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General Miniature Painting - Tips, Techniques, Questions & Advice
Talonrazor
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I used to a ton of painting and modeling with normal scale models, World War II tanks and planes, ships, that kind of stuff. Since I now got into Rezolutions (another thread I'll make, best miniature game ever), I'm learning how to paint minis. One thing is working with GW paint, it's a bit different then the other paints I've dealt with. I wanted to get some general painting ideas and tips and instead of bugging the WH40 thread, I thought I'd open up a general thread and gather the perspective painting knowledge of the entire ODAM community.
I'll start with a couple of questions.
1. I'm currently painting two big zombie-esque creatures and I need a good reddish color for spilled guts/bleeding. What GW color is a real good blood color? How do you layer for a gut affect?
2. What's the best effective way to use inks and washes? It's not really like drybrushing and it appears to me they work best for highlighting. Is this true?
3. What's a really good primer? I almost never primed when doing scale models but I've seen primers for sale at my FLGS and used it once. Do you recommend priming? What kind of primer should I use? Should I use a light primer or a dark primer?
Thanks guys. Feel free to add general tips and fancy techniques you've found to work and post some examples of your work. I hope to get some of my own up in a fair bit.
I'll start with a couple of questions.
1. I'm currently painting two big zombie-esque creatures and I need a good reddish color for spilled guts/bleeding. What GW color is a real good blood color? How do you layer for a gut affect?
2. What's the best effective way to use inks and washes? It's not really like drybrushing and it appears to me they work best for highlighting. Is this true?
3. What's a really good primer? I almost never primed when doing scale models but I've seen primers for sale at my FLGS and used it once. Do you recommend priming? What kind of primer should I use? Should I use a light primer or a dark primer?
Thanks guys. Feel free to add general tips and fancy techniques you've found to work and post some examples of your work. I hope to get some of my own up in a fair bit.
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There's a colour called something like "Red Gore" that makes a good mid-colour for blod and guts. If you're layering, the trick is to use colours that are darker than instinct will tell you. If you use an ink, go quite light and use a dark reddish brown to wash. You can let the ink dribble a bit for a bloody mess effect, then highlight it a little. I like to use a bit of gloss varnish to make them seem sticky.
Ink washes will pool in recesses, so it's kind of the opposite effect to highlighting. Start quite bright and the ink will tone it down, but it's important to remember that the wash is more of a tint than a colour, so the colour you see will be neither the base colour nor the ink colour, but something in between. It's a good technique for things like flesh, where highlighting is a complete pain.
Primers are good. They help the paint to adhere to the surface and make for a smoother finish (especially spray primers). I use GW's Citadel brand spray primers, and I've been fairly happy with them, so I've never tried anything else. I'm sure others can recommend good brands.
As for colour, it depends what you're painting. Darker primer works better with darker colours, Lighter primers work better with light colours. They do affect the final finish in different ways. Models primed dark will have heavier tones, models primed light will look more vibrant. It's also worth mentioning that trying to build up to a light colour from dark primer will involve lots of coats of paint. Building from dark to light isn't nearly as much effort.
How advisable is it to use enamel paint? I've got a ton of enamel paint from when I scale modeled and I wonder how much you guys advise using it. Does it work well as a basecoat? Drybrush and highlight? Do you use it at all? I've got good quality paint, Model Master, and I hate not to use it...
Eh, Simple Green won't work on enamels as far as I know. You'll have to try something much stronger like brake fluid. I've personally never used enamels, so I can't comment on it too much. I'm an acrylic guy, much like most wargamers.
Do not try to mix enamels and acrylics, or apply one on top of the other.
Acrylics 100%
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Acrylics. Water based. Easy to use and clean up. Much easier to restart from too. Use it, love it.
I'm no master, but here goes:
If its pooling either the paint is too watered down, you are putting too much paint on the model, or both. If its pooling and leaving the flat area uncoloured or lightly tinted, too dilute. If its pooling but flat areas are coloured, too much paint.
Watering down is a good thing, but that doesn't mean you should always do it (some people differ on this, but this is my opinion). I don't water down basecoats or washes, only during highlighting or glazing. Also, you would be surprised how much water a brush can hold, and how inconsistently it seems to release it. To water down consistently, do it on a palette with a seperate brush.
If you put too much paint on the model, wipe off your brush on a tissue (but don't clean it), and paint over the surface. Repeat until all streaky blobbyness and pooling is gone, and the paint follows the curvature of the model. Then put less on next time.
Miscellaneous tips:
Clean your brush lots. This stops paint getting to the base of the bristles, keeps the tip good, and keeps the paint on the brush from going all gritty and wierd. I generally completely clean and dry the brush at least once during any basecoat unless its a very small one.
If you find yourself mixing colours a fair bit, try a wet pallette. They are the best thing ever!
Haha, that sounds a bit odd. Someone explain the wet palette!
Thats the one. I tried the sponge/greaseproof paper method, and only found it a minor help. Then I tracked down refills for some of the proper stuff, and it makes a huge difference.
