Painting minis; getting started

[Sacrosanct]

Do drybrushing before the speed paints?

Yep. speedpaints seem like just a thicker wash; very runny and thin. So if you do drybrushing before, when you put on the speed pain, the highlights and shadows are already there due to the transparency of the speed paint and you really don't need to drybrush after that. Only those areas where you want a defined highlight to show.

 

[Aeson]

I like Angela from Hobby Night. She talks painting and does tutorials. She also talks board games and other geekdom.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Here’s a quick comparison of the alchemist purple speed paint from Army painter with a white primer, black primer, and one with layered primer. You can see with black primer, you can’t even really tell the color.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Yep. speedpaints seem like just a thicker wash; very runny and thin. So if you do drybrushing before, when you put on the speed pain, the highlights and shadows are already there due to the transparency of the speed paint and you really don't need to drybrush after that. Only those areas where you want a defined highlight to show.

Makes perfect sense. It’s a way like zenithal highlights or whatever they are called

 

[Retreater]

Makes perfect sense. It’s a way like zenithal highlights or whatever they are called

Yeah you can Zenithal highlight by drybrushing lighter colors over darker primer - or do it with airbrush/rattlecan. I've been very happy with the results since I started using this technique last year. Really helped me paint the HeroQuest set quickly and with decent quality.

 

[MGibster]

I'm trying to come up with some sort of painting plan for these BattleTech miniatures, but the scale is really throwing me off. For the most part, I'm used to painting anywhere between 28-32mm in scale (See T-47 from Star Wars: Legion below for reference). At this scale, I was able to add a lot of detail to the miniature itself with panel lining and various weathering effects. But BattleTech is 6mm to 10mm (depending on who you ask), and what works on 32mm doesn't necessarily work at 6mm.

For example, if I were to use regular grass for a BT mini then it'll look oddly huge compared to the mech. I'm toying with the idea of having a mech with evidence of battle damage/repaired limbs, but will that scale well at 6mm? If I paint some battle damage around the shoulder and paint the arm an entirely different color from the rest of the mech, will you be able to tell it's a replacement arm? How well will weathering look? I'm thinking of using some pigments to darken the feet a little bit because those parts get dirty. Or what about a chipped paint look? Tough to say, but I'm happy to give this a shot.

 

[Mad_Jack]

If you're painting 6-10mm stuff, you're going to want to paint on the suggestion of details rather than actually using the same techniques as for larger stuff... The human eye isn't as powerful as a camera, and can't clearly see details that small unless held right up in front of you. Although you can paint reflections in a 32mm mini's eyes, they won't be visible more than a foot away and will just blur together in the viewer's brain. At 6mm, you can barely see the eyes themselves. So you go back to basics, and paint on simple details that, when translated by the human brain looking at it from three or six feet away, will translate into what you want them to see. Sort of like the technique of pointillism in art... (hell, the quickest way to draw chainmail in an illustration or paint it on a flat surface is to just use alternating black and silver dots.)

For small holes or armor damage, just an uneven black dot or bright silver streak will do to suggest a bullet hole or collision damage. For large holes in armor, once the actual paint scheme is dry, just paint on an uneven black spot with a handful of really tiny silver dots around the edges to represent the ragged shards of bent metal protruding from the hole.

When I was performing with the local Rocky Horror Picture Show cast, playing Eddie, to represent the scar on his forehead where they removed his brain solely with makeup, I used to draw it on like this:

Folks would come up to me after the show and be shocked that it was just two-dimensional -- they thought I'd been wearing FX prostetics...

 

[MGibster]

If you're painting 6-10mm stuff, you're going to want to paint on the suggestion of details rather than actually using the same techniques as for larger stuff... The human eye isn't as powerful as a camera, and can't clearly see details that small unless held right up in front of you. Although you can paint reflections in a 32mm mini's eyes, they won't be visible more than a foot away and will just blur together in the viewer's brain. At 6mm, you can barely see the eyes themselves.

That's actually great advice. Don't feel pressured to paint to photorealistic standards, given the scale and the distance of your audience, it's kind of a waste of time. I know my miniatures look a lot better on the table than they do in my photographs.

 

[Mad_Jack]

I know my miniatures look a lot better on the table than they do in my photographs.

My miniatures look a lot better in other peoples' photographs than they do on my table...

(After 35 years of practice, you'd think I'd be better by now, lol...)

 

[MGibster]

So here is what I’m starting with today:

From the current boxed set. I'm going to keep the base fairly simply and apply sand and pebbles. Once that's done, I'll lay some primer down, base coats, and see where I want to go from there.