Thursday, June 13

Review – Painting Pin-Up figures by Julio Cabos

Andrea Miniatures produce a large range of Attractive pin-up figures in small scale – they are great sellers but with all of the flesh, makeup , hair and eyes to paint  what chance do the rest of us have when we tend to paint everything grey and green and usually male? Well none other than the master - Julio Cabos - has penned a book to show you just how to finish your pin up as pretty as a picture…

Andrea Press
AP-046I
Painting Pin-Up Figures (English)
By Julio Cabos
A4 Portrait softcover
88 pages
Colour photos throughout
Also printed in Spanish
Available from Andrea Press Directly

Sooo many people say when you are talking about figure modelling – “Yes I can’t paint figures very well” Well 9/10th of people – even figure collectors would sometimes say it. SO when anything that helps us understand painting figures – and especially figures as beautiful (and as beautifully sculpted)  we snap it up so you can see it – hence our review today of Andrea Press’ new title “Painting Pin-Up Figures”

This is a softcover A4 book in portrait form, the glossy soft cover is illustrated – as is the whole book – with pictures (there are over 300 of them) of these lovely little figures  that are a real sea change for hardened modellers who are tired of the same khaki and field grey. I am not sick of camouflage but I thought this book was good to have a look at.
The master and very talented painted Julio Cabos is the author of this book and even though his fist language isn’t English there is not even a beat missed in the translation and the book flows really well. The text is not overwhelming and it is complemented by the captions that describe in greater detail the specifics of each of the pictures. The pictures themselves are well shot – all in focus and well laid out in their composition as well as the book’s pages where they are almost places into the book like a photo album. The little tabs look like they holding their fotos in the book, nicely done and in keeping with the almost “pretty” them of the book.
Yes I said pretty – with so many lovely little figures and the many flesh tones with nice colours I think that this book would be attractive to the many (and yes there are quite a few) female modellers out there. It is however a no too “girlie” as the main focus is on the tools and techniques of painting – and doing it very well.
There are some detailed sections on both the tools of the painter and the consumables that Julio uses in his work. The first large section is concerned with brush painting, and we learn the basic techniques and indeed some tricks of Sr. Cabos’ trade. He takes us through how he paints hair, eyes, flesh, dresses and clothing and a really interesting section on how to paint stocking of all things. Indeed the book is a revelation as it showed me how to paint makeup! Something a lot of blokes out there may not have the first clue about – there’s a head-start to the ladies!
The other large section of this book is concerned with the rather more advanced art of painting these figures with an airbrush – a black art to some and easy-peasy to those in the know (it seems).
Although it probably is more practical to paint several parts of the figures with a brush – like the eyes and smaller details – several parts of the pin-up figure can be better painted with and airbrush with the right techniques in your arsenal. Julio takes us firstly through paints and materials he uses, the basics to airbrush painting (the air always comes on first and off last folks) but also painting flesh, dresses and stockings. Julio also explains how he mixes both the brush and airbrush to get the best results.
Lastly the desert – a whole gallery of Andrea’s pin-up figure catalogue – I think they are all painted by the author over a long period of time. So who better to write the book? They are stunning in metal as I think they would look in real life.
I for one am not sick of drab army colours when painting at all – yes I do paint nearly all male armed forces figures but recently have found some fun in science-fiction and movie figures of different genres – even so if I was just going to paint more German SS troopers I would still find this book a very tempting proposition. Learning how to look at, and then paint a human-being is the real selling point of this book. You could say it is the best brochure Andrea has ever produced – being that all of their products are in this title exclusively – but I think that these are the perfect subjects for a book like this. A real point of difference and it sure is easy to read and re-read this book – it certainly is not boring!
I really liked this a lot – it opened my eyes to the skills I need to progress past what I can do now as a figure painter.

Adam Norenberg
Many thanks to Andrea Press for sending me this book to read and to Julio Cabos for the enlightenment within