Glossy finish - How to remove it and some new painter questions

[PureConstant]

Hello guys! I've been painting for about a month and I tried some blending on my lancer. I tried using the glazing technique I saw online with 4 highligths and I'm not sure what I did wrong but as you can see on this picture : http://imgur.com/75NMTQM, the shoulders are really really glossy. The white spots are natural ligth from my lamp.

Is there a way to repair that ?

While I'm here, I also have some other questions.

1) What is the easiest way for a new painter to blend colors ? I do not like the "cell-shading effect" where you see the stripes of the previous layer.
2) How do you layer round surface like the shoulders of the lancer ? I watched a lot of tutorials online but they are always on a flat surface from brigth to dark. Never from dark to brigth to dark again. I'm a little confuse as how to do it.
3) For the higthligth with glazes technique I went with a 4:1:1 (Water+flow aid, Matte medium, paint), is it too thin or not enough ?
4) How can I avoid my paint having some small bubbles ? Sometimes I get bubbles on the tip of my brush and I can't pop them while applying the paint.
5) Finally, If I want to redo the shoulders, can I just cover it with a base color or there will be way too much paint on that part and I have to strip the model ?

Thanks a lot!

[MAXXxxx]

Hi,

to get rid of that gloss the easiert is a light spraying of matt varnish (or even matt varnish with a brush, but that takes longer to do).
For the shoulder: the colors you used are too close to each other, so even though you did 4 layers or so, it's almost unnoticable.

1. imho jarhead's wet-in-wet(more or less described on massivevoodoo blog). I saw people who never painted before do pretty good blending after 1 lesson. Maybe supplemented with BenKomets version of it (painting buddha videos on youtube/dvd are wonderful for this, as is the MiniatureMentor video featuring him and his bases). But it's really imho. For others other techniques are easier to learn.
2. I'd rough it in with highlights (or even start the basecoat from there) and shade in the direction of the edges. But it also depends on the fact, that for me shading is easier than highlighting.
3. for glazing about right. But depending on paint/technique you can go a bit thicker, so you see some progress faster (then if you don't like the transitions you can always go back and correct it with glazes)
4. a. you can't really b. it shows that you have too much paint on the brush, for better controll you'd have to get rid of some by touching the side to a paper towel for example.
5. normally you can simply restart with the base. But if you notice, that you lost some of the details, than all that remains is stripping and starting from the undercoat again.

[PureConstant]

Thanks for the tips and answers! I really appreciate it.

Hi,
to get rid of that gloss the easiert is a light spraying of matt varnish (or even matt varnish with a brush, but that takes longer to do).

Do you know how I can avoid that glossy effect in the first place?

Hi,
For the shoulder: the colors you used are too close to each other, so even though you did 4 layers or so, it's almost unnoticable.

Yeah, I used exile blue -> cygnar blue base -> cygnar hightligth -> cygnar highlight with a touch of white but I was afraid that picking colors too far apart would show way too much. I think I will drop the last part with the white because it was way too brigth and I tried to cover it with a darker sahde. I will go for a 3 colors and using mode cygnar highlight on the top of the shoulders since I'm just starting out.

4. a. you can't really b. it shows that you have too much paint on the brush, for better controll you'd have to get rid of some by touching the side to a paper towel for example.

Gosh, I just tip the point of my brush into the paint, clear it on the towel. So I should have like almost no paint at all? Maybe it's also because I'm impatient because I do not see any results after 2-3 layers.

Thanks again!

[ten ball]

VMC do a matt medium that you add to the paint/water mix which makes the paint dry matt. But I would just matt varnish spray / brush as Maxxxxx suggested.

I always run the tip of the brush over my thumb to test the thickness of the paint.

[MAXXxxx]

Do you know how I can avoid that glossy effect in the first place?

no idea, how do you get it the first place?
Normally I'd say it's one of the additives, but flow-aid isn't that shiny and the added matt medium should get rid of the shine anyway.
so only 2 ideas remain:
- you used too many diluted layers
- the flow-aid - matt medium were not shaken properly before use and instead of the needed medium you got some of the thinner/carrier

Yeah, I used exile blue -> cygnar blue base -> cygnar hightligth -> cygnar highlight with a touch of white but I was afraid that picking colors too far apart would show way too much. I think I will drop the last part with the white because it was way too brigth and I tried to cover it with a darker sahde. I will go for a 3 colors and using mode cygnar highlight on the top of the shoulders since I'm just starting out.

aaaactually I think you don't have enough contrast. If you get rid of the lightest color it will be worse.

