Starks333 Posted December 24, 2007 Share Posted December 24, 2007 -----Im posting this prior to posting as an article to receive feedback, is there more you want to know? things you want expanded on if possible, etc, so its not done with pictures or with fancy fonts writing yet...i will be doing the same when i finish the other parts, i want this to help as many people as possible so i need feedback I leave little notes of where I want to add pictures, a note to you, as well as a reminder to me in case the words dont explain enough, so if you find a spot where I dont have anything noted for pictures and you would like a photo example, please let me know. ***dont worry this will all get better organised, i just wanted to post basic info for now so people can get an idea Before we start a slight note: These tutorials are from my personal experience, the knowledge I've accumulated whether through internet research, personal experience or discussions with some well known painters and world masters, these however are not their words, they are my interpretations, please read on with this in mind, painting, art and everything is always a continuous learning process, some things change some things hold true forever To start off, a simple summary of the concept of these tutorials: -to provide fellow painters with knowledge to answer their own questions -to provide simplified explanations of as many things as possible -to encourage people to paint to higher standards and not be afraid!! Table of Contents: 1. basic painting tools 2. model preparation 3. colour 4. lighting 5. techniques BASIC PAINTING TOOLS: To start, the absolute most important piece of gear is your brush; to have a bad brush is to cause yourself a lot of grief. Grab those GW brushes, those cheap $2 synthetics and stick them in a container aside to use for basing, gluing, sculpting, etc. What you need is a real brush! Why you need a kolinsky sable brush: -natural hairs keep their tips -natural hair means they can hold moisture and oils better than synthetics which improves flow of paint -natural kolinsky hairs are softer and less coarse, which means the paint comes off the brush smoother, less likely to streak -good "snap" means the brush is less likely to fish hook from repeated strokes, or bend out of shape, it also means your strokes are smoother, less rigid(it slides along the piece instead of jumping around) Good Brushes: Raphael Series 8404 and 8408- long bristles hold more paint, and a nicer feel Winsor Newton Series 7- medium length bristles Winsor Newton Series 7 Miniature- tiny brushes with very short bristles, good stiff control, different feel from long bristles Winsor Newton Round- longest winsors I've seen, haven’t tested them and brushes I have not used but know about: DaVinci Maestro- "For brushes you can add DaVinci Maestro brushes (these are kolinsky sable too): I have some of these and some W&N Series 7 Miniature brushes, and the difference (for the most part) is that the W&N minis have shorter hair; I assume that the DaVinic Maestro are very similar to regular W&N Series 7 (which I have not used)." -mario *picture comparison* Good Sizes: Many people differ in this area simply because of personal preference and control, I myself use a Raphael(8408) #2, #1, and 0...I often used the #2 for large area blending, the #1 for everything else, I very rarely ever use my 0 because the tips are so fine on the #1 that I can do anything I need for basic painting. I personally believe you will never need anything less than a 00 on anything 28mm and above(for Raphael they have no 00 brush, so a 000 is their substitute), I’ve never painted smaller so I cannot say for smaller. Freehand and specific details like painting irises and reflections in eyes might require the 000 and stuff like that but for basic paintng i dont find i ever need smaller than a 1 or 0 Palettes: There are two kinds of palettes, wet and "dry". A wet palette uses moisture to keep your paint wet longer, to increase lasting time of acrylic paint. A "dry" palette is simply any form of palette that does not use moisture to keep the paint wet, these are practical to use as your paint never soaks into the palette. I list below either tutorials or examples of both and some well known and respected painters who use both along with their coolminiornot.com user names How to build a wet palette (link) Known users: Vincent Hudon(silphid) Mathieu Fontaine (akaranseth) Wet Palette Tutorial: http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.p...howtopic=110635 Examples of "dry" palettes (pictures) Known users: Allan Carrasco (allan c) Mathieu Lalain (mathieul) Brush Cleaner: A brush cleaner like Winsor & Newtons variety will help break up acrylic paints built up in the ferrule (the metal part of the brush where the bristles connect). To help maintain your brushes, build or buy a little stand for them to sit in so the bristles are suspended in air, (otherwise you will ruin them). When finished painting for the night, let the brushes sit in cleaner overnight, make sure only the bristles touch as the cleaner will eat the paint on the brush handle, when you want to paint, rinse the cleaner off under the tap, and you can scrape gently with the back of your knife to get the paint off if water doesn’t rinse it out. Water Pots: Use, really, whatever you want. I use some plastic shot glasses I had lying around. Make sure you have multiple water pots. One for paint One for metallics- metal flakes, don’t want to get them in your colours One for sculpting/putties- don’t want the thinned milliput to harden in your brushes or get into your paint! *some may use separate water pots or distilled water to thin their paint, i just use my same pot, and im even lazy when it