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Brand New Newbie Mini-Painter for D&D
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<blockquote data-quote="Mad_Jack" data-source="post: 8764862" data-attributes="member: 6750306"><p>Welcome to the hobby...</p><p></p><p>As for the other thread, feel free to join in there - it's the only current minis thread on the forum at the moment and we're happy to answer questions. Also, I'd like to invite you to join the Reaper Miniatures painting forums - it's pretty much the ENWorld of the miniature painting hobby, no negativity at all, as everyone there are good people and happy to help out beginners. (Also, a number of professional painters and sculptors regularly hang out there.)</p><p></p><p></p><p>As mentioned, everyone has their own methods of doing things, and sometimes that will also vary with the needs of the particular miniature as well.</p><p>(I personally prefer to start with the eyes right after the primer is dry, simply because they always end up taking me so damn long and I usually have to start over on them at least once. But I'm also one of the folks who primarily paints for display rather than tabletop use, so I usually spend more time on the face than most folks spend on an entire figure meant for playing with... If you're just putting on a single dot or two of paint for the eyes, you might prefer to wait until you're done with the figure and have put on a layer of sealer before doing them - it's all personal preference.)</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p> My number one piece of advice to beginners is to <em>completely ignore all the videos out there about advanced techniques </em>and just focus on mastering the basics - primarily <em><strong>brush control</strong></em>. The very first thing to learn about painting minis is how to put the paint on the figure: learning how much pressure to apply with the brush, how much paint to use, learning to be able to paint good clean lines... (When I teach people to paint, I teach them to be able to paint a nice straight line without any variation in the thickness before they ever set a brush to an actual figure.)</p><p>Good clean lines are the basis of good-looking minis, and far too many beginners try to rush ahead into fancy techniques that really require you to have mastered how to slap on the paint in the first place before you can make those techniques look good.</p><p> Also, brush control is the key to both learning how to touch up your mistakes and, eventually, to smooth blending.</p><p>You can get some pretty amazing results with basic techniques like drybrushing and washes if your brush control is good.</p><p></p><p>As for your other questions, whether to start with a dark basecoat and paint up to the highlights or to start with the base color and both shade and highlight are mainly personal choices, but often can be determined by the miniature as well - particularly if a mini is either multi-part or has lots of areas that are hard to reach. And you may actually decide to do both on different parts of the same figure.</p><p>If you're painting mainly for speed - you've got twenty orcs to paint before your game tomorrow night - it's much faster to prime them black or some other dark color, then dry brush both your base coats and your highlights. Or paint in all your base coats and then just apply a wash over the whole figure to shade it before dry brushing highlights. But you might also take the time to put a few finishing touches on the more visible or important areas like faces, weapons or shield emblems. Even on a figure where you're going for quality over speed, sometimes there's an area that you just can't reach well enough to paint nicely, so you just paint it black or some other dark color so it's less noticeable.</p><p>For multi-part figures, I personally assemble the parts into several large chunks of the figure and then paint each chunk before assembling them, based on how much you can glue together without making it too hard to paint places obstructed by other parts like arms or shields.</p><p></p><p>In general, whether you start dark and paint up or start with base coats and shade/highlight, it's usually advisable to <em><strong>paint from the inside out</strong></em> - since the flesh is usually buried under clothing and armor, paint the exposed parts of the flesh first so you don't have to try not to screw up the nice job you did on the armor and clothes while simultaneously trying to reach hard-to-paint areas like faces buried inside cloak hoods or the parts of the arms that are behind a shield. Then after the flesh paint the hair sticking out from under the hood or helmet before painting the hood/helmet. Do the clothing under the armor before the armor, and then the cloak after that, etc.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Feel free to ask any other questions you might have... (I love to type really long posts that make me seem like I know lots of stuff, lol.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Mad_Jack, post: 8764862, member: 6750306"] Welcome to the hobby... As for the other thread, feel free to join in there - it's the only current minis thread on the forum at the moment and we're happy to answer questions. Also, I'd like to invite you to join the Reaper Miniatures painting forums - it's pretty much the ENWorld of the miniature painting hobby, no negativity at all, as everyone there are good people and happy to help out beginners. (Also, a number of professional painters and sculptors regularly hang out there.) As mentioned, everyone has their own methods of doing things, and sometimes that will also vary with the needs of the particular miniature as well. (I personally prefer to start with the eyes right after the primer is dry, simply because they always end up taking me so damn long and I usually have to start over on them at least once. But I'm also one of the folks who primarily paints for display rather than tabletop use, so I usually spend more time on the face than most folks spend on an entire figure meant for playing with... If you're just putting on a single dot or two of paint for the eyes, you might prefer to wait until you're done with the figure and have put on a layer of sealer before doing them - it's all personal preference.) My number one piece of advice to beginners is to [I]completely ignore all the videos out there about advanced techniques [/I]and just focus on mastering the basics - primarily [I][B]brush control[/B][/I]. The very first thing to learn about painting minis is how to put the paint on the figure: learning how much pressure to apply with the brush, how much paint to use, learning to be able to paint good clean lines... (When I teach people to paint, I teach them to be able to paint a nice straight line without any variation in the thickness before they ever set a brush to an actual figure.) Good clean lines are the basis of good-looking minis, and far too many beginners try to rush ahead into fancy techniques that really require you to have mastered how to slap on the paint in the first place before you can make those techniques look good. Also, brush control is the key to both learning how to touch up your mistakes and, eventually, to smooth blending. You can get some pretty amazing results with basic techniques like drybrushing and washes if your brush control is good. As for your other questions, whether to start with a dark basecoat and paint up to the highlights or to start with the base color and both shade and highlight are mainly personal choices, but often can be determined by the miniature as well - particularly if a mini is either multi-part or has lots of areas that are hard to reach. And you may actually decide to do both on different parts of the same figure. If you're painting mainly for speed - you've got twenty orcs to paint before your game tomorrow night - it's much faster to prime them black or some other dark color, then dry brush both your base coats and your highlights. Or paint in all your base coats and then just apply a wash over the whole figure to shade it before dry brushing highlights. But you might also take the time to put a few finishing touches on the more visible or important areas like faces, weapons or shield emblems. Even on a figure where you're going for quality over speed, sometimes there's an area that you just can't reach well enough to paint nicely, so you just paint it black or some other dark color so it's less noticeable. For multi-part figures, I personally assemble the parts into several large chunks of the figure and then paint each chunk before assembling them, based on how much you can glue together without making it too hard to paint places obstructed by other parts like arms or shields. In general, whether you start dark and paint up or start with base coats and shade/highlight, it's usually advisable to [I][B]paint from the inside out[/B][/I] - since the flesh is usually buried under clothing and armor, paint the exposed parts of the flesh first so you don't have to try not to screw up the nice job you did on the armor and clothes while simultaneously trying to reach hard-to-paint areas like faces buried inside cloak hoods or the parts of the arms that are behind a shield. Then after the flesh paint the hair sticking out from under the hood or helmet before painting the hood/helmet. Do the clothing under the armor before the armor, and then the cloak after that, etc. Feel free to ask any other questions you might have... (I love to type really long posts that make me seem like I know lots of stuff, lol.) [/QUOTE]
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