Just started a new project which I hope will be a quick one, but we'll see about that......



It's the wonderful JMD Miniatures French WWI trench mortar vignette, sculpted by Benoit Cauchies (now of Wars and Peaces fame). The French nicknamed this mortar "crapouillot" or little toad, so hence the title of the piece.

I've had this in the stash since 2014 so dug it out as I thought it would be much easier to paint than the 1/35 ICM figures in my last vignette. These figures are around 65mm and beatifully sculpted. Here's the parts ready to go:



Today I did the flesh on both figures. I'm still practising with acrylics and also trying to improve my painting style based on a lot of the work I see on here. I'm trying out various techniques and ideas, hopefully improving all the while...

Nice start, excellent figures..

Love this pair Nigel & keen to see your version of them.
MikeTheKiwi

JMD WW1 figs are delightful.
Looking forward to seeing this project develop.

Great start Nigel. I LOVE the sculpting of that guy's jumper!

Thanks very much Warren, Mike and David. Going well so far, fingers crossed for the rest of. Trying new paints (Scale 75 Artists) and some new approaches, so hope it all works out!

Thanks Neil. The jumper is indeed incredible. I just painted it and the detail in the sculpt is amazing. Benoit is very talented.

Thanks Rick, I now have a consistent colour palette which helps getting a good finish. In the past I would find my flesh going too yellow or too pink but it's much easier now I use the basic palette of Vallejo beige red, light flesh and black red.

Looking forward to seeing this progress.
Good start.

Malc

Coming along very nicely

Thanks for the encouragement Malc and Steve

Here's a bit of progress:



The jumper was a joy to paint, so beautifully sculpted. The jackets are my first attempt at painting from "dark to light" - a dark undercoat followed by gradually building up the mid to highlight tones. Normally I paint a midtone overall followed by highlights and shading but I find that creates a very "even" appearance that isn't sensitive to how the light falls on the subject. I'm not sure it's made that much difference so far, I think I have a tendency to want to highlight everything. But it's been an interesting learning experience.

The colours used were the AK Interactive 2nd gen WWI French uniforms set supplemented by some JoSonja and Scale75 Artists.

The catchlights in the eyes look more obvious in the photos than in real life because they are dots of white oil paint and the camera is really picking up on them for some reason.

They're coming on very nicely.
You've certainly mastered using acrylics

Malc

I'd be very happy with those, Nigel

Thanks Malc and Neil. I'm definitely getting more comfortable with acrylics and developing my own style.

They are coming on a treat. Both flesh tones and uniforms are great.

Great start, looking good from here, Nigel.

that looks absolute very beautiful
mario

Thanks Kev, I am making progress, just need to keep practising. Some things have gone really well with these two but some elements haven't worked as well as I hoped (I'll post more pictures soon).

I do mix various types of paints together. I have been trying to use more artist's acrylics like JoSonja and Scale75 rather than AK, MIG and Vallejo in pots. But for WWI figures, the AK uniform sets are really a good base palette and they dry beautifully matt, which is important for WWI uniforms. So I've been using the main colours from AK and mixing in JoSonja and Scale75 artists colours to create the shadow tones and highlights.

Hopefully this will be done for Yeovil next week.....

Great work Nigel! Your use of acrylics is very nicely done. It's very satisfying when things come together.

Looking forward to more.

Cheers,
Ken