Figure painting

Over the years I've dabbled with figure painting to various degrees of being fair to total shit and the bug has bitten me once again. It's been brewing for a while after seeing the work of Man Jin Kim, Sang Eon Lee etc and I even bought a Life Miniatures bust of a German tank commander last year after seeing the picture on the box but chickened out as I felt I could never do it justice;

 So this week I got a few goodies through the post (again) as I need all the help I can get;

I've been looking at getting a wet palette to help stop paints drying out and I could have gone for a branded product but instead went the cheapskate route. I cut the lid off a plastic food box (it did contain some nice cake) and stole a dish cloth and some greaseproof baking paper from the other half and voila! One wet palette!!

For practice purposes I'll be using a 200mm head that I bought from Mitches Military Models as they were selling two for £5 at a model show a year or so ago. I did get some Scale 75 paints for the flesh areas but this time around I'll be using Vallejo;

The head is attached to a holder that was obtained via a Kickstarter project which I find it VERY useful and can be found here;
http://rathcore.com/miniature-holder/

I used the grip holder for a figure I painted last week for the Personenwagen;

You can see what I mean about getting all the help I need :o)

Edit; I spent a very pleasant couple of hours at the bench and come up with this;

I'm quite pleased with that seeing I have'nt painted in ages

Figure painting practice

I picked up these 200mm heads from Mitches Military Models at the Crewe model show (22nd Feb) for a fiver as I thought they would be ideal for practising face painting without buggering up an expensive figure;

I also picked up this;

When I get a bit of time I shall have a play with them as they seem to look better than the Andrea Flesh set (the figure on the front of the Andrea packet seems a funny colour LOL).
The heads are quite nicely moulded and for £5 I can class them as a bargain. I do have a 120mm British Para by Mitches Military Models but the head was'nt brilliant so I got in touch and got 4 replacements for £5 which were much better and will make my figure look a bit different. MMM do some nice stuff and can be found here;
Mitches Military Models
The clamp the heads are in was also purchased at the show from Sphere Products. I actually bought it for a long term project which is a Poste Militaire 90mm mounted French Hussar as the kit is white metal and the horse alone will need a sturdy holder as it is quite heavy. The clamp itself is rather good and goes together easily enough, I just needed to file the location holes for the nuts as they are VERY tight. I bought the taller clamp as it includes the shorter one so I can interchange them to suit. Sphere Products can be found here;
Sphere Products
By the way I got the paint from Steve K Miniatures and he's a great guy to deal with;
Steve K Miniatures
Anyway back to the SS-23 :o)