finally paints the first of his Gauls...
Being satisfied with the general scene, it was on to painting. I primed the figure using my usual combination of grey spray primer and black wash. After that had dried, the shade colours were painted on: Vallejo 983 Flat Earth for the skin, 899 Dark Prussian Blue for the breeches and tunic, 889 Olive Drab for the cloak and 822 German Camo Dark Brown for pretty much everything else. Smaller areas, such as the belt and jewelry, were left in their black-primed state. The armour was then drybrushed with 863 Gunmetal Grey and 997 Silver.
After this, it was time to see whether my three-layer technique would work on this scale - I started painting the skin. The colours used in painting the skin were 843 Flat Earth (as stated above), 843 Cork Brown for the midtones, and 955 Flat Flesh for the highlights.
The midtones and highlight layers were not painted on in one go, but were painted in small increments with very thinned paint. I thinned the paint to a ration of about 1:1:2 in paint:Vallejo Matt Medium:water and painted that on in steps. I achieved a limited blending by painting each successive stroke slighly smaller than the one below it, so that the translucency of the paint creates a smooth(ish) transition between colour layers. A better explanation of this process can be found on the Vallejo website, under Articles, or in the Darkson Designs Painting Guide. Anyway, the result can be seen in the picture above.
One final note as to the eyes - they are sculpted as eyeballs with a depression (well, a hole really) for the pupil. If I found any problem with the sculpt of this figure, that's it - it is virtually impossible to paint a good-looking eye when the pupil is sculpted as a hole. It is far better to just sculpt the eyeballs and let the painter put his own pupil in. That said, for this guy's eyes, I just used... beige around the pupils and left the pupils themselves black.
As for the rest of the painting, I'm afraid I got a bit carried away while painting and forgot to take pictures of the individual steps, so I'll just list the various colours I've used on the figure. The major features (cloak, tunic and breeches) have seen attempts at blending (more or less sucessful), but I didn't bother for the smaller areas such as the belt, which have their colours layered on straight (i.e. without the thinning game). After the major colour areas were done, this is what the figure looked like:
The colours used were:
Tunic
Tunic Decoration
Breeches
- 899 Dark Prussian Blue
- 899 DPB + 951 White
- 899 DPB + more 951 White
Cloak
- 889 US Olive Drab
- 920 German Uniform
- 920 German Uniform + 917 Beige
Belt
- 983 Flat Earth
- 983 Flat Earth + 917 Beige
Gold
- 993 Bronze
- 993 Bronze + 997 Silver
Wood
- 822 Dark Brown
- 873 US Field Drab
- 873 US Field Drab + 917 Beige
Hair & Fur
- 822 Dark Brown
& Shield
- 873 US Field Drab
- 914 Green Ochre
Shield Design
- Foundry Madder Red
As can be seen from this list, the only other paints I've used besides Vallejo are some Foundry paints on the decorative hem of the tunic and the shield design. For those wondering, by the way, the shield design was supposed to be a hand, but it turned out more like a blob, unfortunately. 
One area of the figure I'm not that happy about is the breeches or trousers. I had overdone the highlights a bit, so I applied a glaze of 899 Dark Prussian Blue (a glaze is a paint that has been thinned greatly - something like 1:2:10 paint:medium:water in my case) to tie the layers together a bit. Unfortunately, that resulted in a general colour feel which is a bit more saturated than the rest of the figure (saturation in colour means the 'vibrancy' or 'trueness' of the colour - a very unsaturated colour is hardly distinguishable from gray with the same lightness). However, correcting that would have entailed repainting the entire area, and I did not quite feel up to that.
When the majority of the figure was painted, I assembled the final base for the miniature. The circular base provided was glued to a decorative curtain rail holder from the local hardware store (one has to be creative in our hobby), and then covered in birdcage sand, glued on with normal white glue.
The base was then painted using Vallejo 822 Dark Brown, the shield was attached with superglue, and static grass was glued on in patches using white glue again. When the glue was dry, the groundwork and static grass were drybrushed with Vallejo 873 Field Drab and 914 Green Ochre.