Tuesday 23 May 2017

African bearer - Congo figure and skin colour test

As I hinted at earlier the newish Congo game caught me somehow. Luckily has a low figure count only and I'm creating a British expedition with some of my 1880s Brits and a couple of additions. The setting of the game of course dictates that some native african figures matter.
Until now I havent painted any other figures than more or less Europeans or North Americans. Since I'm always a bit hesitant with experiments I decided to paint a native bearer before tackling Askari and Ruga Ruga units. The figure is a piece of Wargames Foundry's wondeful Darkest Africa range and as far as I know it's been sculpted by Mark Copplestone.
The figure is sculpted really well and especially the facial expression is very characterful. Only the muscles of the arms and legs could be defined more clearly to make painting easier, For the choice of colours I consulted a rather old article I found in the Cool Mini or Not homepage. It deals with skin tones for different ethnic groups and gives some excellent colour suggestions from Vallejo's Model Color range. For further reading find the article here.
After all I'm pretty satisfied with the look. Without any doubt I need to work on working out muscles but the skin tone is rather okay I think. It appears a bit too bronze coloured but darker shades would disappear when watched from gaming distance.

What do you think?

21 comments:

  1. I think he looks great Stefan, really well done. That is a very good point about the using a darker palette and how it will appear from a distance, certainly worth thinking about. Unfortunately I can't access the link at school, but I will definitely be having a read later, thank you. My own plans for Congo are proceeding well, I am going to try to host the second episode, with the great ape, in the summer. I now have all the troops and extras assembled, but not painted. I just need to think about terrain.

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    1. Good to hear that you're progressing well with Congo. Please let me know how your Kong-session went. We played the very same scenario a couple of weeks ago and this dragged me into the game.

      Terrain is kind of easy but nice when you use aquarium plants and such things. I used more or less the same technique shown here:
      http://zangali.blogspot.de/2016/06/making-jungle-terrain-tutorial.html

      But unfortunately my pieces aren't finished yet...

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    2. That's a great link thank you Stefan.

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  2. Looks really great, the foundry african stuff is great

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    1. Many thanks, Martin. Indeed Foundry has a splendid range.

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  3. Agree with Michal, the skin colors are superb!

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  4. Very good! I, too, was have been thinking about suitable colour schemes for my Madhists and will have give this a look.

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    1. Thanks a lot, Monty.
      When you consider the Cmon article: I only used the first four layers suggested because it looked bright enough to me.

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  5. The skin color looks very good - for my abessinians I´ve gone to skin tones a little bit more reddish, but of course they are a bit away from Congo *gg*

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  6. Great work, I love the article and have found it very useful in the past.

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    1. It is indeed one of the best scources for skin colours I know.

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  7. Spot on Stefan. He looks just right mate.

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  8. The skin tones look really good, and well painted too.

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    1. Thanks Alan. The other three should be done tomorrow. I'll bring them online then.

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  9. Very well done Stefan! It might be my screen but the skin appears to be a tad greyish, or is it intentional?

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    1. Hmmm... Until now I didn't find it too grey...

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