Gosh, I just ip the point of my brush into the paint, clear it on the towel. So I should have like almost no paint at all?

yeah, almost no paint.
To be honest I think it's more important to apply a thin layer of paint instead of a lot of overthinned paint.

10Ball: I think matt-medium is already used (4-1-1 water-flowaid-mattmedium in opening post)

admit it 10Ball you paint your nails(at least your thumbnail) too in a rainbow of colors (not to mention using the rest of the thumb as a palette, up to the elbows if using airbrush :lol: )

[ten ball]

Many times ive gone out after painting with paint all over my thumb, hand & lips, when I painted that Nurgle squad it looked like I was turning into a nurgling too lol

[PureConstant]

no idea, how do you get it the first place?
- you used too many diluted layers
- the flow-aid - matt medium were not shaken properly before use and instead of the needed medium you got some of the thinner/carrier

I got it applying about 10 coats of each color. I watched How to Paint: NMM Sanguinor: Shading the Wings and tried to replicate the technique but I painted using the tip of the brush instead of using the side like I just saw on massivoodoo from the link you mentionned.

aaaactually I think you don't have enough contrast. If you get rid of the lightest color it will be worse.

Ok, I'll try it again with more contrast but when I tried it, the brightest one was not blending really well and it clashed with the darker one underneath it. It was also looking "chalky". Anyway, it's caused because I lack experience. Practice will make me better

To be honest I think it's more important to apply a thin layer of paint instead of a lot of overthinned paint.

I tried with a more thin layer but the color was not blending well and I ended with a "Tron" look that I did not like

Thanks a lot again!

[Stewsayer]

My 2c.

Its possible that the gloss comes from working a new layer over the previous before its dry, or that you are over diluting the paint or combination of both. Try a bit less dilution and make sure you are waiting until the previous layer is dry (or use a hair dryer). This comes from observations of my own mistakes. Working a semi dry layer can either tear the layer making the surface uneven and gritty or polish it make it smooth and glossy. Over dilution and many layers results in spreading of the binder and medium (matting agents etc.) in the paint to thinly resulting in weak layers of paint that rub off and a loss of the effect of the matting agents.

The quickest way to get rid of the gloss would be to dilute some matte medium with water (at most 50:50) and paint on a light coat of matte medium. I use this a lot when using inks as they tend to be too shiny and I don't want to matte spray the whole mini (it dulls the colours).

I agree with Maxx you could work some more contrast in. The darker layer is still showing through your highlight areas a lot. So you need more layers of your brighter colours to work up their opacity. The trick is to have a band between the two where the opacity changes. Shrink your highlight area a little with each coat. This band is what creates the blend between the tones. I habitually start from something close to my shadow colour and work up. A habit I'm trying to break as it takes a lot of time and effort to cover a dark colour with a light one. Much quicker going the other way. I'm also finding I'm getting better contrast.

How to highlight the shoulders? you need to picture the play of light on the shoulders and paint it. Great advice hey. Take the mini and a desk lamp. Place the lamp where you want your light source to come from (on your mini it looks like directly above). Take a photo (one from front, back and sides even). Study it and look at how the exaggerated light and shadow cast by the lamp play on the surface. Use Gimp or Photoshop to turn it to a gray scale so you can really see the contrast. Now place your lights and shadows in paint as in the photo. It takes some practice but eventually you can skip the photo.

Bubbles in your paint. Maybe mixed too vigorously and maybe too dilute. Also you may have too much flow aid in there. I'd leave that out and just use the matte medium. I suggest going 1:1 with matte medium to water also and them mixing this with your paint in whatever ratio you find that works. that will change depending on what you are doing. Base coats more paint less dilution, washes/glazes more dilution less paint.

I wouldn't start the shoulders again. You need to work in some more of the mid tone and highlights. You may want to bring the mid tone up slightly brighter to differentiate it from the shadows some more. Or you could add a touch of black to the exile blue and take the darkest areas a little darker. If you increase the overall area of the highlight and make the top of that area more opaque by adding more layers you'll be good I think. if you are seeing too much of that cell shading look then glaze the transistion with layers of a mix(es) of the two problem tones.

