Crusader! Crusader!

I want to show my latest piece. It is a 90mm crusader knight by Romeo Models.

As you can see it's quite a big piece. That's one of the reason I do not usually paint 90mm scale historic miniatures. They are big, but more importantly they are heavy! Quite heavy and if you can, imagine holding such a piece for long straight hours. A real pain in the ass.

That's why I like more 54mm, basically.

Said that, 

Here's a brief explanation of what I did.

Preparation and cleaning 3-4 h

I cleaned the various parts of the biggest metal chunks starting with sanding all the fusion lines on the biggest surfaces. Than I had to use an x-acto knife to partially clean the fusion lines inside the folds on the arms. Manually I had to cut quite a large part of it as the "step" of one side to the other was impossible to fill with milliput.

After the manual cleaning I used a Dremel and cleaned throught the parts, bringing them to shine.

After that I cleaned all the parts with ChanteClair (degreaser for house cleaning) and an old tooth brush.

After that I put some softened milliput to fill all the little gaps. Than I sanded it smooth clean and again the degreaser.

Then I pinned everything with brass rods. And I mean everything, sometimes with multiple rods. Every main piece (I didn't glue the dagger, the sword, the shield and the ribbon) then was glued using superglue to fix it in place and then epossidic glue to give it resistance (I did it at the same time). After I left it for a day for the glue to set, I immediately noticed that one half of the gown was warped and had taken a more slight ample curve. Basically there was this big step between the other half and the rest of dress. I took some green stuff and sculpted (I tried to) on the other parts so to par them.

Finally I took it and primed it black, then a little spray of white.

Painting 30 h

I used my airbrush to spray all the figure with the base color of the white, Iraqi Sand Vallejo, then I used Vallejo Air white to reassert the overall white tone. After that I used only my brush.
Basically I used only Iraqi Sand for the base, then in sequence english uniform, camo black brown and a little black to create the shadows.
The lights were created on the gown using vallejo buff for its yellowish tone, than 2nd Light from the White Set Andrea, then White. The upper part was done the same way minus Buff.

After many hours of light and shadows I tried to clean every surface but eventually there were too much dust speckles and in few areas you can see them clearly ( dust is such a big problem in my room).
The face was done using the skin recipe by Stefano Lancioni, he just posted it the morning I started the face and I said "What the Heck! I must copy it!" (the results are not the same obviously).
Lancio's Skin
The red was done with Napoleonic Green, Basic Red and Vermillion(Vallejo).
The leather was done using everything I had on my palette, mixing and adding everything. So I really don't know what I used except for the final steps with brown ink and chestnut ink with black ink from GW to give it some satin or gloss finish.
The shield was done spraying the base color with the airbrush and then I used oil (why? because I felt trying).

The figure comes with a little scene but I left it to the client to do them as requested by himself, like he asked me to leave the piece like that so he could create a little base on a plinth.

Overall the pictures are showing exactly the figure (no tricks taking pictures from far away, light and cold bulb and everything else) as I painted it but there was some overexposure so a few intermediate steps for the white were lost and the shadow are more harsh than they really are.

Andrea "Kraan" Buratta