First time painting a miniature in over 20 years

[shponglefan]

If I ever needed proof I'm still a beginner at this, this mercenary mini is it. I'm starting to get a bit frustrated trying to figure out how to paint him.

I didn't have a good plan going in; it's still a lot of trial-and-error with color selection and mixing. And especially when it comes to skin. I'm still not sure the ideal paint combo for skin, so I've been trying out various Vallejo skin tones from both their model color and panzer lines. At the moment he looks like he's abusing the self-tanner...

Oh well, part of the learning curve I guess...

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[meaty_nosebleeds]

welcome back to the hobby. i hope you'll find it as fun as you did when you were younger.

your stuff is looking great! very good for a beginner. i can't wait to see you improve as you paint more!

a good way to learn new things is to look online (and in here) for painting advice and tutorials. you can go through until you find something interesting and try it out. if you like it, keep using it, if not, just move on. you'll find yourself improving by leaps and bounds like that, particularily if you put the time and effort into it. you'll also find yourself developing a distinctive style, which will develop and grow while you improve. in fact, i think i can see one developing in your work already.

as for advice on your skin, it looks great for a first attempt, much better than mine in fact. a thing to remember with skin is that it is a translucent layer above muscles, fat, bone, and blood. this means you want to think about what colour is the stuff under the skin as well as the skin colour itself. for humans, as we all know, this is mostly red. you also need to think about light as well. in some areas, like the face, the light bounces around a lot between the skin and muscles etc. and can cause areas to lighten and change colour. try looking at pictures and paintings of the human face/body and look at what colours the light changes to on different areas. another thing you want to rember is shadows. shadows usually have a slight grey blue tinge to them. experiment with this (look at those pics again) and try and see where these "desaturated" shadows fall.

for now, try adding a very slight tinge of red and/or magenta into some of your shadows, and see what happens from there. the important part is to experiment and play, and see what works for you. but the most important piece of advice is to HAVE FUN painting. play with lots of different colours etc. and see what happens. if you've had fun painting the mini it really shows.

good luck and happy painting to you!

 

[Wyrmypops]

You ain't alone in finding skin a particular issue. I remember being there, took me a month or two just working on it. S'gonna be easier for you, internet articles didn't exist when I wrestled with it. Maybe have a wander through the flesh articles on this site. Might be an extra stage or an additional paint could satisfy.

 

[shponglefan]

Thank you both very much for the encouragement. I have to admit, I was getting overly frustrated yesterday which is not a good place to be when painting something tiny!

meaty_nosebleeds, I took your advice and tried to add some more red into the hue of the skin. This time I used the Panzer Aces fleshtone colors instead of the regular Vallejo ones. The Model Color fleshtones seem very orange to me.

He still has a bit of an orangey look to him, although that could also be the white balance not being ideal on my camera. In person he looks a little more 'pink'.

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[Zab]

I don't know, man. He looks dirty and rugged. It's kind of a nice look. Clean paint jobs are nice, but you would be surprised how hard some people have to work (me) to get that natural kind of dingy look to minis. :curl-lip:

 

[meaty_nosebleeds]

skin colour can be a very hard thing to achieve, you have to play around with it a lot. experiment on paper as well as on the mini. if i'm unsure of a colour i usually print out a pic of a mini in black and white, glue it into a notebook, and paint over it until i get the colour and shading i want. drawing out little squares and rectangles and trying out gradients and colours in them works well as well.
your guy is looking a lot better though, his skin really pops out more than the first try. he does look quite orange like you said, so maybe try some "cooler" colours like a magenta, purple, or green. you do need to make these colours only hints though, too much and the mini looks like it's marching in a pride parade or something.

remember also that these are my suggestions, and whilst they work fine for me, they may not work for you. the best way to find out what works for you is to practice and experiment. also, don't be scared to make up your own skin mix if the other skin mixes aren't really working for you. they don't work for me, so i add all sorts of colours in to my skin mix, some normals like browns and reds, some crazy like bright yellow, blue, and green. that is what i found works for me and if it doesn't work for you, well, there's hundreds of tutorials out there for skin that you can try. not to mention you can take pices form therse different ideas and get the one that works for you etc to get the style that works for you. just keep at it and you'll get there. you'll be surprised how far you've come already

 

[Dragonsreach]

Painting faces is one of the hardest things to "Get Right", but once you get the concept of how faces look in the 28mm scale then it starts to pull together.
I did an article (and I can't believe that its almost 10 years since I wrote it) HERE, it may help you with the concepts. (And yes I think I'm gonna have to do an update).

