Making Figures: Sinta revisited

I'm not satisfied with my paintjob on Sinta, and neither was my friend, who commisioned this piece from me. So after some discussion, we agree to repaint Sinta. The most sucky part of the first paint job is the metallic silver color of the dress. The red 'stripe' on the bottom of the skirt just got to go. And her skin is too dark. With all the changes mapped out, I began my weekend hobbyfest.

I started by cleaning and scraping all the paint that I can. I only use water, soap, and a LOT of elbow grease to clean her. After most of the paint is off the figure, I sanded and buff the figure to give myself a smooth surface for paint. After the workout, I'm ready to base coat the figure. I use white spray paint to lay the base coat. It took 3 layers to coat the figure. I even base coat the hair white!

After the basecoat is dry, I started to work on the colors. I use a mixture of poster and acrylic paint to paint all the colors you see here. Yep, no Tamiya color for me, yet. For those of you who are curious, I use Snowman and Sakura brand poster paint, the acrylic I use is Marie's artist acrylic.I first tackle the skintones. I mix pale orange with white (4:1) and a bit of lemon yellow. To thin the paint I use water, just water. I've learned from my previous attempt that adding alcohol to the mix will make the pigments clump and made the paint chalky. To stop the paint from drying to quickly and help eliminate brushstrokes, I add a few drop of dishwahing liquid. I then apply the paint in thin coats on the figure, making sure the previous coat is completely dry before a lay another coat. It takes 3 layers to achieve an even coating. I use the term 'even' very loosely, since you can see many brush strokes here and there. The bottom line is, if you have good model paints, dont use poster paints. I then drybrush the highlight and the shadows of the skin. For the highlight, I add more white and a bit yellow to the base skintone. I added burnt umber for the shadows.

After I finished coloring all the piece, I spary a top coat of dull laquer to seal the paint job. I like the end result. She now have more presence than before. The contrast between the black hair and white dress is sharp. The red and yellow really accented the figure well. I'm liking this color scheme. It maybe not the best paint job out there, but heck I paint a figure with poster paints!

And that's it for now. I hope you enjoy it.
If you have any question you could just ask through the comments or shoutbox. You can ask in both English or Indonesian. I'll try to answer your queries as best as I can.


Until next time!

Here's more photos of Neo Sinta