Mini Painting: The Painting Process
Sep. 8th, 2014 09:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittydesadeThe more I realize I know about this shit, the more terrified I get. Okay, here we go, the painting process. Pictures, again, will come as soon as I plug everything in and get them all set up.
Technically it doesn't start with priming, it starts with getting all that crap off your mini that you don't need there. I don't mean extraneous swords or nipples (okay, I do as well, but that's called modding, and is a whole other lecture), I mean fleck/spall/slag/etc. Crap. Refuse. Detritus. Get rid of it. Use your sandpaper, x-acto, file, whatever you want. If you're worried about any of these leaving marks on your mini, practice using each tool at the base of your mini where it won't show, because your mini's sitting on it.
Once you've got the fucker clean, prime it! Pick your primer according to your tastes, honestly. I prefer an acrylic or acrylic-urethane primer, and I prefer to prime according to what colors I'm going to be painting the mini. Gray is my default, it's not too intrusive if it shows up, it doesn't affect the colors too much, and I don't need to layer and layer and layer over it like sometimes happens with white. If I'm doing something very light colored though, I'll do white, or if I'm doing some kind of turtle-armored guy with lots and lots of non-metal metallic effects I'm going to need to do. Black, as I said, is for things with lots of popping colors, things that I'll need to blackline, or even things that are just dark colored. Deep greens and browns and reds and blues, night time things, whatever. There's a range of undead type colors in bone and sickly green, there's probably even more colors I haven't found useful yet. But keep in mind two things: 1) your primer may show up in cracks of places you haven't painted, and if you don't plan for that it probably will, and 2) Your paint is going over your primer, so both the composition and the color need to be something that will take color well.
Ahem. Prime in a well ventilated place. Prime in a well ventilated place. Prime. In. A. Well. Ventilated. Place. I don't want you to die from huffing primer fumes, and you don't want you to die from huffing primer fumes. And no, it won't kill you, but it is not good for you, so prime in a well ventilated place. The exception, of course, is if you're using paint on primer. But still, paint in general in a well ventilated place. A lot of this stuff is chemical and smells like it.
Primer, generally, no matter the end product, is designed to be a little rough, so the paint has somewhere to grip. Don't worry too much when you're applying it if it looks goopy, it will. In fact, most things will look goopy when they're first applied: primer, paint, and sealer. Don't worry about it. It'll dry and settle in, and if it doesn't, that's what stripper is for. Finesse and being calm about the goopiness will come with practice. If you're really worried, hold the spray can back further and apply it more lightly, or thin it if you're using brush on and apply it more lightly, and use multiple coats. Simple!
I'm trying to mostly take pictures of the same minis, but it just isn't going to happen, since I'm typing this up as I think of it, so. Sorry?
So, at its simplest, paint is: dip paint in brush. Apply paint to mini. Repeat. And indeed there are times (orc army I'm looking at you) when it feels that way, and when you're just starting something that will use maybe three main colors because it's a golem with no pants or a ghoul or something, that's true at the start. True and not true.
[ghoul pic]
So, yeah, right now I'm working on these assholes. Ghouls! I think. I don't actually know. One of the things you'll get used to if you do a lot of this is finding loose minis lying around. What did this go to? Did this have other parts? It must have, but where did they go? I have no fucking clue. My minis storage area is this messy, you guys.
[mini storage area]
And that's your first lesson. Don't be too concerned with what other people call the mini or how other people have painted it. You bought it, you own it, it's your mini, paint it how you want it. I have decided that these are two babyshit brown ghouls, so that is what I am painting them. Why? I have no idea. I had plague this week, maybe the snot coming out of my faceholes inspired me.
Now, people will refer to these by various names, and if you add in the makeup folk there's probably a couple more. I call them trios or triads: base color, highlight, shadow. This is actually a slight misnomer since I'm using four colors here, but we'll start out with, I'm using Vallejo Model Color 874 USA Tan Earth for the base color for these buggers. And in fact now that I have a dedicated working paint area, when I'm working on something consistently for a couple of days I can just leave them out as I'm working on them. The only irritating exception is if I'm using the same color for two things at once, which does happen. I also recommend keeping either a white board or a notepad of some kind and a pen (preferably on the other side of the table from the paint cup) if you at all think you'll need to reproduce this later. Somewhere I wrote down the colors I used for my orc army. I think I'll remember them to my dying day, though. So many orcs.
[paint array]
You'll learn how to pick which colors trio up best, and there are a lot of sites that have them listed out for you. Vallejo has some listed, Reaper has them actually laid out in trios you can buy, and various and sundry painting forums will have tutorials and pinned threads where you can see what other people have chose. This is another reason I recommend keeping a notebook or a file somewhere, so that you can go back and go, oh, hey, I painted this ghoul with these four colors for the body and that worked out all right, let's try some of these trolls in the same scheme. Or alternatively, oh dear god what the fuck was I thinking let us never speak of or do this again. I've had a lot of those moments too.