comes to changing the water, I personally have not found this to cause problems, except of course if you use white, or brighter colours, but even then, it makes the tiniest of differences...so its your choice ^_^ PREPARATION: Tools: -Pin Vice -Hobby Knives -Sand paper, files, etc -Primer Plastic Clean those mould lines! Use a hobby knife and gently scrape them away, sometimes you may find a file handier to use Depending on the plan, if you want a nice base you will need to pin your model’s foot for attaching to the base, do this before priming. AVOID plastic glue, why? Because it welds your plastic parts together! This is fine, if you are careful, not messy, have no intentions on selling/trading your stuff, or never plan on changing any of it….however in my opinion super glue is the best choice, because for 1, you wont need to buy two separate bottles of glue to do your minis and two if the models are taken care of, superglue works fine to keep things intact. Assemble as much as you can without getting in the way of painting (so parts that may cover over areas etc). After you have painted the areas, simply attach the parts after, carefully…another good way to do it, is to paint those parts off the mini by pinning the pieces and painting them on a pin vice, however for armies or squads this can be time consuming. Metal Files are often the best choice to clean metal, however in some cases like fur and such you will need a knife to scrap away…you can use anything from sandpaper, to bendy files, to jewelers files, to knives to clean mould lines. Metal should always be pinning to the base, and pinned together unless it’s a tiny piece or have a VERY good bonding surface. Now the most important step: metal figures have tiny imperfections that plastics do not, and so in order to save your blending you need to do the following: *insert pictures* -Take some yellow/grey milliput, mix it - Roll it into a ball, and press into the centre with your finger to leave a bowl shape - Take some water and pour it into the “bowl” of milliput, let it sit for 30 seconds or so - Take your brush, stir It up until its very foggy, then apply it to the large areas(like capes, robes etc) on your model, trying to avoid filling the recesses and instead covering the surfaces -Once dry, take some fine sand paper and lightly sand the areas This will fill a lot of the tiny imperfections and make blending smoother Resin Look on Forgeworld, they have a good explanation. http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/resinmodels.htm White Primer- This primer allows the largest range of colour from any single colour, because its white you can get the very brightest hue of any colour (ex.blood red), all the way to the absolute darkest. It also allows you to use successive washes from the start, and allows you to paint faster because of the techniques you can use. Black Primer- Darkens your colours, hides flaws on dark schemes because the black stays in the dark areas, where as if it were white, the white would show any missed spots. Requires you to bring your colours up (aka highlight) rather than shade, which is more time consuming for high quality painting, but sometimes a time saver for armies with certain colours. And as a note in north America, black primer is no longer primer, it is simply paint, so a lot less useful now. WHEN PRIMING: Do not spray in long bursts, spray in short bursts to try and evenly cover a piece and not overload with primer. For Display pieces, prime on a pin vice(or equivalent device) slowly turning the figure while spraying in short bursts, this helps even application Some people may suggest spraying in specific ways, however as long as you spray it on in short bursts and slowly turn the model, you shouldnt have an issue spraying it on nice and evenly, if you find you have problems doing it one way, try another, for me, simply aiming, spraying, turning, spraying works for me Final Touches: If you missed some spots just take thinned down skull white or chaos black and wash it in the areas that were missed COLOUR Colour is the single most important thing to know about when painting with colour(oddly enough) Without colour theory you wont know how to control your colour or achieve certain effects. The following errors should be explained after a thorough read-through of my colour explanation Common errors: -highlighting/shading by adding white/black-desaturates -edge highlighting every single edge- doesnt work as per colour-lighting -using black in recesses for "pop" on bright colours- poor poor colours *pets* its gong to be alright, ill teach them right :P -in proper use of shading/highlighting- lack of lighting knowledge -not enough contrast- solved by understanding light and colour Complimentary Colours: These are important for more than just what might look good together, they are in fact how you learn to use colour. Purple/Yellow Blue/Orange Red/Green Saturated Colour: Think intense colour, not necessarily bright and flashy though. Every GW colour is saturated (browns by nature are slightly desaturated). *insert picture* Desaturated Colour: Your dulled down colours, theres multiple ways to do this, and a varying degree of desaturation. Rich Desaturation: To keep the life in the colour while desaturating use complimentary colours. Uses: Ex. Adding yellow to purple will slowly brownify your purple, but because it doesnt zap the colour out you can still maintain vibrant colours while being desaturated, which is excellent for those colour schemes that use multiple bright colours that would normally overload your eye and brain. This however will slightly modify your initial colour, as when adding a compliment it adds that colour, you will find your purple slightly yellowed. This colour