41 replies to this topic

[MamaGeek]

I bought this figure a long time ago, because I just really loved the sculpt, and thought she would be fun to paint, especially with those very big expressive eyes. So far, the very talented Julie Guthrie has not let me down!



Here's my planned palette:



You can see in the color strip above how the orange and green blend into a muddy color, as do the indigo and yellow. A variation of indigo or orange will be the dominant (base) color of most painted areas on my mini. Applying the thinned complement of that base color in the shadows will create a muddy shade, establishing contrast mainly through color instead of tone. Finally, highlighting with white will desaturate the entire area.

Step 1: Boots and Coat

The base color for these sections is indigo. The boots are based in pure indigo, the jacket with a lighter shade of the same. The lowest sections of the jacket has more blue in it than the rest, and the highlights are lightest in the top half. I stuck to my plan with the shading and highlighting.



Step 2: Pants, Shirt, and Skin

These are the orange/red based areas of the miniature, though the shade I used turned out ore red than it should. I'll fix that in the next step. The remaining unpainted areas will mostly be shades of brown and gray.



Step 3: Headband, Gloves, Eyes

As planned, I moved the clothing color away from red, and closer to orange. Then I painted the headband, gloves, and eyes.



The closeup reveals a few flaws I'll want to touch up in the next step.

[Metalchaos]

Nice work so far, the blending are sweet. Her eyes are amazing too, I like their manga fell.

[Adrift]

I always kind of glanced at this miniature in the store with nothing but a passing glance, but your work has definitely made me a believer. I like what you've got going and look forward to more. It's really cool to see someone paint differently. I base with entire mini's base coat first and then move on from there, I like that you do it piecemail.

[ThornDJL7]

Your palette entry intrigues me. How did you determine the colors would do that? It looks like a computer determined the color mixture for you. How do I get my computer to do that?

[CashWiley]

Yeah, the color theory stuff and pre-painting planning phase really intrigues me, too!

[MamaGeek]

@Adrift - Yes, I always paint one section at a time, for a couple reasons. First, base coating is boring. I'd much rather quickly lay on the base for a section, then get on to the fun of highlighting, shading, etc. Second, I never know at the start what color everything will be. I have a general palette in mind, and might know how I'll paint the major sections, but I usually put off the final color decisions until I must make them.

@ThornDJL7 and @ChashWiley - If you are serious about painting, then I highly recommend reading the book Color Theory by Jose Maria Parramon. In general, if you mix a color with its complement (its opposite on the color wheel), you will get a muddy gray. If you mix them in uneven amounts, and do that with another set a few steps away on the color wheel, that's called a harmonic range of broken colors from a mixture of complementary colors. That kind of range is usually used to paint gray with color. I'm using it here to paint a fairly desaturated palette.

If you go to kuler.adobe.com, you can find a really great palette tool. I took a screenshot and edited it a bit to produce this, which shows you my colors on the color wheel:



See how the complementary colors are opposite one another?

I took that strip on the bottom of the image above and edited it in Photoshop, blending the colors into one another to create the image in my top post, so I could show you all how the complementary colors can be used for shading.

If you really want to be a good miniature painter, don't just read miniature painting articles and books. Read general-purpose art books. Miniature painting is really in its infancy compared to the centuries that master painters have been putting paint to canvas. Spend some time in art museums, too. There is so much you can learn!

[MamaGeek]

Step 4: General touchups, plus some details

Tonight I spent most of my tie touching up the face, toning down the orange and brown, and painting some of the small details on the front. I base-coated the sword and other metal bits.

[Adrift]

I use a free color wheel app on my iPhone. I find it really helps. I'm going to study this adobe labs toy however!

[ThornDJL7]

Don't worry about me ignoring the rest of the art spectrum. :P

My next goal is to start taking some fine art classes for the fun of it. The first one I wanted to take was one that was focuses solely on the color.

[CashWiley]

The local art & community center director and I have been passing the idea back and forth about trading acrylic painting lessons for guitar lessons :)

[ThornDJL7]

I bought that book you recommended. I twas $5.xx on Amazon including the shipping.

[MamaGeek]

Don't worry about me ignoring the rest of the art spectrum. :P

My next goal is to start taking some fine art classes for the fun of it. The first one I wanted to take was one that was focuses solely on the color.

Sorry for going a bit into lecture mode, there. Sometimes I get a little carried away, I think.

And I know you'll like that book. It's fantastic!

[chaosscorpion]

Not lecturing...Teaching and sharing your enthusiasm. The work so far is stellar and I love to see the progress on wip's.

[MamaGeek]

OK, so I was wrestling with how to paint the rod and her hair, since those are fairly important bits. I played with some coloring in Photoshop, and I found that using the complements of my two major palette colors works very well.

NOTE: The hair and rod are NOT painted in the following image: they are colored in Photoshop.

[psyberwolfe1]

I would reverse those elements. Not a fan of the green hair. I makes it look like you are being slavish to the palette.