Adventures in Miniature Painting #2

Maybe you're a wargamer who wants to take up the Fight Against the Grey(TM).  Maybe you're like me and get tired of pushing around unpainted figs all the time.  Maybe you just like hobby stuffs--I don't know, I don't know you.  Maybe you just want to learn from my mistakes.  That I can help with.  Buckle in, kids, cuz it's a long way to Texas.  In fact, I've had to split this post into two.  It's that far.  I used to live there, I should know. 

• The goal is to get paint on figs that:
• doesn't make you unhappy 
• is fit for tabletop use
• The razor we will pursue is:
• learn the bare minimum number of things
• spend the least time and cashmoneys to get there 

There's a metric ass load of content on the interwebs including quite a large number of tutorials on the youtoobs.  It is super easy to be overwhelmed by the amount of stuff to learn and all the totally awesome photos that people post.  All that stuff has value but not right now--we're just starting.

Note:  we're not going to talk about gear in depth here (maybe later) but the completionist in me insists that I give what I think is a minimum list anyway:

• One large-ish brush (size 3 or size 4 in most lines), bonus if it holds a point.  It should be bigger than you think is reasonable for painting a mini.
• One small-ish brush (size 0 or 1) which needs to hold a point for detailing.  If you can count the hairs on the brush it's probably too small.  
• One flat or blunt brush 1/2 inch or so that you don't mind destroying
• Your paints (mini paints are better than craft paints)
• One or more minis to paint (not going to get far without these)
• Something to put your paints on before you start painting.  This could be a floor tile, a piece of wax or parchment paper, or a plastic cutting board.  
• Water (hopefully available from your local tap) and something to put it in.  I recommend using a cup you won't drink from (mine is a mug with a wicket chip where I'd drink).
• Paints.  This guy gets you most of the way for $30.  I have the older version of this guy for around $100.  If you want a real analysis, Miniac and pal's got you covered.
• [optional?] A hobby knife like an X-ACTO or something.  
• [optional?] If your mini requires assembly, you'll want super glue or something.

It Begins!

These two gnolls (I love gnolls) came in the same blister pack so you get to see two miniatures painted for the price of...well, free.  These are pre-primed Pathfinder Battles Deep Cuts Gnolls.  I paid under $5 for the both them.  These are primed in white which I generally like for what's about to happen.  

Oh man, gnolls!

If you're new to mini collecting, I like the plastic lines like these.  The common ones are Reaper Bones, WizKids Nolzur's Magnificant Unpainted Miniatures and Pathfinder Battles Deep Cuts.  They tend to be affordable, good quality, and usually come multiple per pack.  The WizKids lines above are licensed which means if you're playing that game and you want an official mini, that's your best starting point.  If instead, you need a large number of the same things, say, gnolls, or just want a pile of mooks, do what the wargamers do.  Frostgrave is an interesting skirmish game with its own line of figs.  Their awesome box sets contain 20 figs and cost around $35 (assembly required).  And yes, they have gnolls.  You want knights?  Perry Miniatures has got you covered.  There are many options if you're trying to build up a collection on a budget.

Hated, Hated Mold Lines

Mold lines are the bits of the casting medium that gets stuck between the two sides of mold.  You can sand them off or scrape them off with the back of a hobby knife.  We aren't spending money on tools yet, and you super don't need it, but I do very much like this one.  (And no, I don't get kickbacks for any of this stuff.)  Failure to remove these now will mean your mini will look less like the awesome thing it's supposed to be and more like the plastic or metal toy it is.  It bothers me so I deal with them but it isn't strictly necessary.  Feel free to skip if you're OK with that or don't have easy access to the right tools or something--it's OK, I give you permission.

Note:  if you're starting with a white primed mini like I am, or a Reaper Bones or something, mold lines are sometimes really, really hard to spot.

Gotta Wash That Sucker

Unless you have a fancy "already primed" mini like I do, you will need to wash and prime it.  All minis come out of the molds with traces of a mold release agent which prevents them from sticking to the molds they're, er, molded in and which is also really good at preventing paint from sticking.  You gotta wash that off with soapy water.  I use an old toothbrush and hated dish detergent (the hand wash stuff, not the stuff that goes in the dishwasher).  This is doubly true if you, like me, played with your minis on the table and they're covered in BBQ grease and Cheetos dust.  I'm not here to judge.

A Primer on Primer

I'm certain no one's made this joke before.  A primer is a paint that sticks to your mini and sticks to your paint.  It's good stuff.  The one I like is Vallejo Surface Primer, this one's in Panzer Grey.  You can brush it on (thinly, please) and it'll dry in a few minutes.  You probably don't want to prime in black despite what most folks might tell you.  Priming in black makes a lot of stuff harder and it makes what we're about to do here way less effective.