modification is what keeps the colour rich. Dead Desaturation: Known as desaturated pastel colours, these colours are just dead, they have no life in them at all, to achieve this colour add grey Uses: As these colours are very dry, and lifeless they are excellent for certain types of landscapes, for example rock, sand, and anything arid(dry) High Contrast Desaturation: You can also add white or black when desaturating your colours instead of a compliment, it will desaturate them more quickly, but instead of desaturating towards a brown, it will desaturate them towards either white or black which means you wont be tinting or enrichening your colour. Uses: Monochromatic schemes(Thomas David's Eldar *insert pic*) Non Metallic Metals...They can also be used as a last resort highlight or shade, for example if theres nothing else to add to brighten or darken your colour enough to get the right contrast, this is when black or white is good. You can also use them for simple general desaturation, its a matter of choice for which tone you want :P *insert picture examples of the above examples* Warm/Cold Colours: Now when people mention stuff about warm and cold colours usually its the very basic, well to make ice cold add blue, or to make something feel warmer add orange or red or yellow. The next step, is why, why is it important to know what a warm/cold colour is. First the colours: Yellow, Red, Orange, and Green or Purple when theres a lower concentration of blue in the mix, are Warm Colours Blue, Purple or Green with a higher concentration of blue in the mix are Cold Colours Warm colours are good for warming things up(go figure)...if you want to add the feel of natural sunlight, you can add yellows and oranges. Red can be added in ways to create a different type of warmth almost always as a tone(which will be discussed later). Warm colours are best placed as highlights or near them as thats where light goes! Cold colours are great for making things colder(again stating the obvious) so they are great for shadows and things not in the nice warm light. You can add blue to things that are wet or frozen as well to cool the colour or add a wet feel(blue+brown can make the brown kinda feel wet) A great example I had to add even though I said no pictures: http://ursispaltenstein.ch/blog/images/uploads_img/leonid_afremov_art_work_1.jpg The cool colours shows that its dark out, and slightly cools the setting to show its wet and rainy, the warm colours on the tree emphasize the warmth of the light, while white is used to desaturate the colours used for the reflections on the ground(so it looks like white, but with a small hint of yellow), and black used as a contrast and directional tool(the tree) it directs you back inwards towards the people... It also shows how purple(in the colourful trees) can be a warm colour, while the green(next to the cool road0 can be cool, sometimes this can be attained simply by placing those colours next to warmer or cooler colours(purple next to yellows and oranges, green next to blues) Colour Characteristics: Now that you understand whats warm and cold, you might want to create atmosphere, but sometimes colours arent just associated with temperature, but feelings and emotions, theres extensive amounts for each and so I will list some basics, as well as a couple specific practical uses Warm colours are generally associated with increased physical emotion(or expressed emotion) like happiness and anger while cold colours are well associated with the less physical emotions(or hidden emotions) like sadness and depression Red- Passion, Heat, Rage, Courage, Power, Warmth, and Sexual Connotation Specifics: Rashes, Skin irritations(a good example is Allan Carrasco's latest daemonette- *add photo*) Blood...adding warming tones to areas of a miniature Atmospheric: Red combined with certain expressions or movements of a figure help create an atmosphere with lots of passion, anger, or courage...the more intense red is the more concentrated(the angrier, or the more passionate, etc) the emotion is Yellow- joy, happiness, warmth, creativity Specifics: Sunlight Atmospheric: Yellow in larger amounts will warm up a piece, while the more saturated it is, the more "happy" it feels, its often done on orks, a brighter more saturated yellow adds the goofyness because the ork is meant to be slightly serious an angry but there is this happy little emotion connected to the yellow that takes a bit of the seriousness away and makes it your fun lovin ork ;) Blue- Quietness, serenity, truth, dignity, constancy, reliability/loyalty, power, sadness, depression, cold, darkness, arrogance Specifics: Shadows Atmospheric: Blue in combination with certain expressions can create a feeling of sadness/depression, power and arrogance, very secretive, emotionless murderer etc. The reason blue can create the most emotions is because its the deepest colour and has so many uses, whether for shadows, as a bright powerful primary colour, or as reflected light(which can be used to show sadness) Green- nature, health, environment, money, vegetation, nature, fresh, growth, abundance, and then when a darker green bad stuff like death or when more sickly green(more yellow) envy, and evil evil things like that! :P Specifics: place around anything that grows(nurgley stuff, vegetation etc) great for magical pieces as green is bright and deep(because of the blue) so it works well for pieces you want to glow, as in magical things, or powered things....you can use the sickly coloured greens for well...to show sickness, and darker greens to show a more dark side of things(like dark angels, being so secretive and using the grim reaper angel as their logo!...crazy eh?) Atmospheric: Green is an excellent colour to apply to