13 replies to this topic

[Maglok]

Just finished my iconic summoner from the reaper pathfinder line. I went with a water colour pastelle pallette. I have several forms of the eidolon painted up. The eidolon/frog is from Otherworld Miniatures and was done quite quickly, but the summoner took me well into the first few levels to finish.



I would love some advice on how to get some more paint skills in.

[ObsidianCrane]

You look like you need 2 things;
1) More patience
2) To build more layers of paint for smoother transitions of colour.

1 thing in general is to thin your paint at least a little so it goes on more smoothly.

Basic skills look good though. :)

[Maglok]

What do you mean more patience?

The thing is if i thin my paints more I usually get that it covers less perfectly and if I go over it again I never touch the exact same area. My hands are simply huge. :)

[ObsidianCrane]

Just that more patience. Being careful and applying more layers of paint just flat out takes more patience until you get better at the techniques when you can use them faster (then it takes patience to level up again...).

When I look at the pictures I see areas that show the signs of using thick paint. It seems you have core ideas down, and your freehand is good (which belies your comment about your hands). The key to improving significantly from here lies in paint consistency. Using thinned paints is key to more advanced techniques like layering, glazing and even things like blending (wet or otherwise).

[DSModels]

Looking Great!

1 thing in general is to thin your paint at least a little so it goes on more smoothly.

Basic skills look good though. :)

One thing that can also help this dramatically is to add a dab of Reaper Flow Improver 09106 to all your drops of paint. this will make the paint go a lot smoother and prevent most of the drag marks I see in the shading and freehand like the purple trim line on the last photo. Practice, practice, practice .

[Maglok]

@ObsidianCane: Yeah I agree with the thick paint. I might even lose some detail by using thick paints. I tried to do some blending on some rust monsters a while ago and that went ok enough, but the areas were a lot bigger. I am going to try to water the paint down a bit more. Thanks!

@DSModels: Reaper flow improver? I am afraid no one here seems to carry any reaper paints (Holland, specifically Utrecht). A drag mark being that a line starts thickish and then becomes less and less clear? I see, sounds wise. I might be able to order some from an online webshop in europe.

[Adrift]

I like your work a lot, and honestly for table top quality that more than covers the mark.

If you want to improve I agree with two suggestions above; thin your paint out as you transition to a highlight. I tend to use water to thin my paint more but I'm sure the Reaper Flow Improver would be of benefit. Overall, you should see a smoother flow of transition between layers assuming you want to put multiple thinner layers of paint down; this will require more time painting said mini.

If you want to move up beyond that I'd suggest trying to increase the transition between areas of shadow and areas of highlight. This is a skill that I've been working on most recently and have accomplished it by painting bi-directionally; specifically, I paint a shade layer on the mini and then from there I paint down with increasingly darkened paint into areas that will receive less light, and then I paint up from that same "middle" shade layer to areas of highlight with increasingly lighter layers of paint on areas that will receive more light.

I could be wrong, but it looks like you might be painting only from a darker layer on up to your brightest layer.

Over in the Work in Progress area I'm working on Rahl, Duke of Pain; you can see my shade layer and then from there how I move from region to region on the mini going both up and down in color.

None of this is easy per se and it takes loads of practice. I'd personally love to have smoother transitions but the only way to get there is practice.

[joshuaslater]

This is nice work. You'll see fast leveling up by thinning and layering. You're going to be one to watch.

[CashWiley]

I've only painted one mini with thinned paints and when I tried to rush a base coat on my Ogre with paint straight from the pot it was awful and I had to thin it out. It quickly feels normal to use thinned paints.

[DSModels]

@DSModels: Reaper flow improver? I am afraid no one here seems to carry any reaper paints (Holland, specifically Utrecht). A drag mark being that a line starts thickish and then becomes less and less clear? I see, sounds wise. I might be able to order some from an online webshop in europe.

