Painting Lead Figures

[traindaddy1]

Hi! A recent visitor's comments on our "O" gauge lead figures got us thinking.

First of all, we have no intention of "saving" them for their intrinsic value so the comment "Some look shabby and the faces are ug-y" got us to thinking. (Often not a good idea!) Why not repaint them?

Based on your experience, a good idea or forget it?

If good, where do we start and what paint do we use?

"Forget it" -- It's fogotten, their just fine as they are.

As always, many thanks for your input.

 

 

[snjroy]

I'm sure Kevin can provide a better answer than I for this question. Perhaps he will chime in soon.

Simon

[SeeYou190]

traindaddy1

Why not repaint them?

Easy way for quick improvement of O scale prepainted figures: Get some Minwax Walnut Polystain. Dip the figure in the stain and then shake as much off as possible. Let the stain dry for three days, and then spray with dullcoat. This will improve figures 500% and take very little effort.

DO NOT do this to HO scale figures!

traindaddy1

If good, where do we start and what paint do we use?

If starting with UNPAINTED O scale figures, paint flat black as a primer. Use Vallejo paints and thin them with Vallejo's thinner.

I paint figures as if they were getting dressed.

Eyes, skin, underclothes, clothes, accessories, shoes, and details.

Use at least three colors for every layer of clothing. A base, shadow, and highlight. The sun creates these in nature, but our layout lighting and small surface areas of miniatures will not. These must be painted on in thin layers.

-  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -

Figure painting is a seperate hobby of mine. I have painted hundreds (maybe thousands) of wargaming figures. This carries over to model railroading, but it is up to you if it is worth the time and money to get all of the supplies and develop the required skills.

I can answer a lot more questions if you are interested.

-Photographs by Kevin Parson

I absolutely love figure painting, and I do not consider it a chore. Most people do.

-Kevin

[chutton01]

Get some Minwax Walnut Polystain. Dip the figure in the stain and then shake as much off as possible
...
DO NOT do this to HO scale figures!

So Kevin, you piqued my curosity  Why should one NOT do this to pre-painted HO Scale figures - is the stain too thick? Is the results too dark or gloppy?

Also that jaunty figure in the brown coat and (I think grey scarf - seems like a Presier figure I have) seems rather unstable on that tank car running board. Clearly not an experience hobo...sorry, "train hopper".

[SeeYou190]

chutton01

So Kevin, you piqued my curiosity  Why should one NOT do this to pre-painted HO Scale figures - is the stain too thick? Is the results too dark or gloppy?

The Minwax Dip method leaves dark patches of stain in the recesses of the model. This exagerates the shadow effect, and removes the "flatness" of using only one color of paint on each feature.

Most HO scale figures have very low depth of details on the model. With low detail depth, the stain has nothing to flow into, and the shadows will all be in the wrong places.

This German Command Group is 1/100 scale, and was made by Battlefront Miniatures. All the features are overly sculpted and give much more depth to the details. This gives the stain a place to go.

-Photograph by Kevin Parson

I painted my entire German infantry collection with only six colors of paint for the entire army, and then dipped them for the shadow effect. It looks gloppy, but it does not look flat. When a couple hundred of these figures are on the table, it looks amazing.

This would not look good in HO scale on a layout. The figures would just look like they had been playing in the mud.

Army Painter makes a thinner dip that I have been told works better for figures like on a layout, but I have never tried it.

chutton01

Also that jaunty figure in the brown coat and (I think grey scarf - seems like a Presier figure I have) seems rather unstable on that tank car running board. Clearly not an experience hobo...sorry, "train hopper".

That is a Preiser figure. Preiser sells unpainted figures for a very reasonable price. They are a bit thin and spindly for my taste, and lack details, but they do paint up OK.

This guy is a cheap Bachmann figure. I like the way he painted up much better. His face actually had features to paint.

-Photograph by Kevin Parson

I can't wait to get my desk up an operational again... need to paint some tiny dudes.

-Kevin

 

[traindaddy1]

Kevin and all: Many thanks for your insight. Appreciate your replies. 