[BloodASmedium]

GW layman medium will when painted on removes the gloss immediately. And when mixed in with the washes line of paints creates a Matt look when the washes dry. Very good stuff. I've tried all sorts of Matt mediums including VMC WHITE WORK.I CLOSELY LIKE THE LAHMIAN MEDIUM BY GW but the LAHMIAN medium by GW is among my favorites cause very simply it does the job you need it to do. I guarantee it.

[Dragonsreach]

One thing to consider some blue paints are glossy by their nature and will require a Matt medium, and while GW does the Lahmian medium, Vallejo does their own Matt Medium which works out cheaper in the long run.

[oistene]

A lot of good advice here, I've been having some of the same problems and this clears up things a lot for me. Stew's advice about letting layers dry was particularly helpful; I've been sinning there and ran into problems with a patchy finish without understanding why.

[MAXXxxx]

One thing to consider some blue paints are glossy by their nature and will require a Matt medium, and while GW does the Lahmian medium, Vallejo does their own Matt Medium which works out cheaper in the long run.

or switching over to paint ranges that are dead flat (andrea, scale75) instead of the satin(but harder to damage, so better for gaming) VGC/P3.

but personally I wouldn't care about it that much, hit it with a matt spray once in a while (when paint behaviour starts to get annoying) and that's it.

[PureConstant]

Thanks a lot everyone for taking the time to help me, I really appreciate it!
I decided to cover it again with Cygnar Blue Base since it's a flat surface and there are no small details that I could cover with too much paint. It removed the glossy finish.

Since it's my first mini ever, I decided to keep it simple and not aim for golden demon standard since I'm not that good in mixing paint and finding the good paint consistency yet. I tried layering without any blending and it went not too bad. The lines between each layer were not blended at all (is there a term for this?) but I did some drybrush over it and I'm fairly happy with the result. I can post a pic when I'm at home for those interested. The darker lines near the recesses are still really apparent ("tron effect") but I covered more surface with the cygnar blue highligth and finished it with drybrushing Menoth White Highligth on top of it.

I followed the forces of cygnar book painting instructions but they do not explain how they achieve the blending at all, wich is a bit sad because when I compare my steps with theirs, there is a huge gap in the finished look

I never thougth that painting a mini would be so hard, especially the blending part. I will need to practice a lot.
Is there another material that is similar to resine that I could use to practice the techniques instead of trying it on my mini, then stripping it and starting again? A piece of paper should do the trick?

I will go online and read more about glazing and use it as a layering technique because I tried it 2-3 times and each time, the paint was too thin and even with almost no paint at all, I could see the color following my brush and the final outcome was pretty bad.

Please forgive me for any grammatical mistakes or if some sentences make no sense, I'm french.

[Trevor]

Grab some cheap plastic miniatures off ebay to practise on. These can be stripped by soaking in Fairy power spray (if they have that in France) and brush the old paint off with an old toothbrush.

[Dragonsreach]

Thanks a lot everyone for taking the time to help me, I really appreciate it!

Please forgive me for any grammatical mistakes or if some sentences make no sense, I'm french.

This site is all about helping each other to improve in painting.
As for the grammar, your English is far superiour to that which I have been subjected to today, and from native speakers too!
We also have to forgive the Americans for their inability to spell COLOUR ������������

[BloodFather of Kharnath]

The British put a "U" in every other wourd.

Nous parlons en francais, si vous plait?

Anyway , some very excellent advice from some top notch painters. Something I've noticed about this site, we all absolutely love helping out the beginner painter. Intermediates don't receive half the attention as someone just starting out, because we all genuinely want to witness that moment when they conquer the pallet. So don't hesitate to ask many questions. C'est d'accord.

Blending on a rounded object. I will give you a solid example of how it should likely be done, but first let me make something clear. You use the term layering as if it is something completely different from blending. If you are layering by using glazes, this is how you are blending. You said you layered a bunch of different tones but had not blended them yet. In the act of layering, the blending should happen. If it doesn't, that is fine, just pick a tone in between the two colors and add a few layers where they meet. This should blend the two if they weren't blended already. Make sense?