If you'll look at the purple line you can see where the paint pushes up on either edge of the line and leaves a whiter transparent drag trail in the center. With the Flow Improver the paint will have a much smoother consistency added with a touch of water. In my experience the F.I. also keeps the paint wet longer, preventing it from drying on your pallet fast like strait paint and water. This I mean if your now using a wet pallet. I personally have yet to try the wet pallet but I have one on its way in the mail .

[MonkeySloth]

What do you mean more patience?

For some of us it takes 8 hours just to do a quick paint job on a single miniature. This really comes down to, as Adrift mentioned, spending time on blends which can be done a number of ways but all do add time to the miniature.

Something to look at also is color balance, which I guess is my job to harp on in these here forums, as you want to make sure that you don't have any over strong colors (like your eyebrows and beard) that force someone only to looks somewhere. Not doing this is A O.K for tabletop and painting for fun but it is something you'll need to consider as part of the over all "becoming a better painter".

Now that I've brought that up...wow...that blue. Don't take this the wrong way but I love all the colors you used except that. I know why you did, it's your toad's colors and that's an awesome concept, but you've got all these desaturated browns and purples then this blue that just seams out of place despite being a low saturation itself--but not quite as desaturated as everything else.

One trick for getting away with this is make sure that blue is used somewhere else on the mini to balance it--even if it's just a highlight for another color. Also you can just wash the blue with some purple or even the shade you used on the toad and then bring it down some. I really think this would work better if the base coat blue was your highlight.

@DSModels: Reaper flow improver? I am afraid no one here seems to carry any reaper paints (Holland, specifically Utrecht). A drag mark being that a line starts thickish and then becomes less and less clear? I see, sounds wise. I might be able to order some from an online webshop in europe.

If you'll look at the purple line you can see where the paint pushes up on either edge of the line and leaves a whiter transparent drag trail in the center. With the Flow Improver the paint will have a much smoother consistency added with a touch of water. In my experience the F.I. also keeps the paint wet longer, preventing it from drying on your pallet fast like strait paint and water. This I mean if your now using a wet pallet. I personally have yet to try the wet pallet but I have one on its way in the mail .

This is generally labeled Matte Medium but you really don't need it unless you're really watering stuff down. There's also a type of flow improver that's not Matte Medium. There was a discussion on this not to long ago that you may find helpful.

[Maglok]

Thanks for all the feedback!

Just that more patience. Being careful and applying more layers of paint just flat out takes more patience until you get better at the techniques when you can use them faster (then it takes patience to level up again...).

When I look at the pictures I see areas that show the signs of using thick paint. It seems you have core ideas down, and your freehand is good (which belies your comment about your hands). The key to improving significantly from here lies in paint consistency. Using thinned paints is key to more advanced techniques like layering, glazing and even things like blending (wet or otherwise).

Yes I see those areas of thick paint as well now. My freehand is quite unsteady, and I only ever claimed my hands to be huge not to be uncapable of tiny stuff. ;)

I like your work a lot, and honestly for table top quality that more than covers the mark.

If you want to improve I agree with two suggestions above; thin your paint out as you transition to a highlight. I tend to use water to thin my paint more but I'm sure the Reaper Flow Improver would be of benefit. Overall, you should see a smoother flow of transition between layers assuming you want to put multiple thinner layers of paint down; this will require more time painting said mini.

If you want to move up beyond that I'd suggest trying to increase the transition between areas of shadow and areas of highlight. This is a skill that I've been working on most recently and have accomplished it by painting bi-directionally; specifically, I paint a shade layer on the mini and then from there I paint down with increasingly darkened paint into areas that will receive less light, and then I paint up from that same "middle" shade layer to areas of highlight with increasingly lighter layers of paint on areas that will receive more light.

I could be wrong, but it looks like you might be painting only from a darker layer on up to your brightest layer.

Over in the Work in Progress area I'm working on Rahl, Duke of Pain; you can see my shade layer and then from there how I move from region to region on the mini going both up and down in color.

None of this is easy per se and it takes loads of practice. I'd personally love to have smoother transitions but the only way to get there is practice.

