Speed Painting Lesson 3

Hello again everyone! I have a small update for you here, this time it's a few techniques to help speed things up. I would have included more, but college and work has left me with a shortage of spare time.First, I would like to mention again about how I undercoat miniatures. It is extremely important to use black primer. This allows you to simply avoid painting the crevices to create shading, which really saves on time. I also like to begin by drybrushing a dark color over the black undercoat. This serves several purposes. For one, it makes it much easier to see details since there is some slight highlights. This also ties all the colors together, which helps make the color scheme work better. Also, this serves as a great basecoat, making it easier to apply other colors in only one coat. For this step I usually use Scorched Brown, but this can vary depending on the color scheme.If you have not already, I would also highly reccomend taking a look at the first speed painting article featuring the importance of custom mixed colors. This is the technique that saves the most time, because you will have to do no mixing on your pallete.Alright, here is the first technique!Woodgrain on a smooth surface:First I began with a Chaos Black Undercoat, followed by a Scorched Brown drybrushHere is the tricky part. Using some thinned Bestial Brown, drag your brush along the pallete (without twisting it) until the bristles begin to split into small groups. This can be slightly damaging to your brush, so use an older one.Now, take the brush and very lightly drag it along the surface, and if you do it correctly, the brush should do all the work for you! Dont move the brush perfectly straight, bend it here and there to get an irregular grain. This is an example of two passes over the wood surface.Next, make your brush into a fine point, and take some thinned Vomit Brown, and paint this inside some of the Bestial Brown lines near the edges. If you are doing this on a lot of models, paint it only on a few select areas. Simplicity is the key!!Finally I applied a light glaze of Chestnut Ink to the wood, and applied it in the direction of the grain.There we have it! Extremely fast wood grain! This technique is also great for painting horns.Hair:Here we have a dwarf miniature, again primed black and drybrushed with Scorched Brown.First I began with a basecoat of Adeptus Battlegrey. Paint this evenly everywhere, but leave a thin dark line where the beard separates from the clothing, and below the mustache.Next the hair is highlighted with Codex Grey. Don't try to paint the individual hairs at this stage, concentrate on applying the paint to large groups of hair, similar to the basecoat step. You want to give the hair form as a whole, rather than painting a hundred individual strands.Next, take out Fortress Grey and paint on the edges of these groups of hair. You want to create more shading in the cracks now than in the previous stages.Notice how the hair is taking on a lot of shape. Finally I used one of my mixes for this stage, 50% Fortress Grey and 50% Skull White. Apply this on some of the very edges of the strands, only in selected ares. Keep in mind where your light source is coming from (I usually consider it coming from directly above).There we have some speed painted hair! Even though I used grey, this could easily be subsituted with other colors. Here are a few of my reccomendations:Black: Chaos Black, 50/50 mix of Chaos Black and Adeptus Battlegrey, Adeptus Battlegrey.Brown: Scorched Brown, Bestial Brown, Snakebite Leather.Blonde: Bestial Brown, Desert Yellow, Bleached Bone.Red: Dark Flesh, Dark Flesh + Vermin Brown, previous mix + Skull White.Alright folks, I hope you enjoyed this installment. I had a lot more planned for this, but time is short. Part two of article 3 will include how to speed paint: skintones, eyes, white, red, and much more!Thanks for looking!-Matt