About this Site

Purpose of this Blog is to become a tool and a place where artist that collect and paint flat figures can find interesting links and news about flats, painting techniques, history and various related articles.English speaking related sites are very few but hopefully this blog will provide the collector and the painter with interesting and valuable information about the Art of the Flat Figure and everything related to it.
During the next days I will post any related info I have collected for a long time about various aspects of Flats. Techniques, photos, links, historic articles, anything that is related. Wherever possible I will including the author of the original article. I apologise if sometimes the author's name is not included. It's not intentional but it is lost through time.

Sunday 30 December 2007

Attic Miniatures

By Panos Charalampakis

While on the usual look for more sets for my collection I found out a new editor, UK based, that looks promising, Attic Miniatures. At the moment they have some old Western Miniature sets that was rather difficult to aquire. Many British subject which usually are rare among the German editors with plans for their own designs in the future. Worth to keep an eye on these fellows.
They do have paypal and I got very fast and pleasant responses to my mails.
Link is http://www.attic-miniatures.com/

Monday 24 December 2007

Leopold von Dessau vignette finished

By Panos Charalampakis

This is my first over 30mm figure (or group of figures anyway) that I finish. It’s a new set from Fredericus Rex engraved by Daniel Lepeltier and designed by Konrad Schultze. It is of 54mm and consists of 3 pieces, two sections of the house entrance and wall and the group of figures standing on the doorstep and the pavement. It is painted exclusively with oils straight over white primer. The background and the ground are painted without insisting on detail with numerous washes and dry brusing as I didn’t want to “steal” from the detail of the figures. Black, blues, browns and sienna reds were used for the washes while lighter tones of greys, red, greens (very sparingly) and whites in some spots were used for dry brushing. I confess I chickened out and I didn’t paint the sky myself that’s why I used an enlarged section of the sky of the actual painting.
The figures were based onto the painting that Konrad provides into his site and tried to follow as closely as I could the actual painting, although in some spots I deviated from it simply because I felt it suited the whole composition better. A different tone, a more or less pronounced cast shadow and so on. As usual, no paint were used straight from the tube but always added a 2nd (and sometimes a 3rd hue) to the base color for more color variation. That’s why no two whites or two blues etc have the same value. I won’t bother you with the exact mixes, although I have kept a small recipe of what I used for easy re mixing if I need a similar tone in the future. I’m sure that more things could be done, but I prefer set a limit when adding details, new shadows and lights or making corrections, otherwise I could spend a year just by adding, removing or correcting things. I prefer doing so and move to my next subject. Oh, and also for the first time I made the frame myself with some leftover laquered wood I had from my previous “round figure” life.