While it is mainly for table top, I like to spend more time on my player characters, I don't have many because I usually fall in the DM area of gaming. Your thread is quite interesting and the paint work on the Duke is really amazing. Very impressive. I shall keep an eye on it. I do tend to paint from dark to light aye.

This is nice work. You'll see fast leveling up by thinning and layering. You're going to be one to watch.

Thanks! :)

I've only painted one mini with thinned paints and when I tried to rush a base coat on my Ogre with paint straight from the pot it was awful and I had to thin it out. It quickly feels normal to use thinned paints.

Chalk another up to thinned paints, roger.

If you'll look at the purple line you can see where the paint pushes up on either edge of the line and leaves a whiter transparent drag trail in the center. With the Flow Improver the paint will have a much smoother consistency added with a touch of water. In my experience the F.I. also keeps the paint wet longer, preventing it from drying on your pallet fast like strait paint and water. This I mean if your now using a wet pallet. I personally have yet to try the wet pallet but I have one on its way in the mail .

Never tried a wet pallet, that always seemed a bit for the pro's. ;) Water I have handy, so I can start trying to use thinner paints right away. I might start a WIP on a mini I just started on. The Pathfinder iconic monk. So far thinning is working for his skin.

For some of us it takes 8 hours just to do a quick paint job on a single miniature. This really comes down to, as Adrift mentioned, spending time on blends which can be done a number of ways but all do add time to the miniature.

Something to look at also is color balance, which I guess is my job to harp on in these here forums, as you want to make sure that you don't have any over strong colors (like your eyebrows and beard) that force someone only to looks somewhere. Not doing this is A O.K for tabletop and painting for fun but it is something you'll need to consider as part of the over all "becoming a better painter".

Now that I've brought that up...wow...that blue. Don't take this the wrong way but I love all the colors you used except that. I know why you did, it's your toad's colors and that's an awesome concept, but you've got all these desaturated browns and purples then this blue that just seams out of place despite being a low saturation itself--but not quite as desaturated as everything else.

One trick for getting away with this is make sure that blue is used somewhere else on the mini to balance it--even if it's just a highlight for another color. Also you can just wash the blue with some purple or even the shade you used on the toad and then bring it down some. I really think this would work better if the base coat blue was your highlight.

Oh this is useful. 8 hours is quite a bit, that said I am awefully slow and usually spend hours on mini's, so maybe I need more patience in a 'slow sense'. For me 4 hours is like 2 hours to you maybe.

I am one of those 'rare' B people (webdeveloper) that took painting/art history as a course in midschool back in the day. I went with the original Paizo colors and thus used Derek Schubert's paintjob as an example: http://www.reapermin...rt/latest/60047 Obviously his colors are better blended, but I kinda liked the blue hair. This is a gnome afterall and they have fey connections. I see now that I might have gone a bit over the top on the blue. Desaturating colors is sometimes my bane, I paint with very vivid colors a lot and sometimes it just fails to hit the mark.

Thanks for all the suggestions I can't wait to get to some painting tonight. :)

[Adrift]

Not to derail your thread, but I have the same problem; I too tend to get nested into the role of DM so I can sympathize.

[ObsidianCrane]

Never tried a wet pallet, that always seemed a bit for the pro's. ;) Water I have handy, so I can start trying to use thinner paints right away. I might start a WIP on a mini I just started on. The Pathfinder iconic monk. So far thinning is working for his skin.
....
Oh this is useful. 8 hours is quite a bit, that said I am awefully slow and usually spend hours on mini's, so maybe I need more patience in a 'slow sense'. For me 4 hours is like 2 hours to you maybe.

On Wet Pallets; not all pro painters use them either and they seem to be more a matter of personal preference.

That 4 hours = 2 hours thing is trimmed in your favor as you pick up tricks and practice and it all comes back to what I was saying about patience.

However you will find once you thin your paints (even a little) in many ways you can paint faster, learning about washes and layering will allow you to produce great tabletop models faster or work towards pro paintjobs if you really want (though these are slower).