Freehand, Pencil, Glaze

secretpaintgeek

New member
Hi all,
I wanna do some freehand work on a mini and thought about trying it out by drawing it in pencil first and shading it then adding glazes to bring a bit of colour in. Just wondering if anyone has tried anything like this before?
I think it could work out ok but not sure how the pencil will react to watery paint on it, Maybe seal it in with a medium or something?
Any opinions/experiences/random input is much appreciated :)

SPG
 

Bailey03

Well-known member
Hey SPG, I haven't tried that approach (pencil/shade/glaze) but I have worked with paint over pencil. I did an article a while ago about doing freehand by drawing on the mini and then painting over it (http://www.coolminiornot.com/articles/7364-painting-free-hand-designs). In my experience, the pencil had no reaction to the watery paint on top of it. In fact, the pencil will show up quite well under thin paint (takes me several coats sometimes to get rid of it). Of course I don't think there's any downside to sealing it if you want to be extra safe. Regular lead tends to be slightly reflective (as you can see from the photos in my article), so you might want to coat it with a matte varnish before applying your glazes.

What kind of pencil are you planning to use? I've worked with regular pencils (B, HB, and H) on minis. Since I was planning to cover up the pencil in the first place I didn't worry about how smooth my lines were. If you're going to glaze over, I would think a softer lead (B, 2B, etc) might give you a smoother line. It would be worth experimenting on a piece of scrap first to see how different leads worked. I've been meaning to experiment with prismacolor pencils. I used their colored pencils a lot when I was younger and have been very curious what sort of effects I can achieve with them on a figure. If you use prismacolor pencils I would want to test out how they respond to paint.

I hope you post the results of your pencil/glaze work. I know I would like to see the results.
 

secretpaintgeek

New member
Thanks for the input Bailey. Will be working on it over the weekend so will definatly post some WIP's. Just hoping its not beyond me but better to try and fail than never try i guess.
In case your interested the pic will be a copy of a painting by P. Rubens of Cronos eating his child.
 
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