Last year I got some very good advice from one of the Euro-Militaire judges, about light placement on faces, the condensed version boils down to:-
Warmer tones close to the hair line,
Base Colour for the Forehead, main cheeks,
Darker version of base for the Eye sockets, nasal sides, nose to mouth arch and below bottom lip.
Slightly darker version again for Jaw and Chin,
Richer shadows for throat and Ear sockets.
The highlights should form a "T" across the eyebrows and down nose.
(As I said a condensed version, there are all sorts of additional factors in play concerning lighting direction, warm/cool tones and Male/Female structural ratios)

Something to consider about an armoured figure.
Armour is what protects them from injury, only a complete idiot is going to allow their armour and weapons to become rusty and tarnished.
Weathered, Yes! Battle Marked, Yes! Scratched, Yes! But rust streaked, can't see the fantasy equivalent of a Drill Sergeant allowing that to happen!
Wool Oil, Beeswax and Goose grease would have been rubbed into metal around joins rivets and seams to prevent rusting. That would have given a darkening effect around those areas and the same to any leather supports, just like polishing shoes.

 

[shponglefan]

Thanks for the tips and advice re: the skin guys. I'm going to keep working it with some new minis; I went out and bought a half-naked barbarian guy which I figure should be good practice. I have a few other minis I might try which have more skin showing too.

@Zab: Good to hear, I was going for a gritty/rugged look, so good to know i got that much right

@Dragonsreach: My intention wasn't to do rust spots TBH. I haven't really spent much time painting the armor on this guy so it was just a consequence of a base coat and a sloppily applied wash. I want the armor to look dirty and used, but not necessarily rusty. I think the armor and weapons will be the last thing I focus on.

In the mean time, spent some time trying to detail him (buckles, leather). Sad thing is for the amount of time I put in, it doesn't look like much has changed

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[shponglefan]

This may be my next mini I try to paint. It's from my collection minis I had when I was a kid (1990 Ral Partha); in fact, this was one of the one's I recently stripped. I did discover priming over a previously stripped mini with bits of paint still on it wasn't ideal. Some parts came out gritty, so I scraped them away, reprimed, etc. On top of that, I broke her sword hand off, glued it, then proceeded to break it two more times (!).

So she's probably a bit rough as a result. But first time trying to paint one of these stripped minis, so it will be interesting to see what will happen...

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[Alexandra]

Welcome back to the hobby! Always good to have new people coming in.

On the devil the only one thing I have to point out is the mould lines. I know it's a pain to take it all out, especially in small minis, but you'll see it will make a difference in the final result.

As for the mercenary, very nice metals! You just have to highlight it a bit and that's it. As for the skin, for the size you are working on, maybe if you start from the lighter colors and wash it darker it would help...

 

[shponglefan]

Thank you Alexandra! Ya, when I painted the devil I realized I hadn't gotten rid of all the mould lines. It's something I've been trying to pay more attention to on newer minis, but still learning as I go

Today I started laying down some base coats on that female warrior mini; this mini should give me a lot more practice on skin tones For her outfit, I'm thinking of trying a black leather look. And I'm going to try to use strictly layering (no washes). So we'll see how I fare...

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[meaty_nosebleeds]

looking good so far. what kind of skintone are you going for on her? at the moment she looks like she'll be quite tan, which will work really well with the black leather on her.
as for the layers. be patient, and remember to use thinned paint, and you'll be fine.

