FeR Miniatures Red Army Junior Lieutenant Barbarossa, 1941 SOLD

I had a couple of these beautiful mini busts from FeR Miniatures for my birthday. This one is much the easier one of the two to paint so I went for this one first. As you can see it's not complex with not a great many things to paint. Both my 1/16 mini busts are single piece castings and looking at the others available I suspect all of them are. All paints used are Vallejo Model Color .

Started with the eyes then flesh from there. The look on the face is despair, most Junior offices would be staring death in the face in the first months of the German invasion. Either from the wasteful attacks or for their failing to attain impossible missions. As such I went with a pale skin tone, this also seems to be backed up by accounts I have read. 

I was going to leave it at that as I had no confidence and little idea on how to do the hair effect. It would end up being almost the last stage I finished so was really worried I would mess it up.

The uniform and hat base colour was Vallejo 70879 Green Brown but I added different yellows to the base colour to give slightly different start colours and then added more of each yellow for each new layer. The tunic received about eight stages whilst the hat received about half as many.

The base normally gets added at the end but in this case it was added pre priming so no risk of damaging the finished piece! Yes I own that T-Shirt.

Lesson for the future will be to sand down the resin base as it's a bit bumpy. Too late for the British Para as he is already attached to his base. Piano wire instead of the usual thicker wood or brass rod that I use for the bigger Busts.

Really happy with how the buzz cut hair came off. I mixed 70.841 Andrea Blue and 70.815 Basic Skintone very very thin so more a glaze. Probably a lot thinner than someone with more confidence as I had to add several washes of this over before I was happy with the look. Then sealed with further washes of watered down Skintone. This was suggested to me by someone on the Facebook Bust@ group. Anyone wanting to get into bust painting should join here as it's a great group and in the six months or so I have been a member it's all been very positive. Some of the work is jaw dropping, so much better than I can hope to get.

Another view of the hair. One thing I think I am learning from this one is to actually work with a far thinner consistency paint and layer it up rather than go for more colour changes. This should give a smoother finish. That being said the images you see are blown up way above actual size.

The other big jump for me was working on leather. Having watched a few tutorials I had a bash. I was surprised in just how many other colours you use away from the final colour planned. I started with 70.871 Leather Brown but then dabs of various red browns along the edges and folds straight out of the bottle. Then a watered down 70.877 Goldbrown for around the belt holes and more on the edges and places it would rub. A thin wash of 70.836 London Grey followed by a few washes of other darker browns and finally a mix of very thin wash of Goldbrown and touched up thicker wash of the Goldbrown. The Lieutenant pips, backing of the star both 70.801 Brass and buttons and belt buckle the brass mixed with a bit of black to dull off the shine and make look different to the polished brass.

The only question is do I keep him or sell him on to pay for more hobby stuff. As you can see he is not at all large. In fact when I got him I was a fair bit disappointed as for the price of two of these you can get a larger bust. However they have grown on me but for now I will be working on a couple of the larger ones I have in hand.