Do not line up all these colors and just go one, then two, then three. Do not. Do not. The point is to blend, so blend. Start with the first color, in my case that tan earth thing, and I went over it with one of my cheapass brushes because all I was looking for here was coverage and even-ness. And for that I did two or three layers; one thing you'll find about painting is that layers are good, layers are your friend, layers are the difference between oh fuck there's a spot of primer augh it's not thick enough why is everything covered in pink, and, ah there a nice even base coat of pulsing pink dermis, that'll make a nice base for the pustules and capillaries on this flesh golem. Layers give you solid bright color and also give you control, which is a thing you will like a lot. Layers are your friend. Remember I said I was going to jump around with my sample pictures a lot? Yeah, here's layering as applied to this potential vampiress or certainly Sinister Noble/Magic Lady Of Some Type, mostly because I sped through the ghoul without remembering to take pictures or mix paints in a demonstrative way. Oops.
[picture of something else]
And actually layers are also a good reason to use retarder, because you can spend a lot of time working on one layer and then need to mix in your next color, only to find that you've used up all the liquid paint and the rest of it is dry. I use Golden Additives retarder, Vallejo also makes a good one, find a brand you like. Experiment! Have fun! This is supposed to be fun, right?
Layers are also a good reason to have two to five minis going at any given time. Right now I'm typing this tutorial while I wait for the layers to dry, but eventually I'll probably be going back and forth between ghoul, ghoul, preacher, preacher, succubus, back to ghoul, giving each one time to dry before I add on the next layer.
Now. Once you've gotten your base coat on, it's time to start highlighting. I'll do an entire spread on that later, don't worry too much about the details, the very basic concept is that what is raised or catches the light gets highlighted, what isn't, stays the base color. Blend your base tone with your highlight, and layer it on. If you're just learning you can start with a base, a 50/50 blend, and then the highlight (I'm not kidding, there are times when I measure out the drops) and if you're feeling adventurous you can play around with the concept. You can see in the picture above that my trio is actually a quartet, so, eh. One of my new favorite skin painting tutorials uses up to five colors. It's the principle of the thing.
Some tips here: you can use any part of the brush, not just the point. If you've got a very sharp ridge or spur, it might help to lightly brush the side of the tip of your brush over it to just get a touch of paint on the top, where the brightest highlight goes. Using a dry brush sometimes helps more than having the brush be entirely wet, once you get down to the finer points of things. More control, again. Some people say you're not supposed to touch your fingertips to the mini because oils, but I find that doing so actually helps me remove excess paint sometimes. Just a very gentle dabbing touch, though. And dry your fingers first.
If I'm doing something with a lot of fiddly surfaces, like this chick, I'll put down all my base layers before I start messing with highlights and things. It's just easier, it means I don't get a perfect set of highlights on something only to swipe paint over it later when I go to paint another section. People have thought I was being murdered when I did that. I'm only half kidding, it's immensely frustrating. So, here we have some lovingly layered ... what is that, a kind of a kimono? It looks like she's wearing an obi, anyway. And her face is rudimentarily colored in with the darkest tone I'm going to use on her, since that's marginally easier than trying to shadow it later. This actually involved a shitload of layering, going back, layering gently over the parts where I got color on other bits, going back again, etc.
Shadowing is even trickier. And most likely requires more feathering, so I'm not going to touch on it here until I get better brush control with more liquid paints. I'm not even kidding, that is a bitch of a skill to learn but basically, yes. Shadowing is putting down dark patches where you want to imply that there are grooves, or where there are grooves or shadows from raised patches. Interestingly I keep finding that darker things, shadows, are applied with more liquid and thinner and more transparent paints or paint mixes, and highlights can be drybrushed or layered with thinned paints or just painted on. Go figure.
Sealing! There's not actually that much to sealing, which is why I haven't put it behind a cut. You get some spray sealer and you seal it. I think I've used decoupage sealer, I've used acrylic varnish, it really depends. You can use gloss, semi-gloss, or matte, I tend to use semi-gloss or matte, but it's purely a matter of taste. If you are going to do a lot of photographing your minis I recommend matte to cut down on the glare, unless you have some kind of rig to compensate for it with your camera; gloss really really means gloss.
And that, as they say, is that. That is, the basics of what I know of mini painting. A lot of this will be covered later on as I pick a topic to ramble on, especially layering, feathering, shadowing, washes, ugh. There's so much to cover. Flesh. Zombies. That'll probably be my next one, I've got a bunch of necrosis to study and a bunch of shambling undead to paint. But we shall see. In the meantime, go forth and paint many things! Just don't paint yourself. And don't lick your paintbrushes, that's how you get into trouble.