[chutton01]

SeeYou190

The Minwax Dip method leaves dark patches of stain in the recesses of the model. This exagerates the shadow effect, and removes the "flatness" of using only one color of paint on each feature.

That I understand. I use a thinned wash of brown/black enemals over acrylic body paint to get the shading which looks decent enough to me.  However, new and potentially easier techniques are always of interest to me.

I painted my entire German infantry collection with only six colors of paint for the entire army, and then dipped them for the shadow effect. It looks gloppy, but it does not look flat. When a couple hundred of these figures are on the table, it looks amazing.
This would not look good in HO scale on a layout. The figures would just look like they had been playing in the mud.

 

-Photograph by Kevin Parson

I painted my entire German infantry collection with only six colors of paint for the entire army, and then dipped them for the shadow effect. It looks gloppy, but it does not look flat. When a couple hundred of these figures are on the table, it looks amazing.
This would not look good in HO scale on a layout. The figures would just look like they had been playing in the mud.
...
Army Painter makes a thinner dip that I have been told works better for figures like on a layout, but I have never tried it.

Hmm, I have tried dip methods for other items that turned out (and other times was too gloppy). Maybe I'll try dipping the figures into a thinned wash and see how that works.

That is a Preiser figure. Preiser sells unpainted figures for a very reasonable price. They are a bit thin and spindly for my taste, and lack details, but they do paint up OK.

I knew I recognized that figure, I have at least two copies of him as the big Presier unpainted sets would normally include dups of figure sprues meaning two copies of the same figure in the set. Therefore with those sets you learn to get creative with paint colors, adding beards on men or filing to modify women's hair and dresses and so on. The several sets I have yielded about 400 figures, however as the big sets seemed to have been molded in the 1980s I had to do plenty of filing to removed ties on men and adding and filing putty to women figures to change dresses and skirts to blouses and pants for a 21st century era.  I disagree about the Presier figures being shallow and lacking detail - sure a few did, but most look pretty good when cleaned of flash, divots filled, and primed.

-Photograph by Kevin Parson

I've known that figure for well over 40+ years. My mother painted that Bachmann figure set for the very young me back in 1974 (IIRC the set included a mailman, a police man, several male and female commuters plus some meh water-based paints - the figure above was posed tipping his hat to a fellow lady commuter on my Bachmann Suburban station platform), I repainted it twice over the years, then realizing this refugee from the 1950s would never work in the 21th century I finally stripped and repainted him and his lady friend, gave the skin a glossy complexion, stuck wire stands in their backs and now they will reside in a large 'antique consignment' shop I am building to contain all the various old-fashioned detail parts like signs, soda machines, furniture and so on I collected over decades of building AHM/IHC, Bachmann, LifeLike etc. kits.

[SeeYou190]

Here is an example on how the Minwax Dip Method works better on larger scale figures.

This fellow is 1/56 scale. The dip shadowed the figure much more effectively. I think I used 8 colors to base coat this model/

-Photograph by Kevin Parson

The way Minwax flows and sticks just does not scale down well to HO scale.

-Kevin

[rrebell]

The minwax way is rather crude and not easily corectable. Much better to use Citadel or other shade colors and yes you can use this in HO which is my scale.

[SeeYou190]

rrebell

The minwax way is rather crude and not easily corectable

Yes, but the OP was asking about easy ways to correct O scale figures, so I tossed out the Minwax Dip as an easy way to add depth and shading without the need for much skill development.

It is "down and dirty", but effective on the right figures.

I painted this Fire Elemental Demon with just two colors. I base painted it bright orange, dipped it in Minwax, then highlighted it with a drybrush of yellow.

-Photograph by Kevin Parson

Total brush time: About 5 minutes

Effective for tabletop: Yes

Golden Daemon competitor: No

Minwax dip on O scale figures will not make anything as good as this, but it will be a huge improvement over single color flatness.

-Photograph by Kevin Parson

I used Dot Filter on that green footlocker for the first time, and was very happy with the results. This is something I need to try out on freight cars soon.

-Kevin