Hi.

I'm hitting a brick wall while planning my painting on a Young Miniatures 'Daimyo 1650' bust. Thanks to feedback and posts from members of Planet Figure I've got the majority of parts planned out (hard armour areas, jinbaori, katana blade), but I'm struggling to find good reference pictures for the following two parts:

- Kote (armoured sleeves)
- Yoroi hitatare (cloth under armour)

Most examples I've found so far for the yoroi hitatare have been quite plain in colour (flat green for example) or are so intricate that the picture quality doesn't really show the patterning well enough that I'd even think to attempt it.

Thank you in advance for any pointers that you may be able to offer, or even just for making it to the end of my rambling.

Ramble away

Tricky area as I'm just discovering having bought a Pegaso Samurai lady. Plenty of stuff on t'nternet, but a lot is 'modern' interpretation or reproduction stuff so sorting the wheat from the chaff might take some time. I understand what you are saying about some of the designs too.
At the moment I'm leaning towards contemporary prints as a source of information, even though they can be 'artistic'.

For my figure I'm going to concentrate on a particular colour scheme that I fancy that fits with the general period even if it means bending absolute accuracy

Good luck with yours
Paul

Cheers Paul.

Think I know the one you mean too. Finding material which isn't modern recreations has been tricky.

I did find this page. Not sure if it's of interest to you:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_colors_of_Japan

So I recently worked on a samurai figure. I looked around at art for reference and also pictures of costumes. In the end, I used some modern costumes as the basis for my design. I can't comment on how realistic it is, but at least it was something I felt I could use and be happy with.

Here's the one I liked

I found two pictures of the same person and was able to roughly sketch out the design


From there, it was just a matter of layering bits of the design on the figure and building it up





You'll notice the design I actually painted is not as complex as the one in the photo. I made some simplifications to facilitate painting it at this smaller (90mm) scale.

Alternatively, you could do what I did on the orange cloth and use a mon as the repeating pattern. Find one for a family that was active in the time period of your figure and go with that.

Many thanks Bailey. I do love that samurai of yours (and your hobbit, let's just say I love your painting actually and get that out of the way).

Thanks for the tips too. Especially the step by step pics too as trying to think on how to approach free hands does intimidate me somewhat.

When I first seen the Pegaso bust 1650 I thought what an odd time period to choose. The bust has a fierce expression but he must be practicing in the mirror since the last combat of any kind was the Shimabara Rebellion in 1638. Either that or he just learned that his clan is being disbanded, a very common practice during the Edo period. If anyone fell out of disfavor of the Shogunate, an obscure law could be found and the clan disbanded with the lands being carved up and distributed.
As this busts armor has been verified as being from the Edo era it was merely for show. With that in mind, there was a role reversal in society with the samurai, now bureaucrats, wearing less flamboyant clothing and the merchants, artisans and traders wearing more colorful clothing showing their new importance. In other words, paint what you like and don't worry about it as there is not a lot of detailed sources from this era not in Japanese. As Bailey said, find a clans clothing from the Sengoku period and stick with it.

Bob

Cheers Bob. Food for thought for sure.