Take that brush out of your mouth. I saw you.
Technically it doesn't start with priming, it starts with getting all that crap off your mini that you don't need there. I don't mean extraneous swords or nipples (okay, I do as well, but that's called modding, and is a whole other lecture), I mean fleck/spall/slag/etc. Crap. Refuse. Detritus. Get rid of it. Use your sandpaper, x-acto, file, whatever you want. If you're worried about any of these leaving marks on your mini, practice using each tool at the base of your mini where it won't show, because your mini's sitting on it.
Once you've got the fucker clean, prime it! Pick your primer according to your tastes, honestly. I prefer an acrylic or acrylic-urethane primer, and I prefer to prime according to what colors I'm going to be painting the mini. Gray is my default, it's not too intrusive if it shows up, it doesn't affect the colors too much, and I don't need to layer and layer and layer over it like sometimes happens with white. If I'm doing something very light colored though, I'll do white, or if I'm doing some kind of turtle-armored guy with lots and lots of non-metal metallic effects I'm going to need to do. Black, as I said, is for things with lots of popping colors, things that I'll need to blackline, or even things that are just dark colored. Deep greens and browns and reds and blues, night time things, whatever. There's a range of undead type colors in bone and sickly green, there's probably even more colors I haven't found useful yet. But keep in mind two things: 1) your primer may show up in cracks of places you haven't painted, and if you don't plan for that it probably will, and 2) Your paint is going over your primer, so both the composition and the color need to be something that will take color well.
Ahem. Prime in a well ventilated place. Prime in a well ventilated place. Prime. In. A. Well. Ventilated. Place. I don't want you to die from huffing primer fumes, and you don't want you to die from huffing primer fumes. And no, it won't kill you, but it is not good for you, so prime in a well ventilated place. The exception, of course, is if you're using paint on primer. But still, paint in general in a well ventilated place. A lot of this stuff is chemical and smells like it.
Primer, generally, no matter the end product, is designed to be a little rough, so the paint has somewhere to grip. Don't worry too much when you're applying it if it looks goopy, it will. In fact, most things will look goopy when they're first applied: primer, paint, and sealer. Don't worry about it. It'll dry and settle in, and if it doesn't, that's what stripper is for. Finesse and being calm about the goopiness will come with practice. If you're really worried, hold the spray can back further and apply it more lightly, or thin it if you're using brush on and apply it more lightly, and use multiple coats. Simple!
I'm trying to mostly take pictures of the same minis, but it just isn't going to happen, since I'm typing this up as I think of it, so. Sorry?
So, at its simplest, paint is: dip paint in brush. Apply paint to mini. Repeat. And indeed there are times (orc army I'm looking at you) when it feels that way, and when you're just starting something that will use maybe three main colors because it's a golem with no pants or a ghoul or something, that's true at the start. True and not true.
[ghoul pic]
So, yeah, right now I'm working on these assholes. Ghouls! I think. I don't actually know. One of the things you'll get used to if you do a lot of this is finding loose minis lying around. What did this go to? Did this have other parts? It must have, but where did they go? I have no fucking clue. My minis storage area is this messy, you guys.
[mini storage area]
And that's your first lesson. Don't be too concerned with what other people call the mini or how other people have painted it. You bought it, you own it, it's your mini, paint it how you want it. I have decided that these are two babyshit brown ghouls, so that is what I am painting them. Why? I have no idea. I had plague this week, maybe the snot coming out of my faceholes inspired me.
Now, people will refer to these by various names, and if you add in the makeup folk there's probably a couple more. I call them trios or triads: base color, highlight, shadow. This is actually a slight misnomer since I'm using four colors here, but we'll start out with, I'm using Vallejo Model Color 874 USA Tan Earth for the base color for these buggers. And in fact now that I have a dedicated working paint area, when I'm working on something consistently for a couple of days I can just leave them out as I'm working on them. The only irritating exception is if I'm using the same color for two things at once, which does happen. I also recommend keeping either a white board or a notepad of some kind and a pen (preferably on the other side of the table from the paint cup) if you at all think you'll need to reproduce this later. Somewhere I wrote down the colors I used for my orc army. I think I'll remember them to my dying day, though. So many orcs.
[paint array]
You'll learn how to pick which colors trio up best, and there are a lot of sites that have them listed out for you. Vallejo has some listed, Reaper has them actually laid out in trios you can buy, and various and sundry painting forums will have tutorials and pinned threads where you can see what other people have chose. This is another reason I recommend keeping a notebook or a file somewhere, so that you can go back and go, oh, hey, I painted this ghoul with these four colors for the body and that worked out all right, let's try some of these trolls in the same scheme. Or alternatively, oh dear god what the fuck was I thinking let us never speak of or do this again. I've had a lot of those moments too.
