What's Been Going On - All caught up

The last thing going right now is a project for ReaperCon. Not sure I can pull it off at this point, time is pretty short but I'm going to give it a shot. This is a little vignette from Scale 75 called Charing Cross 1940, Alice and Johnny. I reviewed this box of parts a couple of years ago and I'm just now getting around to putting it together.

I have cleaned up the parts and put together everything that I can before priming. I spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out what carriage Johnny is leaning out of and it mostly resembles a 100 seater. These were built by South Eastern & Chatham Railway (SECR) in 1923 and were in main line service up until 1961. SECR was merged into the Southern Railway so the red livery is not right, actually it was never right it should be an olive green (although I certainly wouldn't say olive based on what I have seen in photos). I'm not sure I can match the rather odd pattern on the bench so that may just be painted in a solid color.

I modified things a little bit to closer match the actual carriage. I filed off all the big bolts on the inside and I'm still debating if I should include the brake system which I don't see on any of the surviving carriages. I'm definitely dropping the lamp which certainly doesn't show up on a carriage.

Anyway enthusiasm is slowly returning so hopefully things on the blog will get back up to speed.

ReaperCon 2017 Project - Scale 75 - Lt Winters

Scale 75, the US distributor, will likely be at ReaperCon this year and is already sponsoring a few manufacturer awards for the painting competition. After hemming and hawing a bit I settled on this 75mm Lt Winters figure. It looks like a very nice miniature out of the box although there was more flash than I expected and some of the attachment points are going to need some work. More work than I was anticipating with this company's reputation. I don't anticipate any problems with it, just need to find the time to do it!

A "New" Skintone Receipe

As happens frequently on my blog I can go off on tangents when working on something else. I have been working with my ScaleColor paints from Scale 75. However, I have found that they can be frustrating to work with at times. The regular line is just a bit thicker than a lot of other paints out there (including Vallejo Model Color) and thinning them properly can be vexing. When I have sat and worked with them exclusively for a while I find things coming together much better and their Fantasy Colors are much thinner and easier to work with.

One of the things that I have learned from Scale 75 is how to get a better variance in the skintones themselves (okay I knew this but I didn't really know how to put it in to practice). When you buy a set there is a little card in there with a couple examples on how to use their colors to achieve different effects. While the Spanish to English translation is poor (at best) they are usually simple enough to piece together what they are trying to say. It doesn't help that frequently the instructions are written from the point of view of someone using an airbrush. Its just impractical to use an airbrush to paint the face on a 25/28mm mini.

I decided that I would like to try and replicate the tones in the instructions with Reaper paints. Reaper makes up the bulk of my paints and I use them more frequently than any of the paints that I own. To match colors I went through an exercise that I have done before. On one sheet of paper I drew half inch squares with some space in between them. On another sheet I drew a much larger square and I cut the center out. The center being a 1/2"x1/2" square. The outer edges of these squares were painted with the flesh colors from Reaper and Scale75. I painted the different colors (and labeled them) on the 1/2" grid as well. With the center cut out I can slide the square with the color I'm trying to match with my smaller swatches of color. You can see a detailed example of this process in my post from June 9. 2014:Color Matching Brand to Brand

From this exercise I can see that Scale75's SC-22 Arabic Shadow is almost a dead ringer for 9220 Olive Shadow from Reaper. Using this method I was able to pick out 8 Reaper paints that are a pretty good match to the Scale75 Flesh set.

Here is the list:
SC-17 Pale Flesh  - 9048 Fair Highlight
SC-18 Light Skin  - 9234 Bright Skin Highlight
SC-19 Golden Skin - 9233 Bright Skin
SC-20 Basic Skin - 9044 Tanned Skin or 29822 Suntan Flesh
SC-21 Pink Flesh - 9140 Blushing Rose (I'll  have to find another equivelent for this if I run out of Blushing Rose, its a color that has been discontinued by Reaper).
SC-22 Arabic Shadow - 9220 Olive Shadow
SC-23 Indian Shadow - 29801 Crimson Red
SC-24 African Shadow - 9025 Burgandy Wine (probably with a drop of 9164 Dark Elf Skin to grey it down a bit)

I would then use these colors like this:
Base coat 1:1 Blushing Rose and Tanned Skin OR Suntan Flesh
Apply an overall highlight of 1:1 Tanned Skin OR Suntan Flesh and Bright Skin
Apply a shadow (working from underneath) of 1:1 Crimson Red and Blushing Rose
Apply a highlight of Bright Skin Highlight
Outline the eyes and the upper lip with 1:1 Crimson Red & Burgandy Wine
Apply a glaze to the cheeks of 1:1 Blushing Red and Crimson Red
Final highlight with 1:1 Bright Skin Highlight and Fair Highlight

The charts and some examples:

Color Swatches with product numbers and names. Don't forget this step!

You can see and maybe even be able to read some of my notes on the right

That's the Scalecolor colors on the top, everything else are Reaper Triads

Ultimately I will cut these out so I identified them on the back rather than the front.

The base coat of Blushing Rose + Tanned Skin

Here he is pretty much complete, probably still needs a few touchups

Competition Entries - The Next two Months

Since I seem to have reached a stalling point on the Steady Lads diorama I thought I would get started on some my other intended entries. There are four categories at ReaperCon; Painter (single miniatures), Open (conversions, scratch sculpts), Diorama/Vignette and Vehicles/Ordnance. My original thoughts were to have an entry in each category. I'm going to skip the Open category this year. I have made a couple of attempts at some major conversion work and I'm just not happy with them so I'm going to concentrate on the other categories. As it stands right now I'm planning two dioramas, two painters and one vehicle.

