What's your painting style?
Patronius
What style of miniatures painting do you prefer? I pulled the following
remarks from another thread (which wasn't about painting but ended up there):
> >All in all, though, I have a peculiar taste when it comes to miniatures.
> > I also think figures usually look ugly when people paint the eyes or use
too
> much
> >shading/drybrushing/blacklining; I like a simple, basic paint job.
>
> Here! Here! At 15mm scale, and at normal play distances, adding those
little
> features always seemed a bit weird to me, too. And the blacklining tends to
> make figures look very cartoonish.
>It's not the presence or absence of the features that creates ugliness;
it's the execution. There are a myriad of painting styles, using a
large number of techniques. A superbly-executed "plain" paint job will
always look better than a poorly done "fancy" job with washing and
drybrushing.
>That said, I am amazed and humbled by the quality of work I see at
conventions and shows. I rate myself about a "B" painter at best,
despite having painted 2000 or so figures.
>As for your own painting, do it simple! You'll start to reach for
"special effects" techniques when you feel a need for them, not before.<
Any other remarks along these lines?
Patrick Carroll
patr...@aol.com
Brady Severns
Howdy,
Patronius wrote:
> What style of miniatures painting do you prefer?
First of all, my approach is that a uniform is just that: a guide. I prefer some
experimentation built around simple, standardized, processes. For example, I may
prime all my figures gray, yet spare some to prime white, black, or even brown
just to see if there's really any difference at the end.
I tend to draw attention to detail only on those figures that are personalities
or leaders for a given group. And that's primarily through careful drybrushing
and selective detailing. The rest are done much less fiddly. I also like to mix
and match figures from different manufacturers, leavening a bunch of cheap Esci
or Airfix with Revells, for example.
Important: I never paint eyes on anything smaller than 25mm. A decent wash tends
to take care of the detail needed. At 25mm, I'll shade the sockets and maybe put
a bit of a squint in Payne's Grey to them. I do paint eyes, and am careful about
it, for 54s.
Finally, it being war and all, uniform appearances give way to a degree of
license after campaigning in the field, so some of my troopers may sport
different colored caps, trousers, and sometimes jackets or weapons from many of
their mates. It adds some time to the painting of figures, but caps and trousers
are quick and easy enough. Sometimes a dab of flesh at the joints lends a
threadbare appearance to the lot, even if the trooper next to him sports a new
jacket.
Basing is another story.
**Editorial: You can juxtapose the care I take in my figs to my rant about "game
play" in the boardgames newsgroup and perhaps understand my frustration at many
miniaturists: The time spent in putting on the spectacle or studying the
histories would have been much more wisely spent weasel-scanning the rules for
loop holes to earn a coveted Rules-law degree. I mean, what's the use in
investing in figures and terrain to put on a show if folks are going to waste
time arguing and rewriting the rules instead? Better off playing a more cut and
dried board game for all the trouble its worth...
Brady
Dan Dionne
Patronius wrote:
>
> What style of miniatures painting do you prefer?
> >As for your own painting, do it simple! You'll start to reach for
> >"special effects" techniques when you feel a need for them, not before.<
>
> Any other remarks along these lines?
The special techniques I use are drybrushing and some washing. I
started with drybrushing because I was very dissatisfied with the way
cloth looked when painted in plain, block colors--particularly dark
blues, which tended to come out very shiny. I now drybrush all cloth
surfaces that don't otherwise have decoration. That goes for 25mm
fantasy figures as well as 15mm ancients. If a piece of cloth will be
highly decorated, I usually don't bother with drybrushing.
I use washes much less, although I'm starting to get some good shadowing
effects in 15mm with light washes. Like many other folks who've posted
on this subject earlier, I have trouble controlling a wash.
For horse painting, I use a black primer, a very heavy drybrush of a
darker shade, and then a light drybrush of a lighter but compatible
shade. Then I detail socks, blazes, and the like in white or black.
The best aspect of my painting is expressionistic color, although a
constant challenge in 15mm is to keep the figures from getting too dark.
The worst aspect is my fine detail work, which ain't very fine. I do a
great scruffy-looking Hun, but a lousy knight with heraldric devices on
the shield.
As to my preferences: a consistent paint job improves an army
tremendously. I paint in large batches (100-200 figures) so that a new
army all looks like it belongs together. A consistent basing scheme
does a lot, too. I don't like the look of armies that have figures
painted in different styles, even when some of the figures are
outstanding. Other aspects are really determined by the nature of the
army. For instance, I used a light black wash for a finishing touch on
my 15mm Angle and Saxon invaders. For them, it worked well, because it
helped convey what a ill-mannered and filthy lot they were. The same
technique would have been a complete miss for my contemporary Patrician
Romans.
--Dan Dionne, ddi...@us.ibm.com
Ray Rangel
I copied this from the thread "Painting" elsewhere in this group.
