Trying to improve - Need help

[WolpheBayte]

I just started painting minis about 7 months ago, and I am trying to take my quality of work up to the next level. My method has been prime, basecoat, highlight (drybrush), wash, wash, highlight (drybrush) and highlight (drybrush).

Right now now I am trying to teach myself layering and blending. I am kind of getting it. You can still see some of the lines, brush strokes and sometimes looks a little chalky. The biggest problem I am having is on the faces. I just can not seem to get them down. I am currently working on a goblin that has a lot of emotion and detail in face. I ended up getting frustrated and just washing and drybrushing it. Does anybody out there have any good advice or could point me to a good tutorial on how doing faces with a lot of detail.

I will try to post a WIP of the mini tonight if I have time.

Thanks for the help and advice.

 

[Master Splinter]

I just started painting minis about 7 months ago, and I am trying to take my quality of work up to the next level. My method has been prime, basecoat, highlight (drybrush), wash, wash, highlight (drybrush) and highlight (drybrush).

You need layering or blending instead of drybrushing for a better result ->

Right now now I am trying to teach myself layering and blending. I am kind of getting it. You can still see some of the lines, brush strokes and sometimes looks a little chalky.

The chalky parts come from the drybrushing technique not becoming smooth blends. After you have done some blending you can wash with e.g. smokey ink which covers these things a bit. If you see lines, spots and marks you have can thin your paint on a piece of cloth and make the equal. You can learn more in the articles and tutorial on this site and the web.

The biggest problem I am having is on the faces. I just can not seem to get them down. I am currently working on a goblin that has a lot of emotion and detail in face. I ended up getting frustrated and just washing and drybrushing it. Does anybody out there have any good advice or could point me to a good tutorial on how doing faces with a lot of detail.

I will try to post a WIP of the mini tonight if I have time.

Thanks for the help and advice.

Please do post a pic.

 

[TrystanGST]

It is hard to give specific advice without a photo to go on. But bravo for trying to move beyond drybrushing.

 

[Einion]

Right now now I am trying to teach myself layering and blending.

Just to check: layering and blending, or layering to do blends/graduations of colour?

I am kind of getting it. You can still see some of the lines, brush strokes and sometimes looks a little chalky.

This is perfectly natural early on, don't be disheartened. One of the main pieces of advice with this is always going to be to thin your paint a bit more but sometimes it's just about developing better brush control, which comes with practice.

I am currently working on a goblin that has a lot of emotion and detail in face. I ended up getting frustrated and just washing and drybrushing it.

Well for fantasy minis you can get a lot out of those two techniques, as long as you don't overuse them (too much, too heavily, or both). One of the best historical modellers uses a kind of drybrushing as a major element in his figure-painting technique, it's just that he doesn't only do that.

Does anybody out there have any good advice or could point me to a good tutorial on how doing faces with a lot of detail.

Honestly, faces are hard. You get better at them as you get better at painting generally, particularly if you make a point of working on a lot of faces obviously, but mostly it's again a matter of practice - you get to learn along the way how lighter paint goes onto 3D surfaces to create the highlighting you have in your mind's eye. That's a lot of what painting is about.

Einion

 

[WolpheBayte]

Thanks for the help so far. The pictures of WIP for this one is below. Constructive criticism is welcome. Einion, I am trying to learn layering to do blends.

So far... Face, Hair, Shirt and Scarf are done. Just got done with the basecoat on the pants.

View attachment 14094

View attachment 14095

 

[kathrynloch]

Welcome Wolphe! Actually, you look like you've got a pretty decent start there! The face doesn't look bad at all and the shirt tells me you're headed in the right direction.

It looks like you can thin your paints a little more (I too struggled with this and did a forum search on "juicing" a terrible term but great posts that helped me realize what thinning really means ).

Are you layering in shadows too? On both shadows and highlights as you layer and go darker or lighter as the case may be you need to make the coverage area smaller - another thing that I struggle with. I keep wanting to make those progressive highlights/shadows the same size and that doesn't work too well.

Faces, especially non-human sometimes seem impossible. You'll find yourself working and failing and working and going crazy and then all of a sudden - hey, this actually looks a bit like I want it to. And the next one will improve and so on. If non-human faces have you tearing out your hair, try a human one and see how that goes. Sometimes once you get human down, non-human becomes easier.

As you progress you'll find going deeper with shadows and lighter with highlights will help add contrast to the mini. In these small scales, contrast helps those tiny details stand out.

One thing that was suggested to me was to focus on one thing, for example you might focus on just doing faces and if the cloth or hair or whatever doesn't look all that great don't kick yourself over it. Just focus on improving one thing at a time. Maybe you get a sculpt that you want to focus on the clothing, so if the face doesn't turn out so great, don't worry about it. I went through a stage where all I painted was faces - I had a bunch of minis that were just primer and all that I painted was the face or skin tones. When I had enough of that I went back to the first mini and just painted clothing and down the line I went again.

A lot of it is just practice, practice, practice. But when you get frustrated, don't force it. Get up and walk away, take a break. But don't give up!