If you have been following my blog on a somewhat regular basis you have seen the work on the Steady Lads diorama. Its getting close so I'll probably stop posting anything related to that work as it reaches completion. The other diorama is intended to be a shadow box style piece titled Shopping II. It will feature the same three miniatures (well new ones) used for Shopping plus two additional pieces. This was a concept that I intended to enter a couple of years ago and didn't finish. I have scrapped the original concept and I'm working with new idea that I think will be easier to pull off.

The original shoppers from Hasslefree

The sellers also from Hasslefree

The two painter entries are: Big Game Hunter, and Terror From Outer Space. If things go as planned then these will actually appear to be vignettes as they will be presented on my display base concept I developed last year.

Big Game Hunter features a female alien from Reaper's Chronoscope Line

Terror From Outer Space features a pulp style female also from Reaper's Chronoscope line

I focused on working skin tones (its never ending) tonight. Principally on the Big Game Hunter. She is getting blue skin and I think purple or maybe pink hair. I have the skintones blocked in pretty good at this point so they just need some refining. I did finish her eyes and I'm very happy with those. Managed to get a nice orange dot in for the eye and a nice dark blue dot right in the center for the iris. I guess I still have some brush control. Not quite sure how I will proceed with the rest of her at this point. She has a very space barbarian look to her.

I'm trying out a new set of Scalecolor paints from Scale75 tonight. This is the Elven Fantasy Set which is primarily blue. These are much thinner than the historical color sets and I like them a lot. I feel like they go on quite a bit smoother and don't need nearly as much thinning. Like all the colors from Scale75 you to have to pierce the top in order to get paint out. I have another fantasy set and based on how well behaved the Elven set is I'm looking forward to using it.

The box art, front.

The box art, back

Like all their sets this once includes a guide on how to use the paints. The instructions are better than the ones in the historical sets but could still use some improvement.

And the paint line up. Note that the Fantasy colors are not only clearly labeled (with their own numbering sequence) but come with grey tops instead of black, making them pretty easy to pick out if you are just through them into a box

Leveling Up - Color Matching Brand to Brand

Now I'm a self admitted Reaper fan and I'm heavy user of both their MSP and HD paint lines. However, I don't let that stop me from trying out other brands (I use Vallejo, some P3 and a smattering of GW along with a small selection of washes from Secret Weapon). Since I have been collecting Scale75's ScaleCoat paints I thought I would push forward with some color matching and see if I could match the six Reaper colors that I have been using to create my six color wheel. The ultimate idea would be to create a six color wheel using the Scale75 paints. I'm using these six colors from Reaper because of a question I had asked Anne. Of course she didn't just give me a quick answer, she responded on the Reaper forum and pretty much hit a home run with it. Not only did she list the six Reaper equivalents I asked about (and they are only equivalents not exact matches) she told us how to do our own color matching. So that is what this particular exercise is all about seeing if there are any close matches between the "Reaper Six" and Scale75.

So here are the colors that make up the "Reaper Six" along with their, roughly, artist color equivalents:
Republique Red (61108) -  Cadmium Red (a warm red)
Crimson Red (29801) - Alizarin Crimson (a cold red)
Ultramarine Shadow (9187) - French Ultramarine Blue (a warm blue)
Sapphire blue (9016) - Cerulean Blue (a cold blue)
Clear Yellow (9095) - Cadmium Yellow Light (a warm yellow)
Sun Yellow (9008) - Cadmium Yellow Medium (a cold yellow)

We need to compare swatches of color directly against other swatches of color. To do that we are going to make a tool that will surround one color with another to get a good match. I know that sounded weird but basically we are going to make squares of color and cut the middle out. We will lay the open square over the color we want to match and see if we are close. The pictures probably explain it better:

Took one of my art journals (with perforated pages) and layed out a series of squares. The big square is 1 1/4 inches on a side. The square in the middle is a 1/2 on a side. That leaves 3/8ths of an inch for our color on all four sides of the center square.

So something like this

Cut out and ready to use

Important point, You should label the colors on the back, in case you forget what you were using, and you may as well put the stock number as well.

And from the front

A selection of the Scale75 ScaleCoat Blues plus one yellow (there are only two yellows in the whole line right now, a sad deficiency)

Now with the Reds plus the only other yellow

Reaper Color Matcher using the "Reaper Six" and the two Scale75 Color Matchers trying to see if we can emulate the "Reaper Six"

The Blue Color Matcher (plus a yellow)

The Red Color Matcher (pluse a yellow)

Republique Red is pretty close to Antares Red (Reaper Color Matcher on top, normally I would compare against a swatch of color but I didn't want to get the paints back out)

Crimson Red is a bit darker than Deep Red (the darkest red that Scale75 makes). Probably close enough in the long run.

Clear Yellow is a tad lighter than Sol Yellow. Again probably close enough for our purposes

. 

Sapphire Blue is a bit darker than Mediterranean Blue. Mediterranean Blue is not as "cold" as Sapphire Blue. 

Ultramarine Shadow is a bit lighter its closest match Navy Blue. Navy Blue is not as "warm" as Ultramarine Blue

I didn't even bother comparing Sun Yellow against Tenere Yellow. They aren't even close. In fact I might argue that Tenere Yellow isn't a yellow at all, its almost ivory in color. I suppose it might be a yellow tone.

So that's the tool. Its small enough to fit in my journal that I'm tracking my ReaperCon 2015 projects in and that will also help flatten them out. I'm thinking I need to mount them on a thicker stock of something. I'll figure that out later.