show life, so around nature and vegetation as mentioned above, it adds the feel of a warmer happier nature if it has more yellow or red(red to desaturate) in it, or a bit colder if more blue, the more black you add to the green the more it zaps the happiness, add in more brown(or red) and it slowly kills it.....a more saturated green can be used for a more magical environment Purple- wealth, royalty, sophistication, intelligence, royal, spirituality, dignity Specifics: the more purple the more wealthy/important someone appears, especially brighter purples, purple also associated with the psyche, is great for magical purposes because of this, so psyhics, wizards, their powers, or just nice magical tones to their skin or weapons Atmospheric: purple used beside blue will help colden a piece, it will also warm a piece if next to red, it also enriches the environment because the colour is associated with sophistication and intelligence and wealth Orange- playfulness, warmth, vibrant, upps the spirits Specifics: apply around yellow tones to warm them up a lot, so if you wanna show sunlight, adding light tones of oranges help warm the yellows up further...orange is also like yellow in that the more saturated the more happy it is...Dead desaturated oranges are excellent for scenery because it warms them up and dries them out, so its perfect for arid environments Atmospheric: adds warmth...in larger amounts could also act as stimulant(so raises the mood) ...not...much for orange to do though... Black- sophistication, elegant, seductive, mystery, death, rebellion, strength, evil, emptiness Specifics: elegant black clothing adds elegance...black robes/cloaks add mystery, black armour adds strength and evilness, black on daemon skin can show the daemons emptiness and pure evil tendencies Atmospheric: Black as above used in certain ways add certain effects, its mostly associated with the piece it covers, it tends to be good for emphasis White- purity, cleanliness, light, youthful Specifics: white clothes/robes is associated with purity and cleanliness, when combines with soft tones(saturated pastels) it creates a feeling of youth, when combined with yellows it creates a feeling of warm light Atmospheric: white tends to emphasize the "good" aspects because of its association with purity, it will always brighten/lighten and purify the environment if its plentiful(you know movie/music video scenes where most of the room is lit with white light(that one with Gwen Stefani...), its to show the purity, or to show youthfulness/happiness like in Gladiator) ***note i tried to keep things simple, no point getting overly complex with colour after all :) Light and Colour now what does light have to do with colours...? EVERYTHING!!!! Colour is a result of light, primary colours are Cyan(blue), Magenta(red) and Yellow, everything else is a result of them. Black and white are a result of low or high concentrations of light, a reflection for example is a high concentration of light and shows up white, while black or extreme shadow is a result of a lot of light being absorbed(as in not reflected) or simply. Light bounces around at different wavelengths which create different colours, this is why when you see European pieces they have lots of colour, because everything in nature is that colourful. Your eyes will adjust to accommodate it(as if it was natural), and on some pieces you wont notice it until you really look, on others (often when its exaggerated) you will. You will always hear crap about black and white being shades and not colours, this is true if you aren’t talking real life. Real black and white are actually a combination of colours with either high or low concentration of light. If you could take anything black or white from real life and put it in Photoshop you would see the black or white is always going to be a combination of red, yellow and blue. The colour black in light doesn’t exist just like white in shadow doesn’t exist. **side note, white sometimes shows up white in photoshop because white is reflection and cameras sometimes have a hard time handling reflections Light always comes from one source unless it’s fake lighting (reflections or man made lights), and because of this colour/light follow the same rules always In the following image the light is coming from above, known as Zenithal Lighting, the same basics apply for directional lighting -anything perpendicular to light will be the brightest, because it has the most area being hit by light… the lightest spots are also followed by the darkest because if one spot is receiving all the light, then directly under that spot there is no light being absorbed(bottom of octagon) -anything angled to or away from light will be transition from the colour of the object to brightness or darkness. Anything angling towards light is a highlight, anything angling away is a shade. -anything parallel with light is not affected by it, which means this is where your true colour lies, this area determines what colour your piece is, if you want dark red, this area is that dark red ****TEMPORARY IMAGE http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/Starks3333/Tutorial/ColourControl.jpg How edge highlighting can change your colour: Edge highlighting does not follow the rules of light, so naturally when you start applying bright colour to parts that aren’t supposed to be bright, it changes the colour by brightening it…this is why you will get the “oh no I highlighted brighter to get more contrast but now my red is too bright!”