Adventures in Miniature Painting #5

Installment #4 was way back in February of 2019 so I figured it was time for an update (if you want to go all the way back to the beginning, installment #1 is way back here in 2018).  So, what have I learned in the last eighteen-ish months?  As it turns out, quite a lot!  So much so, in fact, that I've had to split this into two installments.  Coming soon!

Basing Is Not Overrated

I made a real big basing push this year.  I talked about it here following an effort of several weeks over the totality of the minis I'd painted to date.  I'd resisted basing until then.  That's not "I based a few things but mostly didn't"; I'd literally based none of my figures and couldn't even be bothered to black-ring them because it was all scary and new and mystifying.  James Wappel educated me about this among other things.  

Since then, I've based every figure I've painted in some way, though, it bears noting that my bar is still pretty low.  For instance, I generally don't add crap to my vintage figures because I want to modify them as little as possible and suffice with painting the base black.  I also sometimes don't choose to base figs with sculpted bases or those that would be hard to cut off.  Everything else is fair game.  In fact, I look for figs that are easy to cut off of whatever they're standing on so I can do something fancier.  Notably, a large number of Bones 4 figures are not molded to their bases.  Win!

Basing isn't magic, nor is it particularly hard.  It does require a handful of specialized materials but they don't have to be super expensive.  Many of the best things tend to live at the hardware store which generally works in significantly larger volumes that we might use in the miniatures hobby.  That means it's inexpensive and/or can be easily pilfered from your local construction site.

Very fine sand can be purchased in way too big a bag at the hardware store or pilfered from your friendly neighborhood sandbox.  Sometimes beach sand can be fine enough but that requires a beach nearby.  Occasionally you can buy small bags of this from the dollar store but the stuff I bought is fairly coarse which is good for scale gravel fields.  Note that at typical miniature scale, even very fine sand is huge grit.  Baking soda sprinkled on superglue is way closer in scale, dries really fast, and is hard as a rock!  Thanks, Uncle Atom!

Small rocks can also be purchased from the dollar store or in much larger quantities from aquarium suppliers.  You could buy ballast from Woodland Scenics or something (I did) but a fine aggregate from (again) the hardware store is just as good.  I also understand that kitty litter works well, too, but I am not a cat person.  Alternatively, visit the nearest construction site and pilfer some of their cement grit.  Tree bark can make very convincing large layered stone.  Vince recommends these which are readily available 24x7 from Amazon.  I like these a lot because I don't have a friendly bark pile to pilfer from.  Note:  if you're going to take these from nature, make sure to kiln them in your oven to kill off any nasty beasties that might be hiding inside.  This will also reduce the probability that they rot due to internal moisture.

Flocking is not a thing you can pilfer easily.  You can make this stuff from sawdust or ground up foam or whatever but I recommend buying stuff from Woodland Scenics or something like that.  Seriously, a small amount of this will go a really long way and I currently own enough that I don't expect to ever run out.  You probably want two different colors because nature isn't monotone.  Clumps are good too to give some texture difference or to hide figs that didn't get cut off their molded bases but do what makes you happy.  Tufts are also things you can make yourself with a little skill and tend to be on the spendier side but a couple of those will really punch up a base.  Note that tufts are like salt--you want enough to turn up the volume but not so much to become overpowering.  

Hated Mold Lines

If there's a trend in my painting posts from this year, it's painting with oils.  If there are two then the other one is failing to deal with mold lines.  Mold lines, hated mold lines, are prominent in many of my posts, mostly because I habitually fail to deal with them sanely.  I've learned the hard way that mold lines will absolutely ruin an otherwise good paint job.  Reaper Bones are especially bad because the plastic is soft and tends to fray out and the normal white material hides imperfections terribly.  It also hides details and makes those details predictably soft which is why they're falling out of my favor.  The newer Bones Black material seems to be better in both regards.  

I agonize over mold lines now, significantly increasing my prep time but I'm at the point of not wanting to deal with them after the primer is on.  Nolzur's minis are lousy for this as they're already primed and in my experience, the mold lines are very pronounced and often badly placed.  Vince gives this guidance:  use acrylic gloss varnish over missed mold lines and paint over them.  I can confirm that this works over limited and shallow mold lines.  Anything bigger needs to be cut or sanded off.  

There's a reason that folks who have been doing this for a while shout about this one so much.  I've learned this the hard way and I now understand why.  Ultimately, they're your minis--do what you feel is appropriate but I'm going to wage a personal war on them moving forward.  

The Brush Cycle

In the last installment I waxed not particularly poetic about finally buying nice brushes.  I've now gone full circle.  It's not that I don't like nice brushes, but it's more that I don't need nice brushes for most things now.  Furthermore, there are a handful of things that carefully chosen crapsynthetic brushes are actually better suited to.

Washes love to soak up into the ferrule of your brush.  This is because their surface tensions is so low resulting in a much lower viscosity--exactly what we want so it'll flow into the recesses.  Paint drying in the ferrule is bad, however, and the most common way for brushes to split.  Large synthetics, say, these at less than 50 cents a brush, are inexpensive enough to handle all your washing needs.  Best yet?  When they inevitably do split or hook or whatever, graduate them to terrain or metallics or drybrushing or whatever you use your dead brushes for.  

If you've followed the typical guidance of using the biggest brush that you can stand, you've probably noticed like I have that natural hair brushes are typically floppy at that size.  This generally means that I have to work an awful lot harder to get the paint where I want it which is a friction that I just don't need in my life.  I generally note the opposite for small synthetic brushes--they're super stiff and painful to use a lot of the time, but more on that in a bit.  What if we use a really big synthetic brush instead of a natural hair brush?  Could that be the best of both worlds?!

The answer is yes!  Large synthetics are soft enough at scale to be usable for most of your heavy work like shaded basecoat (note the nice tips) and cheap enough to not worry too much about if you're rough with them.  I'm also a fan of fanning them out with paint in them in a very filbert-like way to do damp brushing across details a la James of Wappelville.  I wouldn't dream of abusing an expensive natural hair brush like this but with 50 cent synthetics I'm all about it.  

Have you ever had difficulty edge highlighting with your fancy Kolinsky Sables?  A tiny variance in the pressure will change the thickness of the line even if you've carefully wicked excess paint out of the brush and now you've got a lousy smear where you needed precision.  What happened?  Aren't Kolinskys supposed to be the best?  Edge highlighting would be trivial if you were using a pencil (say, these) since all you need is to get the tip where it needs to be and the rest is a snap because the pencils won't deform much under pressure. 

I find that synthetics are way better for edge highlighting small details because they're so much stiffer.  I was flummoxed about how hard it was to edge highlight with Kolinskys for months because I didn't have the brush control.  And don't waste your time with a tiny spotter.  Use a liner brush which has much longer bristles holding more paint and less likely to dry in the middle of your carefully applied stroke.  I also find them better for painting things requiring a lot of precision like eye highlights and whatnot for the same reason.  

I'm generally now using synthetic brushes for most of my work.  Flowing locks, freehand, and other very stroke-sensitive work is still done with the many (many) sables I've collected in the last two and change years.  Everything else is done with brushes that cost less than $1.  I abuse these terribly and will generally clean with abrasive soap where other chemical cleaners aren't doing it anymore and use them for glue and other terribleness on the regular.  At the price they are, they aren't super worth fretting over which has saved me a lot of hobby time.

Join me in the next installment where I'll talk about paints, color theory and haaaaaaate.