Major Dreadful and Archie, his trusted bulldog

This piece is from Smart Max Miniatures. It was originally released in October 2009 and since that moment It remained closed in my "new pieces" box.
Major Dreadful and Winston



It was sculpted by Grégory Clavilier (the Major Dreadful) and Romain Van Den Bogaert (Winston, the dog).
This is the first piece I ever bought from them and It was a blast since the first time I saw it.
The novelty it represented was extraordinary and the addiction of the bulldog with the gas mask was what in the end convinced me of investing 25€ (more or less) for such a beautiful and unique piece.

Before the Christmas Holidays a fellow painter and member of AMIS asked me if I could show him how I work. The necessary steps for painting a miniature at a Certain level (relatively to him).
We decided in breaking up the piece and doing thematic lessons so that I could explain him zenithal lighting, how to make creases in clothes, how to paint metallic in an interesting way and making little diorama bases.

What followed was a series of demos (it was just me painting) in which we chose the theme of the lesson and then starting straight away explaining.
It was interesting to show someone else my way of painting because how different our approaches were.
He comes from the historic side of painting. AMIS is an association where most people paint exclusively with oils and historic subjects.

The piece was primed with Tamiya grey Primer (a great product but a threat to those clumsy or uncaring of preparing a piece). Then I started painting all the pieces separately with acrylics (I use Vallejo, GW, Liquitex...)

First was the coat in which I showed him how leather or animal fabrics behave regarding colors. Especially since Major Dreadful is a fantasy piece and those restrictions of reality aren't strict as he thought they were.
I used some mix of browns for the base color and then for the lights i used oranges and ochres. For the shadow I showed him the use of washes and the in end glazes with inks to give a satin finsih.

Then I painted the trousers and eventhough the sculpt was not as extreme, I painted the creases like they were big and precise and not smooth and round. The reason was simply to show how the zenithal light changes the approach in painting in respect of general light (what I describe as GW style or gamestyle - no condemnation intended- ).

The steam arm gave me the opportunity to show my friend how metallic colors can be used exactly as normal colors with the usual scheme [SHADOW-BASE COLOR-LIGHT] and blended together.
I used the metals from GW and then one (i think bronze or copper) from Golden (they are so strong that pure are like punches in the eye).
To add a few extra touches I added some rust spots using acrylics (though I had my pigments with me).

The rest and the preparation of the base were done alone at home and then the painting of the earth was the last lesson (obviously before adding the grass and plants).
Usually I use semi-drybrush and drybush to paint bases. In this case I used wet on wet and then drybrushing.

In the end when he received the piece he was very happy and satisfied in how the "demos" worked for him.

I hope you like it.

See ya to the next article!

If you like to give your vote and your feedback to this paintwork in CoolMiniOrNot, you can do it here and here.
Thanks for supporting.

Andrea "Kraan" Buratta

Article and Pics by: Andrea "Kraan" Buratta