Forty-third scale is the most widely collected size of model car, and a figure of around forty millimetres is what turns a shelf of them into a story. The selection is small and mostly produced by fine 3D printing: racing drivers of the 1930s in period overalls and headgear, civilian characters, and subjects tied to the history of Czech travel, among them the explorers Zikmund and Hanzelka on their Asian and Oceanian expedition of 1959 to 1964.
At this size you are no longer painting a portrait but placing a suggestion, which makes it a forgiving entry point into figure work. The guide below covers period matching and a quick, reliable painting sequence.
Collectors of 1:43 cars often have dozens of vehicles behind glass, yet it is a single body by the door that makes one of them into a scene. The figures here cover interwar racing, ordinary street life and a few distinctly documentary subjects, and because they are printed rather than moulded the detail survives close inspection better than the size suggests. A forty-millimetre body is also the smallest size at which clothing still reads as clothing rather than as a painted silhouette, which is what makes it worth the effort beside a car.
A driver in a leather helmet belongs beside a 1930s racing special, not a post-war coupé. In a scene this small, period agreement between figure and vehicle carries nearly all the credibility. The same applies to headgear and footwear, which date a figure faster than its clothing does. Cars of every era are listed under car and Formula model kits.
Printed figures already carry the detail; your job is to underline it. Primer, the base areas of clothing, flesh, then a thin wash into the folds is the whole sequence. Faces are not portraits at this size, only a clean suggestion: a dot for the eye and a shadow under the nose do all the work from normal viewing distance.
The nearest alternative for automotive scenes is the larger 1:18 model figures, where there is genuine room for facial expression. To present a finished vignette, use model display bases.
Every size of figure is listed in the overview at model figures.