>In article <353d32fa...@news.texas.net>,
> Ray Rangel <xr...@texas.net> wrote:
>
>> Before you drive youself nuts or start needing glasses try this...
>
>> Take a figure in your hand so that it is standing between your thumb
>> and forefinger. Now remover the figure holding your fingers in
>> position. Extend your arm and look dwon your arm and through you
>> fingers. Hold you fingers so that they frame some one in the distance
>> as if you holding them like the figure....
>
>> ...now tell me how much detail do you see. Do you see eyeballs? do you
>> details other than large areas of color? can you make out the face at
>> all?...
>
>> There is something called scale effect though, so we paint in shadows,
>> but little more than that is simply wasted effort.
>It depends on how much effort you wish to give why not just dip the model
>in a single pot "its not much more than a large area of colour!"
>
To clarify: There is a phenomena known as "scale effect". In short,
this is the effect that light has on a model and the tricks that the
brain plays when viewing a scale model.
The effect (or lack thereof) that light has when striking a model
forces us to paint in shadows as the depth of crevasses are too
shallow to make natural shadows. To this end we make use of washes,
inking, black-lining, black prime, and other tricks to fool the eyes
into thinking they are looking at something much larger yet very far
away. At normal viewing distances small detail becomes
indistinguishable; if added it is only for close inspection of
individual figures and impressing others with the painter's digital
dexterity.
Another aspect of scale effect is that models that are painted too
perfectly, or too brightly don't look right at a normal viewing
distance. The brain is mightily confused by mixed signals. The brain
knows that it is looking at something that appears to be at some
distance but it is in too sharp a focus. One of tricks of the trade
used to remedy this is to wash the entire figure with black or dark
gray. If one looks at people in the distance they appear as very dark
shapes if they are wearing anything but white and shadows turn from
darkened colors to black. My Napoleonics and British Colonials are
washed thusly. They are *very* dark. The effect, though, at a viewing
distance of a yard are extremely realistic. However my DBA armies are
painted with much more color, detail, and less contrast as the viewing
distance is only half a yard. My LPE armies are somewhere in between.
To wrap this up (did I hear my fellow club members sigh with relief?),
my position is that a one-size-fits-all painting style is not
appropriate in 15mm (or any scale). Normal viewing distance, size of
the game table, and number of figures on the table all should have an
effect on the methods used to paint castings for an army. However, in
no case would I even consider painting eyes, lips, or fingernails as
on a figure viewed from more than a couple of inches these are lost
and contribute nothing to the look of the fielded army or game play.
Frankly, I would rather invest the time that would be wasted painting
invisible, inconsequential details fielding more armies and playing
more games.
>
CBenn92586
>What style of miniatures painting do you prefer?
I do not paint eyes, ever. I looked at a series of photos with people the same
size as the figs and you can't see eyes.
As for the rest, dry brush, wash, solid, all three-what ever suits my fancy.
. . .so the world goes round and round
with all you ever knew-
they say the sky high above
is Caribbean blue. . .
Doug Shand
Patronius wrote:
>
> What style of miniatures painting do you prefer?
> >
> > make figures look very cartoonish.
>
> >It's not the presence or absence of the features that creates ugliness;
> it's the execution.
>
>
> Any other remarks along these lines?
>
> Patrick Carroll
> patr...@aol.com
Hi! I always basecoat the figures either white (or light grey) or
black. I use black on figures with heavy detail, such as armor, or
elaborate uniform detail like Renaisance figures. I use white
generally, but espescially because of the pleasing effect it has on
bright colors of napoleonic type uniforms. If white based, I don't put
in shadelines withblack. Rather I pick 2 other colors, one lighter and
one brighter than the original shade. I then use these to contrast the
folds in the cloth, or the muscles on the horse. I use a simil;ar
technique for the black coated figures, but sometimes it takes a couple
of coats on light areas of the face for example, as the dark coat can
bleed through a thin coat of paint. I now use acrylics almost
exclusively, I like the ease of use and the brightness of the colors.
Idolater7
>>In article <353d32fa...@news.texas.net>,
>> Ray Rangel <xr...@texas.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Before you drive youself nuts or start needing glasses try this...
>>
>>> Take a figure in your hand so that it is standing between your thumb
>>> and forefinger. Now remover the figure holding your fingers in
>>> position. Extend your arm and look dwon your arm and through you
>>> fingers. Hold you fingers so that they frame some one in the distance
>>> as if you holding them like the figure....
>>
details other than large areas of color? can you make out the face at all?...
>>
>>> There is something called scale effect though, so we paint in shadows, but
little more than that is simply wasted effort.
>>It depends on how much effort you wish to give why not just dip the model in
a single pot "its not much more than a large area of colour!"
Yes, that is San Antonio's own Ray Rangel, venting over the fact that he
applies ink by the bucketful . . .
Therein lies the difference between the historical wargamer and his 50
identical archer figures and the historical hobbyist and his painted, detailed,
shaded and flocked figures.