 

[shponglefan]

^ Not really sure yet. Probably a bit lighter than she looks now, but I'm still learning how to mix the skin tones I have to try to get the effect I want. Lots more trial-and-error ahead!

I am taking some inspiration from one of my favorite female leathered warriors though. So I may try to do a Callisto-style look with this mini

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[meaty_nosebleeds]

that will certianly suit the mini very well.
as for the skin, i have just remembered a tidbit of information that might benefit you (i believe i picked this up from the jen/ann dark sword dvd). when looking to paint anything a ceartin colour, aim to have about 50% of the visable colour in the tone you choose, with the rest highlights and shadows.
ahh... that was a little confusing sorry. what i am trying to say is that if you use the rule that 50% of the colour visible on the mini is your chosen colour for that bit, like your mini's skin, and the rest is devoted to highlights shadows etc. then it will look like that colour is the natural tone. of course, like all rules, you can break this one, and still produce great results, but it is a good one to follow when you are starting out, then have fun breaking it when you're a bit more confident with your skills.
i'll apply the rule to your mini now. if that colour on her is going to be her base skintone, with highlights and shadows over it, she will turn out very tan, and looking more like a bodybuilder. if you want her skintone to be more like in the photo, you may want to lighten the basecoat.
if the paint on your mini is a shadow and you will build it up, remember that you need to cover about 75% of it in paint, with 50% for your "base" and 25% for your highlights. you will want to shoose her "base" colour, so you know exactly what you are working with before applying paint to mini.
could you understand that? i'm sorry. i'm not very good at explaining things at all. too many things go on in my mind at once >.<

 

[shponglefan]

No worries meaty_nosebleeds, I understand what you are saying

I am going to try to lighten her skin up a bit; it's definitely too tanned/orange right now. I'm using the Panzer Aces flesh colors; that base coat was about a 6:1 or 7:1 base-to-highlight flesh mix. But I'm thinking it probably should have been closer to 2:1 or 3:1. At any rate, maybe some glazes with a light color will lighten it up.

 

[meaty_nosebleeds]

if you are going to remake the basecoat, i'd say carefully paint over it instead of glazing. your basecoat is like the foundation of your house. you don't really want to build a house on shaky foundations, so you should apply the same thinking to the paintjob. she will be fine with an extra layer of paint if you keep it thin and build it up that way. as long as you don't let the paint pool on the mini, you can build up a strong but thin basecoat that way.

 

[shponglefan]

Here's another attempt at the skin. This time I used an approx 50/50 mix of the Panzer Aces flesh highlight with the flesh base. I think it came out better, definitely lighter, although still seems a bit orange.

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However, while lightening the skin I really started to notice all the flaws caused by the poor priming job. And rather than be handicapped by that in trying to make the paint job decent, I tossed her in the PineSol and will start over. Lesson learned: take more care with the underlying priming and prepping because it will come back to haunt you.

 

[meaty_nosebleeds]

if you feel it is too orange, try missing in a tiny drop of blue to tone down the orange. complimentary colours do that sometimes. however this may or may not work depending on the paint, so my adviceis to mix the original skin up (the 50/50 mix), then try adding various colours to bits of it until you get a skintone that looks nice. it might take a little extra time before painting the mini, but you will feel much better with the colours if you do

 

[shponglefan]

Thanks for the advice meaty, I will try that. Also, do you think there might be any advantage in doing a blue undercoat? I.e. Prime + undercoat + paint base colors... or would that be overkill?

At any rate, here is she again, all nekkid and ready to be re-primed. I did have to reglue the hand again as it came off during the scrubbing process. So I'll probably prime her no earlier than tomorrow...

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[Darthmarsh]

Hey buddy

Not sure how helpful you'll find this seeing as though its 2D photoshop skin tutorial. http://www.imaginefx.com/02287754333308296399/ Having said that the palette is still relevant. I quite like the mercenary TBH and think your being a little over critical Relax and enjoy, it will come with time

Tim