. To avoid this problem, apply some basics: **Step by Step to follow*** Different Kinds of Lighting Theres different kinds of lighting as you will know; sunlight, reflected and man made. Sunlight always has a warm feel to it, because it’s the sun!! So to apply this you tend to add more warm tones to and around your colours, yellows help warm up highlights, while oranges and reds applied to tone the area around the highlights emphasize the warmth(if needed). Man made light is only really visible when sunlight isn’t, which means in darkness, or indoors. Object source lighting is an example of the very basics of man made light, its simply an object that emits light which tints the area around it in whatever colour the light is. Man made light combined with darkness creates a lot of ambience In this piece I did (sadly not the finished photo) I aimed for a more ambience driven skin, When you have a man made light source(in this case its behind her) you get what’s called ambient lighting which is essentially a lighting effect that creates a mood and connects you with the environment surrounding it. In this scene there’s warm light (her right breast) and colder reflected light (her left breast) and then a mix of the two on the face. Man made light will always tint objects with the colour of the actual light. Reflected light will always tint the object with the colour of the surroundings. If the scene is outdoors, it’s usually tinted the colour of the sky (in this case I wanted it to feel more cold and outdoorsy so I used blues) indoors it’s usually the colour of the lighting and surroundings (like if the room is very purple you might get purple tints, or if theres a lot of wood and man made light you will get warmer tones like reds, oranges and yellows) **temporary image http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/Starks3333/Competition%20Pieces/Dark%20Lillith/RSBMBL-2Tcopy.jpg The idea of reflected light is that its softened because its not pure direct light hitting an object. Reflected light is how you maintain highlights within shadowed areas, you cant simply not highlight otherwise you lose depth, so you use reflected light to do this. The amount of colour you add to this dulled light is completely up to the result you want because colours are tied to emotions, so the more colour noticeable the stronger the emotion or reaction connected to it. Lighting, Contrast, and Artisic Freedoms As mentioned above there is always freedoms when it comes to applying light and colour, as long as it follows the basic rules, you can really play with it as much as you want. Zenithal lighting’s purpose is to emphasize lighting on the upper part of a figure to draw the focus to the face, you see this often in classical paintings where its brighter near the faces…this is not 100% scientifically realistic, but because it follows the basic rules of light and colour placement it looks normal to your eyes. Ambient lighting is all about mood so the quantity and intensity of certain colours will affect this mood Contrast, Lighting and Depth Now with lighting you begin to get into more than just how light affects a piece, but how close/far is the light, this is shown with contrast. The closer the light source, the higher the contrast, as in the faster your colours go from dark to bright. The farther the lighting, the softer and more subtle the transition from dark to light Adding contrast without affecting lighting is simple to do, you darken or brighten in spots and in small amounts, if you darken or brighten everywhere you will be affecting the overall contrast. Things like underlining to gain depth of field will not really affect your lighting unless you go too dark for the area around it… And this is where we get into blacklining and why it’s not practical if taken word for word. The idea of blacklining is to place dark “lines” between two different areas of colour to separate them from each other. For example you have a table, and a cup on the table, to show the cup is not part of the table you place a thin dark line around the area where the cup meets with the table. This creates the separation to show they are two separate objects. For 90% of things you use a dark COLOUR and NOT black. Black is too strong and is best left for things you want to add lots of depth to because black shows nothingness, which means its good for creating empty space and giving a 3D feel to something (figures may be 3D but once painted the details can lose the 3Dness if not emphasized, this is due to their size) *insert diagram picture thing* *******This next bit on contrast was borrowed from Team Toulouse’s website: http://www.ttcreation.com/modules/articles...6&langue=en It saves me time in explaining, however I will add a bit to it to explain it in practical terms **insert pictures of the following* Contrast can be defined as follows: In visual perception, contrast is the difference in visual properties that makes an object (or its representation in an image) distinguishable from other objects and the background. (Wikipedia) For example, in a black and white image, a strong contrast would mean using dark blacks and bright whites side by side. On the other hand, a low contrast image would be made up of similar tones of grey. In painting, there are 7 colour contrasts. That means 7 ways of making a strong visual impact with a miniature. Some of these contrasts can produce an extremely colourful, even garish, result. We will prefer the more subtle effects (here we return to the notion of "colour awareness"). * Pure colour contrast: a very violent contrast can be obtained by using pure colours (at maximum saturation) side by side. This is even more visible when using primary colours. In my humble opinion, this should be avoided as much as possible because of the garish effect... and unfortunately it is a very common mistake. Starks- Desaturated colours are easier on the eyes, and you can use more colour combos if desaturated…saturated