Ok round object. Look at a sphere receiving light from above. Just cut that circle in half, at the equator, and you have your rounded object. So there's several ways to do it, but first I would apply a mid tone. Then I'd take the brightest highlight, maybe pure white, and make a tiny circle. Then I'd make a circle around the circle with a slightly darker highlight. Then I'd do this again with a slightly darker highlight, closer to the midtone. Then I would leave original midtone and start with the lightest shadow somewhere where the darkness should start. I'd then pick a slightly darker color and make a larger circle around the previous circle. All the way to my darkest color, which should be the largest circle and should be at the base of the rounded object. Hope this makes sense.

You may be getting glossiness from your recipe of additives. All those different liquids may be combining to do something funky. I'm assuming you fixed this so I won't go too much in depth. As some have mentioned, just use a glaze medium. I go through a pot of lahmian per mini.

Your blue tones were too close in hue, as some have mentioned. Don't be afraid of picking shades of a color that are far apart. Like a really light baby blue and a dark blue. You can always glaze on a few layers of an intermediate color to bring them together. Again, I am just a little concerned that you are confused about layering through glazes and the outcome of a blended miniature.

You our seem to be struggling with how much to dilute. Let me tell you that most beginners struggle with this because they are unable to see results as they paint, and so it leads to all sorts of problems. For me, even now I don't dilute as much as I should, just because I tend to make a mistake when I don't see immediate results. Right now I can normally add 3-4 layers to make a color opaque enough to call it complete. This isn't very diluted, probably 1:1 glaze mediumaint. I think you have to slowly learn to dilute that much. Gradually dilute more and more as you become a more experience painter. It takes that experience to know when layer is done.

The he bubbles you are speaking of may be pieces of grit. You can get this from your paint drying in the pot or your brush being overly dirty. They suck because they result in a rough surface. I still deal with this, and my answer right now is to quickly take a toothpick and knock off the gritty fleck, then glaze on a couple more layers to fix the hole it created.

Update us us all with some pics please.

[PureConstant]

The British put a "U" in every other wourd.
In the act of layering, the blending should happen. If it doesn't, that is fine, just pick a tone in between the two colors and add a few layers where they meet. This should blend the two if they weren't blended already. Make sense?

Yes it does

Ok round object. Look at a sphere receiving light from above. [...] which should be the largest circle and should be at the base of the rounded object. Hope this makes sense.

Thanks for the detailed procedure! I will give it a try on my next mini.

Again, I am just a little concerned that you are confused about layering through glazes and the outcome of a blended miniature.

Indeed I am. After watching some videos, I was sure that layering = blending and that layering would automatically blend my miniature. I went the a GW shop and the guys there explained to me some basic stuff and told me to try and master basecoating and drybrushing first before trying to go into more complex techniques.

You our seem to be struggling with how much to dilute. Let me tell you that most beginners struggle with this because they are unable to see results as they paint, and so it leads to all sorts of problems.

That is exactly my problem. If I do not see any colors, I kind of panic and add more paint. I have to be more patient and try with some different level of diluted paint and finding the right one.

Update us us all with some pics please.

http://imgur.com/a/zL0Gd
There you go! Almost finished it. I need to go get some arcane blue to finish the metal part on it's head. I'm pretty happy with the Cygnar logo on the shield. It goes from an orange to a bright yellow. The pictures are not that good but you can kind of see the blending. I still struggle with using more contrast but since it's my first, I stopped after the drybrush + glazing on the shoulders. I did some edge highlights but my crappy brush was not pointy enough so there are some spills on the side of some parts.

My next model is Coleman Stryker. I went and buy a Raphael 8404 and god this brush is smooth and precise. It's amazing. I'll probably keep a log somewhere on my journey into the painting world.

Thanks again for all the help!

[BloodFather of Kharnath]

Ok, so the pic. Not bad at all. For your first it's actually impressive. So keep that in mind when I offer you some constructive criticism; you are off to a great start. First good thing I noticed is you are achieving a smooth finish. This means that you aren't over working the paint, and it looks like you are diluting enough and unloading the brush. This is good because it is the basic skill painters must master-how to work with diluted paint. It is much harder to work with than paint straight out of the pot. Second thing I noticed is it is neat. This is another basic skill that sounds obvious but many beginners mess this up. Finally, you have some basic blending of different tones. I see some blending of different shades of blue, and a good yellow to orange. Nice start. But here is the glaring shortcoming that everyone will immediately notice and comment on:

NOT CLOSE TO ENOUGH CONTRAST. I wrote this big and bold for you, because it is something that many beginners are uncomfortable with. You need a much darker blue and a much lighter blue in your range of blues. Basically, you have a range of midtones right now. They are far too close in hue and tone. Make much larger steps. Your darkest blue and lightest blue are really not that different. Remember these are tiny figures so you need to exaggerate the contrast. Make it more than it would really be in nature so it sticks out. Some artists go from pure black to pure white with all of their colors, believe it or not. Look at my gallery for a good example of blending blue armor. And your yellow to orange blending is great, but make it stick out by adding a darker orange at the bottom and a lighter yellow at the top. You can blend. It is clear that you can because you blended yellow with orange, two very different hues. But just take it a step further. Blend the orange with dark orange. Blend the yellow with light yellow. So get this down, then we will work with lighting, I.e. Where should the light spots be or where should the shadow line be, etc

The only other thing is your metals. It looks like your just painting a metallic on. Look up tutorials on TMM and NMM. Decide which you want to try, and then go for it. This part of painting can be very rewarding once you learn the skill.
**WARNING-Don't listen to GW staffers: they are concerned with teaching you a method meant only for painting quick armies and using lots of paint, which will maximize their profit. They don't teach to dilute because this would save you money on paint. They want you to quickly finish a unit so you can buy another one and spend more money. Dry brushing and edge highlighting, and washes etc will not teach you how to paint. There is a place for all of those techniques, but not as the basis for painting figures. Now, if you want quick armies that just look okay , then listen to them. Otherwise, run!!! I disagree that you need to learn those skills before you tackle more advanced techniques. Dry brushing will not teach you to blend. See what I am saying? These skills don't make you a better painter. If you want to be a better painter, keep doing what you did on the figure you just painted, but add more contrast.

[PureConstant]

First good thing I noticed is you are achieving a smooth finish. This means that you aren't over working the paint, and it looks like you are diluting enough and unloading the brush.

I unload some paint on some paper towel then I brush my thumb nail. My left hand is always way too dirty

NOT CLOSE TO ENOUGH CONTRAST. I wrote this big and bold for you, because it is something that many beginners are uncomfortable with. You need a much darker blue and a much lighter blue in your range of blues.

You nailed it! I'm kind of afraid going with too bright colors because when I look at the forces of Warmachines books, the contrast are not too steep. I just took a look at your gallery and that blue warrior is freaking awesome. Now I can understand what you mean by more contrast. I'll give it a try this week-end.

The only other thing is your metals. It looks like your just painting a metallic on. Look up tutorials on TMM and NMM. Decide which you want to try, and then go for it. This part of painting can be very rewarding once you learn the skill.

I did a simple basecoat of some mithril silver with some wash and that's about it. When I did it, I did not have any other metallic colors. Since then, I got some other paints. I will go over it again and read about the techniques you mentioned.


Again, thanks a lot! Everything you wrote is useful and pertinent.

[PureConstant]

Hello again, I'm back after some times fooling around in the painting world (and I'm having a blast) and I still have a question regarding the glossy effect when I glaze.

My WIP : http://imgur.com/4BEHtmV

As you can see on this magnificient machinery, it's pretty sublte but I tried glazing again on a khador warjack. I used 50/50 matte medium/demineralized water to thin my paint at a ratio of 1 part of paint to 4-5 parts of my mix. As you can see (on the lower part of the rigth knee pad and also to top rigth part of the "neck" shield), there is a demarcation where I started to glaze. And that is only doing one coat.

I also have the same problem when I tried two brush blending with less thinned paint on my previous attempt. the surface becomes different then when I only had the basecoat and you can tell where I putted my brush down. Using my saliva makes it even worse (when 2BB).

So my question is : Is it normal that I can see where I first putted my brush down to start pushing the paint around?

How I do it from what I saw on the net :
1. Thin paint until I can see letters trougth it on a paper (4-5 drops usually).
2. Pick some paint while almost removing all of it on a paper.
3. Push the paint with the brush where I want the pigments to be (purple arrow on the image). I hold my brush horizontaly (purple line).
4. Wait for paint to dry.
5. Repeat until color buildup is ok.

I looked at a lot of videos and I never saw this glossy finish like ever... or maybe I missed it but it's driving me crazy.

Thanks a lot again!