My very first self-painted paper soldiers

 My very first self-painted paper soldiers

Hello,

today I would like to show you my very first self-painted paper soldiers. At the beginning of January I was in contact with Jean-Benoît Pfeiffer via Facebook, and when he explained to me how he makes his wonderful figures, I didn't want to wait any longer and created the first template and started gluing, cutting and painting.

These were my "test pieces" so to speak. Unfortunately, I didn't pay too much attention to research on the figures, so the piping that was supposed to run in the middle of the chest now runs much too far to the side. I also thought it would look particularly good if I outlined all the details with thin black lines. I did that with acrylic paint, but it was incredibly slow. So I tried out different things and finally found a bottle of black ink. That worked much better - although the ink was a bit shiny after it dried. So I wanted to seal the figures with a layer of matt varnish. That's where the strange shine and the spots that you see in the photos (especially in the dark blue) come from. All in all, more and more things came together that made me unhappy with it. For example, my buttons were still very uneven, etc. So at some point I decided to end this "series" instead of painting figures that I had far too many complaints about from the start.

So those were my first works from the beginning of January 2025. Only a few weeks have passed since then, but I think I've changed my style since then. And these test figures were of great importance for that - even if five of the ten were never finished. At least I learned a few things that I won't do in the future!

Best wishes,

Andreas