Sean Connery as Richard the Lionheart Part One

The bust kit from Young Miniatures was washed and scrubbed in soapy luke warm water and then spray painted black and dry brushed pure white to show the features. Then glazed with skin tones, burnt sienna and sepia tones as well as Vermilion to get the basic broad strokes up. The beard is painted black and stroked with white and grey. Eyes are duly painted whites and tone with vermilion wash. Pupils are painted black, light blue, royal blue iris. This forms the broad strokes base coat of a face.

The turban and the cloak are painted very much the same way. Black, drybrushed white, then glazed with greens and washed with black again to form the base tones.

Same goes for the body, the chain mails, the whites, the reds etc. The reds are highlighted with shades of red toned with a little orange just for making the contrasts.

The the Skins have darker tones augmented with burnt sienna, vermilion washed to make it warm, and lighter shades of sunny skin tones and whites are added to increase the 3D effect.

Then the skines are further blended to get the 3D effect of a white man having spent years in the sun in the taking of Palestine.

The next challenge is the shield. Richard the Lionheart has an ensign that is very complex for someone who lived almost 1000 years ago.

I bought some Wave decal sheets and some from Art Friend, both stated that its for Laser. Unfortunately, the wave decal sheets cannot be printed and what came out were only the outlines for the 3 lions. What I did was at best to get the silhouette going and fill in the details by brush painting.

Hand painting the lions are a real challenge. The colours needed about 7 layers to form a solid film like tone. Fortunately, I coated the shield with Vallejo white, abotu 7 layers deep, that helped. I put in 3 tones of yellow to give the lions a closer resemblance to the artwork. Then hand painted in the blue claws, blue tongues, the black eyes. Then the surrounding areas are coated in red, some 9 coats of it. The rivets are highlighted and washed with sepia ink, so was the edges. The edge of the shield was painted gun metal and then highlighted with silver pencil as well as sepia ink and buff washes to get it to look dirty and worn steel.

The rear of the shield is the same affair as the face. Its first painted black, then drybrushed with white and then coated with various strokes of Buff, Yellow Ochre, Sienna, Red Browns and Flesh. Then the whole wooden section is washed with Vallejo Sepia Tone that was thinned down to get the details to come up as well as to increase the contrasts. 

Leather is black, stroked over with various tones of sand, beige and red brown colours till I get the tones I likes. The bolts are then painted and highlighted and the edges and shadows are augmented with black to ge the final finish that I liked.

IDF SHOT KAL Centurion ERA part 4

Had worked on this project for more than 3 years. Sat there after my work on the Kosovo T55 project for a Greek collector.

This is a kit bash of Legend and the old battery operated Tamiya Centurion kit. It was further added with details from Verlinden collection of IDF stowage as well as Brown 303 from Academy with the nose job Browning 50 cal from the same. Strethcers and tarps are Academy and Tamiya Epoxy putty affairs. The cables are made from nylon strings adn the sand tones are higly thinned Vallejo paints.

Here is the tank model again with flash added into my HTC phone photo, amazing how these little pin hole cameras can take pictures of such quality.

I am putting in the barbed wires as well as an old Verlinden Israeli Live Firing Area warning sign post. The ground work is a two tiered affair of 2 large pieces of plywood, and the depression was blank area left in the ply when I air nailed the 3 sections together. One in 18mm, one in 12mm and leaving a corner blank to be profiled with Epoxy Putty and Milliput. Then I added in the rocks and the posts, which are areall 16 gauge wires that were twisted on a drill bit.