Adventures in Miniature Painting #3

That's right, I split the painting part from the prep part in much the same way you wouldn't do a party.  It was too long as a single post and now I get to ++ my post count.  You can't stop me!

Miss part 2?  It's here!  Part 4 continues here!

Glazing

Brown shows through better where the drybrush left paint.
Recesses are still dark but we'll darken them again later.

OK so we now have a pretty reasonable value sketch so we can go about putting color down.  We want to pick our colors and thin them down to make a glaze.  If we thin them down too much, they stop being paint.  We want something slightly heavier than the wash.  Depending on the paint, I'm looking at 1 part paint to 2 or 3 parts water but glaze medium is far better (this is what it's for).  You'll need to mess around with this but you basically want paint that goes on translucent.  If you want to move the color more, put on another coat once it's dry but know that the more pigment you get on there the less of your lighting will show through.  I aim for two or three layers because I don't trust my mixing to get it in one.  You can always add more paint but taking paint away is really hard.

We aren't moving the color much with each coat.
Left:  3 coats, right:  1 coat

When you're putting the paint down, you're going to want to not load your nice hopefully pointy brush too heavily.  Paint should not be dripping off of it.  You want to put the paint down in a controlled manner.  I keep a folded paper towel to wick paint off my brush to make sure I don't get too much to work with.  I don't use it all the time; only when I've been too pushy with my paint puddle.  Some people will wipe the excess off on the thumb holding the mini.  The important thing is to get the paint where you want it and only where you want it.  Paint shouldn't pool in the dark recesses, but unless you're using a light color (like I did) it doesn't matter much if you do.  Aim for smooth strokes with the brush pulling the hairs where you want them on the fig.  Stabbing with the brush (called stippling by paint-y types) isn't what we should be doing.

I generally work interior to exterior.  That usually means starting with fleshtones and ending with weapons and equipment.  For these dudes it was dark fur, light fur, then armor.  I will sometimes start with super hard to get at places with my brush if I think it's going to be a problem because I know it's going to be messy.  For this particular thing, if I make a mess on an area I'm already happy with, I will quickly get an extra brush, get some water on it, then take care of the issue before it dries.  You can sometimes paint over it, but it depends on what it is.

Also, it'd be remiss of me to not mention that you'll be painting away, finish a color then take a look and thing "holy carp, I've ruined it!"  No you haven't.  Most minis go through a phase that looks bad.  I have no idea why.  I've learned that unless I can pinpoint what's wrong at which point corrective measures are usually obvious, I just need to power through.  I find that the more I paint the more true this becomes.

Details

My crappy shot washed out the subtleties of the shading
on these guys.  They look much better in person.

This is where I pick out a bunch of the fun details and where the mini starts looking done.  Depending on how I feel, I'll do eyes first with whatever touch ups are needed.  This is what the sharp brush is for.  Note:  I always paint eyes.  This is Vince's doing.  If you paint eyes all the time you'll get used to painting them and eventually it won't be a chore.  I'll also note that you can give your figs a heck of a lot more character if you paint eyes well.  Eyes won't save an otherwise lousy paint job but badly painted eyes will ruin an otherwise good paint job.  Human types are really good at picking up incredibly minute issues with eyes so getting good at painting them will pay off in the long run.

This is also where I do weapons, armor and other metallics.  If I'm going fast I usually just paint with full strength or slightly thinned metallics.  I haven't found a metallic that glazes well but I'm also not a professional painter.  You don't need to overthink it at this point (that'll come later).  This is usually where I sort out other details like bags, bandages, leather straps, bejangles or earrings or whatever.

And while we're talking about metallics, the good news is that our bang per buck ratio goes up if the fig is wearing chain mail or scale mail or something like that.  As it turns out, we've already got all the technique we need to quickly paint these without much trouble.  Start with a dark metallic like gunmetal or something.  Hit it with a dark wash (gloss would be best here).  Then finish it off with a light drybrush of a lighter metallic.  It's like 5 minutes of work and looks like you spent a heck of a lot more time.

One More Wash

The last wash re-darkened the recesses.

Now we want to re-darken all the places we messed up with our glazes.  We can't be messy with this one:  get the paint only were you want it and (generally) only in the places you want to darken.  If you're heavy with this wash, you'll get coffee staining which is cool if that's what you want, but we usually don't want it.  If you're not opposed to spending money, I super recommend Agrax Earthshade and Nuln Oil from Citadel (special mention:  Reikland Fleshshade).  People call them liquid talent.  I don't think this is overstated.  I use one or both of these on just about every build.

Often your models will look dirty if you finish with a wash.  Obviously, this is OK for the gnolls but sometimes less so for other characters.  I will sometimes drybrush over the top, but if you do that it will sometimes look chalky--light colors seem to be more prone to this than others.  Occasionally I will put normal paint over the top, usually the color I glazed with.  That will usually solve it but you have to be extra special careful to not get paint in the recesses otherwise your wash was for naught.

Further Reading Watching

Vince has a really good explanation of this whole process here where he's painting his hand gunners.  It's a long video full of all kinds of good stuff, but the first ~40 minutes is what we want to focus on.  He's using this technique to speed paint, but this is where I started with to do any paint.  I think this is a heck of a lot easier to start with than the normal "gajillions of layers" approach.  You don't need to know how light works to get a decent result and you don't have to sweat a lot of details other than getting the techniques down and those aren't all that hard.  Seems like a win-win to me.

Fierce!

The dirty secret of miniature painting is that you don't actually need any artistic ability to get figs to a reasonable table top level of quality.  You do need steady hands, though, a few techniques briefly outlined here, and a little bit of patience.  The two gnolls shown there took a grand total of under five hours which isn't all that bad for two figs.

Like all hobby endeavors, you can take this one deep--really deep.  How far you take it is up to you but remember that no one is forcing you to paint in any particular way or to any particular standard.  If you're like me and only really care about getting figs on a table (sometimes call "tabletop standard" or "3 feet fabulous") then you don't need to get too deep or labor over a single fig for weeks on end.  They're your figs.

And We're Done!

Congrats!  You've painted your first mini!  Now what?  Let it dry and impress your friends!  In the next installment of this rarely updated almost-series, we'll talk about other newbie-friendly advice and my experiences spending far too much cashmoney on far too crappy gear.  Stay tuned!