Capt Maynard - On the Seven Seas

A friend has asked me to paint Capt Maynard from North Star Military Figures Royal Navy Crew. He wanted to get my take on flesh and basing so here's a short tutorial on how I did him. Dougie

Neil wanted the Capt based on a 2p piece so the first stage is cleaning the figure, gluing him to the base and blending the cast base in with milliput.

The base was to represent a desert island so I decided on ground only and no vegetation. The base has been painted in VMC 873 US Field Drab. I then glue ballast on for the terrain, I use Woodland Scenics Dark Brown Ballast fine code B71. This is a good match to 873, use white glue to attach it and wait for it to dry. We then dry drush the base up in progressively lighter shades using the following colours;
VMC 843 Cork Brown
VMC 912 Tan Yellow
VMC 847 Dark Sand
VMC 837 Pale Sand
The edge of the base is then tidied up with 873.

I prime the figure in Matt Back, I use VMC but any will do.

I use a fairly standard triad system for painting flesh, this is my standard european version it can be easily enhanced by putting further shades on but this has just 3. The flesh areas are intitially panted with the shadow shade, VGC (Vallejo Game Color) 44 Dark Flesh. Leave the eyes black and the very darkest of shadows.
Next we add the main flesh colour which is Foundry Flesh 5A.
To highlight the flesh areas we use VGC 4 Elf Flesh.
To pull it together paint the bottom lip with VMC 802 Sunset Red, highlight it slightly. Only paint eyes if you're up to it and can do very small precise dots of white either side of the pupil. If they're too big you'll spoil the whole face, better to leave them black and in shadow! The photo below has the eye left black in the following shot you'll see I've added the white.

The white areas added and the eyes sorted.

Painting completed

The whole figure and base edge is given a coat of Humbrol 35 gloss poly for protection.

The figure then has a Matt varnish applied I use Daler-Rowney Soluble Varnish Matt for a dead flat finish and we're done. Next stop the Caribbean !