inks and gave is a slight gradient, darkening towards the hilt. The big task was painting the heraldry on his shield and his chest. For the shield I started with the red background and did some simple shading. For the design I wanted to do a dragon and I based it on the rampant lion, a common symbol in heraldry. I worked out the design on paper and, when I was happy with how it looked, I moved back to the figure. With a medium yellow I sketched in the curving shape of the neck, body, and tail. Then I drew in the details: head, arms, legs, wing, and spike. Using the background red I cleaned up the outline and carefully drew in the thin red lines separating the arms and legs and the one along the belly. With some darker yellow tones I did some shading so it fit with the rest of the shield.

I was on the fence about trying to do a design on his chest as well, but decided to give it a try. The strap across his chest made it tricky and the size would need to be about half of what was on the shield. So I took a slightly simplified version and did my best to repeat the design. Overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

So modest. Looks fantastic and considering the scale well done indeed.

Peter

Excellent work.

Marc

I can only echo what has already been said.....great stuff! Like the Almost-Celtic wyvern/dragon heraldry; nice touch.

Alan

Excellent paint job. The colors are nice and rich and have a good balance between contrast and portraying the individual colors accurately even from a distance. Very nice!

Mike