Do not line up all these colors and just go one, then two, then three. Do not. Do not. The point is to blend, so blend. Start with the first color, in my case that tan earth thing, and I went over it with one of my cheapass brushes because all I was looking for here was coverage and even-ness. And for that I did two or three layers; one thing you'll find about painting is that layers are good, layers are your friend, layers are the difference between oh fuck there's a spot of primer augh it's not thick enough why is everything covered in pink, and, ah there a nice even base coat of pulsing pink dermis, that'll make a nice base for the pustules and capillaries on this flesh golem. Layers give you solid bright color and also give you control, which is a thing you will like a lot. Layers are your friend. Remember I said I was going to jump around with my sample pictures a lot? Yeah, here's layering as applied to this potential vampiress or certainly Sinister Noble/Magic Lady Of Some Type, mostly because I sped through the ghoul without remembering to take pictures or mix paints in a demonstrative way. Oops.
[picture of something else]
And actually layers are also a good reason to use retarder, because you can spend a lot of time working on one layer and then need to mix in your next color, only to find that you've used up all the liquid paint and the rest of it is dry. I use Golden Additives retarder, Vallejo also makes a good one, find a brand you like. Experiment! Have fun! This is supposed to be fun, right?
Layers are also a good reason to have two to five minis going at any given time. Right now I'm typing this tutorial while I wait for the layers to dry, but eventually I'll probably be going back and forth between ghoul, ghoul, preacher, preacher, succubus, back to ghoul, giving each one time to dry before I add on the next layer.
Now. Once you've gotten your base coat on, it's time to start highlighting. I'll do an entire spread on that later, don't worry too much about the details, the very basic concept is that what is raised or catches the light gets highlighted, what isn't, stays the base color. Blend your base tone with your highlight, and layer it on. If you're just learning you can start with a base, a 50/50 blend, and then the highlight (I'm not kidding, there are times when I measure out the drops) and if you're feeling adventurous you can play around with the concept. You can see in the picture above that my trio is actually a quartet, so, eh. One of my new favorite skin painting tutorials uses up to five colors. It's the principle of the thing.
Some tips here: you can use any part of the brush, not just the point. If you've got a very sharp ridge or spur, it might help to lightly brush the side of the tip of your brush over it to just get a touch of paint on the top, where the brightest highlight goes. Using a dry brush sometimes helps more than having the brush be entirely wet, once you get down to the finer points of things. More control, again. Some people say you're not supposed to touch your fingertips to the mini because oils, but I find that doing so actually helps me remove excess paint sometimes. Just a very gentle dabbing touch, though. And dry your fingers first.
If I'm doing something with a lot of fiddly surfaces, like this chick, I'll put down all my base layers before I start messing with highlights and things. It's just easier, it means I don't get a perfect set of highlights on something only to swipe paint over it later when I go to paint another section. People have thought I was being murdered when I did that. I'm only half kidding, it's immensely frustrating. So, here we have some lovingly layered ... what is that, a kind of a kimono? It looks like she's wearing an obi, anyway. And her face is rudimentarily colored in with the darkest tone I'm going to use on her, since that's marginally easier than trying to shadow it later. This actually involved a shitload of layering, going back, layering gently over the parts where I got color on other bits, going back again, etc.
Shadowing is even trickier. And most likely requires more feathering, so I'm not going to touch on it here until I get better brush control with more liquid paints. I'm not even kidding, that is a bitch of a skill to learn but basically, yes. Shadowing is putting down dark patches where you want to imply that there are grooves, or where there are grooves or shadows from raised patches. Interestingly I keep finding that darker things, shadows, are applied with more liquid and thinner and more transparent paints or paint mixes, and highlights can be drybrushed or layered with thinned paints or just painted on. Go figure.
Sealing! There's not actually that much to sealing, which is why I haven't put it behind a cut. You get some spray sealer and you seal it. I think I've used decoupage sealer, I've used acrylic varnish, it really depends. You can use gloss, semi-gloss, or matte, I tend to use semi-gloss or matte, but it's purely a matter of taste. If you are going to do a lot of photographing your minis I recommend matte to cut down on the glare, unless you have some kind of rig to compensate for it with your camera; gloss really really means gloss.
And that, as they say, is that. That is, the basics of what I know of mini painting. A lot of this will be covered later on as I pick a topic to ramble on, especially layering, feathering, shadowing, washes, ugh. There's so much to cover. Flesh. Zombies. That'll probably be my next one, I've got a bunch of necrosis to study and a bunch of shambling undead to paint. But we shall see. In the meantime, go forth and paint many things! Just don't paint yourself. And don't lick your paintbrushes, that's how you get into trouble.
Take that brush out of your mouth. I saw you.