If you're really opposed to priming, you can sometimes get away without priming some minis.  My first Reaper Bones weren't primed and while the paint does kind of stick to it, it just doesn't stick very well and I know I'm going to have to repaint them at some point.  To add to to the debacle, I also didn't wash them because I was lazy.

A Value What?

What we're about to do is called a value sketch.  This is a simple accounting of how light interacts with the model with an emphasis on highlighting details on the model.  Since all lighting is basically baked into a mini, you can think of this as vertex lighting if your mini was a polygonal model.  Onto that we're going to add our texture data (colors) while preserving as much of the vertex lighting as possible.  To accomplish this, we'll be using a number of thin glazes.  If you know photography and not graphics programming, you can think of a glaze as a gel on your light applied very specifically to your target.  We'll choose to cover over some of the lighting info we're about to put on with stuff like metallic paints but we're not there yet.

We apply a value sketch in two easy steps:

1. Apply a dark wash over the mini to darken the recesses.
2. Apply a light drybrush over the mini to lighten the high areas.  

Note:  dark washes usually dry lighter than they start.

A wash is paint thinned down to the point that it's a) very translucent, and b) very thin.  You can get fancy with them but for this particular application it doesn't have to be super precise.  One part black paint to like four parts water should work.  Note that how much not-paint you need will depend on your not-paint and your paint but you'll figure this out with time.  Sub one or two of those parts of water with thinner or flow improver if you have any--it'll help the paint stay paint.  Washes get into the deep areas of the fig and darken them as if in shadow.  We want to work it into all the nooks and crannies we'd fill with butter if it were an English muffin.

Slap your newly made wash all over your model with whatever brush you have handy but not super heavily and not your chunky brush--we need that guy for the next step.  You do not need to be super careful with this step, but you will need to wait for it to dry completely.  Sorry.  When it's done you should have a mini that's darker in the recesses than the primer color and is generally darker overall.  If you end up with too much wash on your fig, it'll dry in ugly stains.  This is less of a problem because we're about to cover some of it up, just slow your roll next time, OK?

One down, one to go!
These sculpts re really nice!

The next step is to apply a drybrush to add your vertex lighting.  Take your chunky brush you don't mind destroying (I use an eye shadow brush from the dollar store), get some light paint on it, like an off-white or actual white, then wipe most of it off on a piece of paper towel.  You want your brush to only be holding onto the barest traces of paint.  When I started, this seemed to me like a terrific waste of paint but it does work.  I got over it.  If you run it over your hand, it should pick out your skin texture but not intrude into the crevices.  If it does get into the crevices, you've got more wiping to do.

Now you want to very carefully bring the bristly end of the flat brush down across the mini.  Start gently to make sure that you don't have too much paint on it.  It should not streak or leave smudges.  It should only pick out the high points on the model and it will pop out all kinds of detail including every mold line you didn't deal with.  This is probably my favorite part of this technique because it's like a journey of discovery of all the bejangles and cool bits the modelers left for us to admire paint.

When you're applying your drybrush, you want to be super careful of two things:

1. Try to only have the brush touch the mini on the way down (we don't want to paint the undersides with the highlights)
2. Focus on the top area of the mini and anything exposed like protruding knees and exposed calves and maybe really big prominent boots

I used an old pot of Reaper "linen" from 2004.
That's the brush I used.  It cost a dollar.

If you do this correctly you'll be mimicking a top down light source.  Interior areas on the fig will be in shadow which will be mostly correct and lower areas, especially those on the underside of things will also be in shadow.  Note that protruding weapons and jangly bits are going to make this harder.  I find that archers in firing poses and folks holding weapons out with both hands (like the gnoll on the left) really muck this up but most folks won't notice.  When you're done you should have a pretty reasonable greyscale figure with recesses and undersides in darkness and stuff on the upper or exposed parts in extreme highlights.

If you set the fig down on the table, the lighting will hopefully look exaggerated but natural.  Note that we want to exaggerate the lighting because these figs are really small and real light doesn't interact with them the way we'd hope.  Otherwise we'd get away with a simple base coating and actual light will sort the rest of it out for us.  The universe doesn't like to cooperate, though.

Next time:  glazing and finishing touches.  I guess that'll be most of the actual painting as opposed to the prep (yes, I consider the first wash and value sketching as prep).

If you missed part 1, you can find it here and here's part 3 if you want more.