colours are too intensified and really jump out at you which is why they create problems * Dark-light contrast: playing with the difference between the very dark and very light zones is a good way to create contrast for your miniature. This can be done by using deep shadows and bright highlights, or by zones of different lightness (light skin and dark clothes for example). Starks- This is a good way to create a focus, this is essentially using colours to move the eye to the focus as bright areas stand out more than dark…so a bright area surrounded by dark areas will stand out more * Simultaneous contrast: When a grey area is placed next to a saturated colour, it tends to take on a hint of the colour's complementary colour. So if a bright red is placed next to a neutral grey, it will seem cold and slightly green. In the same way a cold colour will seem colder if placed next to a warm one. (See below) Starks- This one is usually done without knowledge until you really understand what you are doing. Basicly this is using colour to affect colours, this is good for atmosphere and ambient applications. * Warm-cold contrast: placing warm and cold colours next to each other will create a strong contrast. Interesting, but difficult to apply while ensuring colour harmony. Starks- This is difficult because of the connections with certain emotional reactions…sometimes using the wrong tone will disrupt the atmosphere and delivery of the piece. * Quality contrast: A very good way to highlight specific elements on a mini or to harmonise some colours. Quality contrast consists of placing saturated and desaturated colours side by side. This contrast only works if desaturated colours are predominant. Starks- Think source lighting on a plasma gun, making the plasma bright saturated green, next to desaturated red armour, its going to be much more vibrant than if the red armour was more saturated as then the green and red would be even in intensity and brightness, and the green would no longer outweight the red. * Complementary contrast: Using complementary colours in the same scheme creates a very violent contrast (red/green, yellow/purple...), it is difficult to master and harmonise. When well used, this can give your colours a surprising depth and richness, by carefully dosing the saturation of your paints and the amount of surface covered by each complementary. On the other hand, if used pure and in large amounts, complementary colours can give your mini the subtle class of a suburban house decorated for Christmas, flashing lights and garden gnomes galore! Starks- Compliments is basicly warm+cold (blue/orange, purple/yellow, green/red) so it usually suffer from the warm/cold contrast problems. One way to help this is by making sure both colours are warmer, or colder, and not one warm and one cold. * Quantity contrast: Used with some of the other contrasts, such as complementary, warm-cold or quality contrasts, a quantity contrast will mean using a combination of large surfaces painted with colours of different hues, temperatures or saturations and smaller surfaces painted with an opposing colour. Starks- The idea is that certain amounts of colours next to each other contrast more or less. For example if you have a large amount of purple(a robe say), and some details done in a yellow or gold colour, this will contrast not only by compliments, but by quantity, where as if you had more yellow or gold the details would no longer be as noticeable because the colour is more dominant….the same idea goes with using small amounts of darker colours next to bright colours, or using browns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mario Posted December 25, 2007 Share Posted December 25, 2007 Some stuff that you can add (if you want) as I don't know how or where you separate feedback and input: For brushes you can add DaVinci Maestro brushes (these are kolinsky sable too): I have some of these and some W&N Series 7 Miniature brushes, and the difference (for the most part) is that the W&N minis have shorter hair; I assume that the DaVinic Maestro are very similar to regular W&N Series 7 (which I have not used). It looks like Cyril Abati is a dry palette user too (some evidence can be found here). Although this article is old, so he could have switched to wet palettes (that trend appeared after he wrote the article). It is not easy to identify if or when this happened as his style was very wet even on a dry palette. But he seems to use his airbrush a lot so a wet palette is probably not that useful in his case. Water pots: You forgot the last pot with the clean water that is used for thinning paints; that is if you don't have a dedicated pipette with your über-secret paint thinning mix (water, acrylic paint thinning medium, drying retarder, future floor finish, pieces-of-your-soul-suspended-in-a-liquid-medium :woot:) ready. Primer (general): When using the spray always start off your miniature (s) and move over it with the spray active and then stop spraying once you have passed the miniature(s) to the other side. You can do this left to right, right to left, or however you want. I pays off if you apply the first bursts of spray from a little lower angle to hit these hard to reach areas, and the later bursts a bit from the top. These are supposed to be short burst so three layers of spray should obscure no details at all. If that happens, you are doing it wrong (most probably keeping the miniature too long under a burst or moving the spray can too slow) or the spray is bad.This technique is more spray wasteful but can help with spray texture problems. And it gives you a lot of control. Black primer: The hard to reach areas are often areas that are supposed to be very dark to it makes (not) painting these areas a nice shortcut for tabletop painting. This trick does not work that good with white or grey primer. Note (so the mods don't curb stomp your article for missing credits or reference): Starks333 feel free to just copy&paste from my post what you need for the article (if you want). No need for link or credits (that just makes things messier). And I could help/support you with some writing for the theoretical parts (I camera for the practical stuff) if you want (simply PM me in that case). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mario Posted February 23, 2008 Share Posted February 23, 2008 I would have some little corrections: Steps 1- 6 I don't know what exactly you mean in that section but I think I know what you wanted to explain. There is no dichotomy between value change and saturation change as both can (and mostly do) happen at the same time if you add a coloured filter (thin beige paint) over pure values (white primer). At least that's how it works with real paint; if you do the same thing in a digital medium then you can "freeze" values and just add hues (this time in the real sense of the word filter) in whatever saturation you want. That is not really possible with real paint as you work with pigments in an suspension and not pure pixels. I changed what I though is a bit confusing in your explanation (I hope you don't mind). Steps 1- 6are the base-coat; thinned layers of bleached bone were applied. What do you see? The white getting "darker" as the beige reduces its reflectivity and you see the beige getting slowly more saturated as the layers added over the white get more coloured pigment and less tranlucency. The thin layers of beige over the white slowly reduce the value and increase the saturation which shows how paint is affected by the layers underneath. What would happen if it was grey instead of white? The beige would slowly build up saturation and depending on the beige and grey used it could reduce or increase the value, or even not change it at all if the grey and beige were of the same value. If there beige were of higher value it would increase the painted areas value, and if it were of lower value the beige would reduce the painted areas value. As long as you do not apply opaque layers (or use so many layers that the end result is opaque) the beige will always look brighter over a white primer. This is because as long as some of the white primer is hit by light and reflects through all these beige layers it is of higher value than then black that does not reflect light that much (as the white). Steps 18-21: Your explanation in this case is a bit wrong. The eye does not see contrast between hues better than between values. Two examples are that we have about twenty times more rod cells (light sensitivity, not colour vision) than cone cells (better at colour vision) in our eyes and that some image compression algorithms use this to their advantage by compressing in HSV (format) by focusing on keeping the values right and accepting more losses in the hue and saturation parts. Value contrast is the one that is easier perceived. But adding contrasting hues in addition to a value contrast creates an even bigger contrast. You text makes it look (in my opinion) as if hue contrast is easier to see than value contrast, while it is probably supposed to read that a stacked hue and value contrast is better than a value contrast alone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starks333 Posted February 23, 2008 Author Share Posted February 23, 2008 Steps 1- 6I don't know what exactly you mean in that section but I think I know what you wanted to explain. There is no dichotomy between value change and saturation change as both can (and mostly do) happen at the same time if you add a coloured filter (thin beige paint) over pure values (white primer). At least that's how it works with real paint; if you do the same thing in a digital medium then you can "freeze" values and just add hues (this time in the real sense of the word filter) in whatever saturation you want. That is not really possible with real paint as you work with pigments in an suspension and not pure pixels. It was more about the layers under affecting what goes on top, I do need to edit to involve the primer discussion however Steps 18-21: Your explanation in this case is a bit wrong. The eye does not see contrast between hues better than between values. Two examples are that we have about twenty times more rod cells (light sensitivity, not colour vision) than cone cells (better at colour vision) in our eyes and that some image compression algorithms use this to their advantage by compressing in HSV (format) by focusing on keeping the values right and accepting more losses in the hue and saturation parts. Value contrast is the one that is easier perceived. But adding contrasting hues in addition to a value contrast creates an even bigger contrast. You text makes it look (in my opinion) as if hue contrast is easier to see than value contrast, while it is probably supposed to read that a stacked hue and value contrast is better than a value contrast alone. Ill have to look into this, I agree in a sense, however I believe my explanation is to blame, not being precise enough I changed the image to greyscale, the first 6 steps arent very noticeable(this is more what im talking about), while the difference between the red and the beige is slightly more obvious in greyscale http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/Starks3333/Tutorial/BnC%20Tuts/robestepbystepcopygrey.jpg Ill deal with this in a bit, i have some things to do right now...thanks for pointing this out!! Starks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikemike Posted February 24, 2008 Share Posted February 24, 2008 I have few questions: You said you started use red to shade first (step 7- 11), then you use blue to shade more. Do you mean the blue is fully cover the area of your first shade (red)? Actually which steps it's takes to shade blue? Did you added the green in the stage? And I wonder at last, why I can see the shade looks like brown more than blue/ red? :lol: I suggest you can make the picture more bigger, because I can't see the picture clearly, sorry man :P This explanation of this tutorial is great. I'm sure I learned more things on this tutorial. I'm going to study it a bit more this few day :P Thanks Alex! Mike. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starks333 Posted February 24, 2008 Author Share Posted February 24, 2008 I have few questions:You said you started use red to shade first (step 7- 11), then you use blue to shade more. Do you mean the blue is fully cover the area of your first shade (red)? Actually which steps it's takes to shade blue? Did you added the green in the stage? And I wonder at last, why I can see the shade looks like brown more than blue/ red? :D I suggest you can make the picture more bigger, because I can't see the picture clearly, sorry man :P This explanation of this tutorial is great. I'm sure I learned more things on this tutorial. I'm going to study it a bit more this few day -_- Thanks Alex! Mike. if you click the image it should open a new window and enlarge it..you can click again and enlarge it more(i use firefox, might not be the same in explorer) you never fully cover the same area with shades, you want to create levels....levels meaning varying differences in value...this is how you create depth however it wasnt a big thing on blending so ill try and keep it to colour the main idea is that you can use colours(red, blue, green) that are completely different from the original(beige) and still have it look "correct" where/when you apply them is decided by light and atmosphere Starks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starks333 Posted April 1, 2008 Author Share Posted April 1, 2008 i donno if the quality will bother you but i just did this last night: link to video: http://s6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/Star...nt=100_4745.flv Im using just a couple layers, heavier layers, to blend faster, it just wont be as smooth...to glaze its usually thinner layers because you are trying to blend two areas so if you use a heavy glaze its gonna just mess it up Shading heavy wash (drag towards darkest) highlight: heavy glaze (be soft on the brush) blending joint lines or tinting: thin glaze for an idea on consistency: http://s6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/Star...nt=100_4732.flv i never go by ratios, so dont assume its 1 drop of water to 1 drop of paint, test your consistency with the paper, and memorize what the paint looks like(dragging some out and away from the puddle will help show you how transparent it is) because p3 paint is already quite liquidy it doesnt take much to thin it so: the 1st line would be heavy glaze/wash, its thinned, transparent but still has a lot of pigment 2nd line is thin glaze for tabletop, its thin enough to tint 3rd line is thin glaze for blending...this is what you would paint with using successive washes, to build up transition and super smooth blending The less contrast you have in a piece the smoother you can make the quick blending, because i have high contrast it will look a bit rougher upon close inspection, but very nice at 12"+.. your usual tabletop viewing distance The light source(zenithal) is what allows me to place the highlights and shades so quick and easy because i already know where hey are going because light has a predetermined angle...the head is brighter so the piece has a focal point...all the while painting a tabletop mini, quickly this is the end result http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/Starks3333/Tutorial/BnC%20Tuts/100_4746.jpg http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/Starks3333/Tutorial/BnC%20Tuts/100_4747.jpg you can use red, or green, or brown, or purple and green, or red and green, or whatever colours you want to shade the yellow, i just chose purple cuz i could ;) http://s6.photobucket.com/albums/y218/Star...ial/BnC%20Tuts/ Starks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tyrannicide Posted April 2, 2008 Share Posted April 2, 2008 Starks that is a very informative glazing video. Your paint is extremely thin, but it works nicely. Would you mine tossing together one on shading? Also what types of brushes do you use, when painting? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starks333 Posted April 2, 2008 Author Share Posted April 2, 2008 Starks that is a very informative glazing video. Your paint is extremely thin, but it works nicely. Would you mine tossing together one on shading? Also what types of brushes do you use, when painting? blending is glazes/washes...which is thinned paint, so if you want to shade, same idea, thinner the paint longer the process, smoother the blend.....heavier the paint, shorter the process, rougher the blend as for brushes, I'll refer you back to page 1, I list mine under brushes, along with some others, i plan to buy a couple more brands to give a true comparison shot :D I also wanna show some paint quality, and some other stuff hopefully im working on getting some website stuff together cuz that would make setting this up much nicer as id have more freedom in how it appears Starks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobPhoboS Posted January 8, 2010 Share Posted January 8, 2010 Great post ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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