This is a bit of a change from Historie & Collections and a most welcome book. This one is labelled as a Painting Guide for WWII figures and it is pretty much what it says. To many modelers, painting figures has always been quite daunting. Most of us just toss some color on there and call it done, but they always look like toy figures, despite our efforts.

Doing figures, especially in smaller sizes, takes quite a bit of work and practice. It also takes an understanding of how a figure should look. For the most part, figures are painted as if the light hitting them is from directly overhead. This provides a clue as to where the highlights and shadows should be.

Many figure painters like to use oil paints as these have a slow drying time and are easier to blend into each other. However, a growing number of modelers are using acrylics and these take a different method to achieve the blended look. In this case the blending is done by applying glazes. A glaze is a very thin, nearly transparent coating of a color that is close to the base color, but has been slightly lightened or darkened as the need requires. This method is pretty much required as acrylics tend to dry very quickly and so cannot be blended as can oils.

In this book, the author takes you through all the stages of figure painting with acrylics. This starts with an introduction and a section on tools and materials. It then goes into the preparation and building of the figures, something that is a basic requirement to getting a nice looking figure. Then the figure is divided into sections. First is the face and complexion of the figure, then it goes into basic clothing, followed by leather and camouflage uniforms. The final bit is on the various weapons that soldiers often carry.

Figure presentation is the next section. Some like stand alone figures while others like to have them in small vignettes. The design and construction of vignettes is the next section. This is followed by a gallery of various figures, some of which were used to describe and show the earlier sections.

I say show as each section is chock full of color images showing a step-by-step progression as each of the various techniques are described. Each section ends with a most useful chart on mixing colors for the different parts that were discussed in the write-up. The author pretty much uses Vallejo colors for all of his paints and these should be available to most modelers. As a for instance, in the section covering complexion we are provided with the different color mixes for brown, blond, dark brown and auburn hair.  Each chart provides a base color, highlights, shadows and intermediate shades so is quite complete.

It all makes for an excellent book on the subject and one that I know you will like. The book is printed on high quality, somewhat thick paper stock and looks like it will withstand a lot of use. It is a book I found particularly interesting and give it my highest recommendation.

December 2013

Review book courtesy of  Casemate Publishing, where you can order your copy of this and many other superb books. You can get this book at this link.

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