Having been asked so often how I arrive at my painting results, I thought of putting the below tutorial together. I'll invite you to follow me painting a set of 15 SYW French infantry miniatures. I have chosen to turn them into the roughnecks of Aquitaine (template seen in the right background). As my late reading implies, it was one of Frances more formidable fighting units. A must have. Can't believe I set my eye on this regiment only recently. The flag design will be a challenge, and I'm already getting quite excited as to how it will turn out.
While thinking on how to present my method of painting miniatures, I realised I don't have much of what would deserve to be entitled a ‘deliberate technique’. I guess I'm a loose gun sort of bloke - talented - possibly - but rather instinctively painting away at random.
That's way I decided to let the pics speak for themselves with only a minimum of supporting information. Besides, as I'm no native English speaker, I'm missing most of the needed technical terms anyway.
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The priming I do with a white universal paint - that's what the label says, at least.
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A good old German brand. The multi lingual text on its label indicates you can buy it basically anywhere across the globe.
I tried priming with black - once, but that was no good for my way of painting. I stay with white. Its so much better. Actually when applied to the metal, it'll turn light grey, really.
I should note, that I use artists fine oils with the required additives and also modeller's matt enamels.
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Both can also be mixed quite well. Such a mix I often use as initial base coating, as it dries more quickly and allows for a more speedy progress. If you aren't in a hurry, you don't need them.
Given the slow drying of oil colours, they are best prepared in a little box that can be closed to keep annoying dust off.
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The first step is simply to apply a base cover to every part of the figure. I'll cover the coat, vest, breeches, and gaiters, etc. The faces and hands, I do in a flipped manner. I start off dark with a red-brown – ‘English Red’, I find best here – and then work in the lights with white.
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I add white onto the forehead, nose, the cheeks, and the chin. This works best while the initial red coating hasn't dried yet. Unfortunately, here I was too slow, so that the white didn't mix with the red so well. I have done this better before. No worries. I'm only starting. Plenty of opportunities to correct later if you happen to have your brush loaded with the right shade of colour at a later stage. Really, seeing the figures at this vastly increased scale, my paint work looks terribly inaccurate. A lot more then it actually is. The real figure, seen from about a foot distant, looks perfectly fine.
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Initial coating of the figures is continued. I also do the cartridge bags, the rucksacks, etc. Do you notice the flag. It looks awesome. Must be a design by Yves Saint-Laurent or Missoni. How stylish it is. That's what I love with the French army. Prussian ones manufactured by this obscure Bunzelockwitz Silk Painters Ltd. located at Berlin Hackische Höfe will never be a match.
I also started the first shading with the drum. Before you engage into the shading part of the paint work, you'll have to decide at what level of 3D appeal you want to arrive. The below sketch will illustrate the issue with an odd cylinder (Fig. I) – Yes, that is a cylinder.
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It will be more obvious if you illustrate it as Fig. II and even more so as with Fig. III. I usually seek to arrive at Fig. III. This sketch also serves as a good eye-ball calibrator if you do it for yourself before starting to paint. That said you can now see how I do it when sculpting the coats, to begin with. I dash off rather boldly and line out the dark parts in a rather sketchy manner.
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Right after that I use the coats initial base colour again and mix it into the dark creating gradients from darker to lighter where I want it.
This way works better then painting the dark parts into the cover while it is still wet in order to arrive at the gradients. You have better control of what you are doing. Too much dark can be easily removed with a brush stroke of cleaner instead of colour. You can't do that when painting into the wet cover.
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The result is seen below.
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With pretty much the same method, I did the shading and lightening of the two tambours blue coats. Different to the white coats, I started off with applying the light parts first. Not too much to avoid arriving at a light blue coat. The dark parts are applied only after. Less detail is needed here since both coats will receive a lot of lace later.
…
(The article will be continued as I continue painting)
While thinking on how to present my method of painting miniatures, I realised I don't have much of what would deserve to be entitled a ‘deliberate technique’. I guess I'm a loose gun sort of bloke - talented - possibly - but rather instinctively painting away at random.
That's way I decided to let the pics speak for themselves with only a minimum of supporting information. Besides, as I'm no native English speaker, I'm missing most of the needed technical terms anyway.
A good old German brand. The multi lingual text on its label indicates you can buy it basically anywhere across the globe.
I tried priming with black - once, but that was no good for my way of painting. I stay with white. Its so much better. Actually when applied to the metal, it'll turn light grey, really.
I should note, that I use artists fine oils with the required additives and also modeller's matt enamels.
Given the slow drying of oil colours, they are best prepared in a little box that can be closed to keep annoying dust off.
I also started the first shading with the drum. Before you engage into the shading part of the paint work, you'll have to decide at what level of 3D appeal you want to arrive. The below sketch will illustrate the issue with an odd cylinder (Fig. I) – Yes, that is a cylinder.
This way works better then painting the dark parts into the cover while it is still wet in order to arrive at the gradients. You have better control of what you are doing. Too much dark can be easily removed with a brush stroke of cleaner instead of colour. You can't do that when painting into the wet cover.
…
(The article will be continued as I continue painting)