The Toad - Infamy Miniatures

So I made a little promise with James the owner of Infamy Miniatures that I would paint one of his models for Salute to enter in the comp as I have all of them and have yet to paint one.....the forfiet was for me to give him my Reaver, although I am sure he would never have collected.  But it was a motivator for sure, but the models are so gorgeous that no motivation is needed just a gentle push to start in the first place.

I chose the Toad the newest release and it hasn't failed to impress me, lovely sculpting by Mihk

 Started off by undercoating black and then zenithal highlighting with a white undercoat

Peaky Blinders is one of my favourite drama series in recent times (yes I prefer it to game of thrones etc.) and I made a concious decision to use some of the pictures from the series when I worked on the Toad. Set in Victorian Burmingham at the turn of the 20th century and based on the youth gangs of the era, I thought it was the perfect colour palette for a steampunk gangster like the Toad.

From this picture I went with Arthur Shelby on the right - he just seemed the perfect fit and the colours in the skin all just fit in perfectly with what i had in mind anyway.

Started on the face.  I started with a basecoat of Stained Olive from Reaper to give that sickly green tinge to the flesh, then added various skin tones to it, building up to a more human colour yet still retaining a hint of the Stained Olive.

Sadly, the way I paint is grab a colour without looking at the name, just whatever seems right, so can't reveal every flesh tone.

I didn't take the highlights too high at this stage and began to add some shade with a little Dark Sea Blue from Vallejo mixed into some skin tone and Stained Olive. I blended this into the fat folds and then added a tiny amount of black to that for further shade.

I also used pure Dark Sea Green glazed onto the skin to insinuate stubble. Finally at this point I wanted to add a little contrast and colour interest to the skin. Adding some crimson glazing around the eyes, cheeks and nose (being a perfect contrast to the greens already in the skin) gave the face some life!

I started to add more colour by introducing pale yellow and pink glazes into the highlights, further increasing interest, then finally adding white to these glazes.

At the same time I worked the other way, improving the shadows with more dark sea green glazes.

At this point I left the skin alone. I have learned from far superior painters than myself to take parts of a model to a point of 'not quite finished' and then move on to other areas. This means that once the other colours are put on the model and start to interact with those already in situ, you can assess what you need to change.

I started to block out the base colour for the hat and waistcoat and painted the rollie he is smoking.

I also painted the pinstriped shirt using bone colours rather than white, to give that slightly used feel rather than a box-fresh bleached and starched shirt

I started to work up the colour of the hat and waist coat, starting with a base colour of Bone Shadow and adding progressively more white to it for the highlights and then adding Stained Olive (used in the skin and duplicated here to bring the model together as a whole) for the shade. I also used a little black for the really shaded areas.

On the very light areas you have pure white and on the deepest recesses black giving the area contrast and visual interest.