The Beginning: Act 5 Scene 4

VICTORY!

This is it - the last of my practice marines - the inspirational leader, the most complicated to paint. The one with a face. Yikes.

The lessons I'm intending to act on today are:

1. Using a wet palette to avoid paint drying out
2. Using different water pots for metallic and non-metallic paint
3. Re-applying the base colour after applying the shading
4. Try more starkly contrasting highlights on the edge of the armour
5. Using gloss varnish, matt varnish and MicroSol to apply the decals

First though, applying the base colours. There are a few more small areas of colour to paint this time - with some fiddly detail on the dagger and skeleton key.

So far so good. The wet palette worked really well - keeping the larger volume of blue paint wet between the two coats, and avoiding any waste. The palette is as simple as possible - a plastic takeaway tub, a folded sheet of kitchen role soaked in water, and a piece cut from the bottom of a baking-tin liner.

Shading was applied exactly the same as last time; looks pretty much the same. The additional stage is next - re-applying the base colours.

That does look better - a better starting point for the layering.

Less shading this time - hopefully coming across as slightly more subtle. Now on to the edge highlighting; I'm going to try for harsher highlights (very white), but fewer of them. I'm then going to add the decals using the gloss varnish > decal > MicroSol > matt varnish method.

There we have it. I'm not sure I like the highlights from this method either. I think highlighting is going to need a lot more practice - hopefully it will get better (and easier and quicker) as my brush control improves.

The three marines are now complete. I've learnt a lot, I've got some decent practice in, and I'm actually pretty happy with the end result.

This is not the end. This is not the beginning of the end. But it is the end of the beginning.