The fine folks at Mr. Black Publications, out of Athens, Greece, have produced for us the first in a series of painting guides. This one concentrates on doing faces and uses acrylic paints which are very popular with figure modelers for their fairly fast drying times and the ability to mix them. It doesn't hurt that there are a lot of manufacturers who produce these paints.

This edition takes you step by step regarding the best way to paint these. It starts out with a section on what tools you will need as well as preparation of the subject itself. In this case, it is a 1/10 scale bust of a German Panzer Commander. This part also provides a look at some accessories you might find useful as well as the various paints and paint enhancements you can obtain. I noticed that everything listed is from somewhere in Europe, but many if not all of these are available elsewhere or can be obtained via internet shops. This book uses Vallejo paints for the tutorial.

This first guide concentrates on faces. Faces can be broken down into a various 'planes' in terms of how light hits them. The more direct ones are lighter colors and the ones in shadow are darker. This pretty much means that you need to mix shades to get the ones you want.

This is what makes this edition so useful. You are provided the mixture ratios as well as exactly which colors to use while doing this. It is then pretty much a 'paint by numbers' sort of route in getting the colors in place. Of course you have to then blend them into each other and that is covered in some depth as it is this shading that really makes the face look realistic.

In addition to this how to, Mr Black has provided a guide to the various other brands of paints and which ones to use in the process if you are not using Vallejo paint. This includes Andrea Color, LifeColor, AK,  and several other brands of which I've never seen before, but are obviously easily available in Europe. This area also includes several pages of paint chips to assist you and there is another section on what sets are available for skin tones.

In all, it is the most comprehensive edition I have ever seen on the subject. I feel that if one really wants to improve one's skills in this area, this guide is very much a 'must have'.

Thanks to Mr Black Publications for the review book. You can get this one at this link.

November 2020

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