Boot25 (John Richer) is no stranger to 1/6 scale fans. John proves that you don't need fancy schmancy oil paints to repaint these sculpts, and his system obviously works time and time again. You can see from the photo's that he achieves a fantastic level of realism consistantly time after time after time. Johns been kind enough to put together this tutorial for painting headsculpts with enamels. He assures me that this method will work equally well with acrylics. Waiting for oils to dry is no longer a viable excuse to have those horrible factory paint jobs on your figures. Buck up for some supplies, and follow Johns recipe for success!

The first step is to spray a cote of Testors Dullcote on the sculpt. After the Dullcote is dry it it's time to paint! Use a good quality RED SABLE 6/0 Liner brush to apply the shadows (the dark areas in the picture), this should inlcude the inside of the ears as well utilizing Testors Model Master Skin Tone Shadow #2004.

Using the 1/4 Shader brush lightly drybrush Testors Model Master Skin Tone Light #2001 to the highlight areas of the face. This includes the bridge and end of the nose, nostrils, cheeks and so forth. Using the liner brush go back over the shadow areas with the Warm Skin Tone to help blend the color seperations in. At this time you will also lay down the the lips with a mixture of Tesotrs #1705 Insignia Red and the Warm Skin Tone.

Finally the entire face is lightly drybrushed again using the Warm Skin Tone. This will help tie the colors together and smooth out the variances in the shading/highlights. It's not necessary to repaint the eyes or hair If your careful. You can see that Werner here has had a repaint on the hair to a new color and it does make the figure look that much more unique. Hopefully this will encourage even more modelers to try their hands at repainting their headsculpts! If you have questions or comments you can reach John directly here: John17@cox.net