The idea is you have a palette, but moisture seeps up through the surface so your paint doesn't dry out or change consistency while you work.
I suppose its more of a permanently damp palette really.
Will dive back into gobbos in the week and see if I can hit it.
SoogaGames Blog
My observations thus far are:
-Metallics need lots of watering down, as the blends have to be much smoother.
-Wait for each bit to dry if you want to see exactly how it will look.
-Check it under different light if it looks even slightly dodgy.
I'm still trying to figure this one out myself though. Going beyond the good ol drybrush is hard with metallics.
As japan says, ink washes are basically a dead easy way of adding layers of shading. It's best used in conjunction with some highlighting as well, as just a base colour with a blanket ink wash looks a bit skew-whiff (to me, anyway) and a tad too shiny. Slap on your base colour for the piece of clothing/face/whatever and then do the ink wash once the paint's dried. The whole area will now be darker, and the recesses will be darker still. If it pools too deeply in the recesses you can thin out the amount of ink by dipping a tiny piece of tissue (or a dry brush, or anything absorbent) into the area to soak up some of the excess. When the ink has dried you can re-paint the raised areas with the base colour again and start mixing some of the base colour with white (or whatever lighter colour) in small amounts and begin the laborious process of applying successive coats of ever-lighter colour to the raised areas. Each time you make the mix lighter you'll be painting a smaller area. So, you've gone from base colour to base colour + ink wash to base colour + inkwash + successive highlighting layers and now everything looks great. Hopefully. It's a time-consuming process, but it's well worth taking the trouble.
Another thing you can do with ink washes is to follow a wash with some drybrushing. I find this works best with uneven surfaces with lots and lots of ridges (like fur, for example, or some types of hair). Slap on your base coat, wait till dry, apply ink wash. Now, get the base colour (or the base colour + white mix) and apply to a brush. Now wipe most of the paint off the brush and draw the brush lightly and evenly across the surface you want to highlight. You can also do this with successive coats of drybrushing, making the mix a little lighter each time and using less on the brush to achieve the same sort of effect you get with the ink wash + highlighting outlined above.
For the guy asking about metallics - one thing I found worked well was just to paint the base coat of metallic colour and then drybrush a very small amount of black/rust - drawing the brush over the edges and a little way across the flat surface (not aiming to provide highlights here for the raised areas, just accentuating the parts that would get knocked about in everyday use). Hey presto, instant battle wear. Alternatively, don't bother with a metallic base coat at all and just drybrush heavily over a base coat of black.
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Good for picking out detail, and maybe ageing things.
Back in the day, I'd paint up a model, then take a lighter shade, and using an old brush (or a special one) I'd take a lighter colour, apply it to this brush, then rub most of it off on a tissue or whatever. Then gently wipe it over the model. Only the raised surfaces should get any paint on them, so the detail gets brought out.
Also, you have too much paint on your brush. Trust me, you do. It takes a long freaking time, but super tiny thin coats add up nicely.
I wish I would have taken some pictures last night of the night goblin I did. I blanked on the shield, and need to redo it now (my attempted color scheme failed miserably) but the skin and robe went very well I think. I'll be sure to post it tonight for a critique and maybe get some suggestions on colors.
If my roommate gets back within the next hour, I want to borrow his camera and do a little painting blog thing here. Step by step and taking questions for most of the day.
These are the models I want to do:
and if I have time/if I feel like it:
Inquisitor will be in light colours (white armour) Steel legion guy in dark colours, and the eldar in Red Armour.
Sam and Frodo will be done like in the picture.
Would anyone like this?
just to get an idea of what my other models look like
(spoilered for big)
--edit--
Oh, and I might try to get a Wet-palette together to use for the first time
By "Really thin those bastards down" what kind of a dilution would you suggest? would a 1:2 or 1:4 ratio of paint:water do it, or should it be even more of a dilution?
P.S. Sharp, that would be great. Something like that would be interesting to pleanty of people I think.
I would GUESS at 1:1 water to paint, maybe closer to 2:1
If he gets home soon I can get started, everything is sitting there assembled primed and ready to go.
If not, I'll have to wait until Thursday. (have to write an essay tomorrow :P)
I'm pretty happy with how this night goblin turned out. I wanted to test a color scheme and see if I could figure out how to paint green skin. I think I did a pretty good job on the skin. The robe looks good, if a touch subdued. It definitely needs highlights. The shaft of the spear, the rope belt, and the shield all need to be repainted. The shaft was rushed, the belt got one coat, and my planned color scheme for the shield failed. I tried to recover by doing a red shield/bronze pattern on it, but then it got mushy and I went for a bronze shield. It just looks ugly now. Going to give it a coat of black and start from scratch there.
The dwarf was a quick paint job to test colors as well. It was also done before I realized how much I really needed to thin my paints, so the paint on him is really thick. Also, his beard is just one coat of beastly brown and a quick black was I gave the entire model.
So, suggestions on how to go about highlighting those robes? How do I keep my colors vibrant without takihng away from the dark tone I want to go with for the robes?