Help and advice

[TomasP]

Howdy fine folks,

I've been painting and reading for a few months now and I'm at a point where I'm looking for any advice on what's going wrong and what I can do better with my painting... I paint and strip, paint and strip and I'm yet to complete anything, but mainly I've been focusing on skin.

Here's a close up of where I'm at, (blotchy, dirty and chalky) and any help or advice as to what direction I should be going in to improve would be greatly appreciated.

View attachment 4940

Many thanks

 

[airhead]

Not too bad.
1. thin your paint. Painting from the jar is like using stucco for makeup. You want translucence not opacity. You get that by thinning paint.
2. more layers. Rule of thumb = 3 layers for tabletop (shadow, base & highlight - call them 3,5 & 7.) Take it further for display and/or add intermediate layers.(add 1 & 9 and maybe 2,4,6 & 8 as well depending on what you are doing with it.).
3. when highlighting, use the edge of the brush instead of the tip. Hold the brush at about a 45 degree angle to the surface and let the flat surface of the brush just hit the higher points of the skin.
4. don't use white to make the lighter color. Use a lighter color instead.

 

[Dustin09]

I dunno if I can help you but I'll try, make sure your paints are thinned with fleshes you want to work with transparent colors, make sure your color is smooth before moving on to the next color, also you can always try a technique called transparent basing where with the base color you cover the shadows and mid levels areas more then the highlight parts I dunno if that makes any sense?? For a fast nice flesh look I usually base in VGC dwarf flesh do a wash in ether purple or red then clean up with dwarf flesh then high light with VMC Basic Skin tone and final highlight with bleached bone for something a little more advance I would base in Tallarn flesh shade by mixing with a dark red and high light by adding bronzed flesh. Hope that helps.

 

[Einion]

Can you list the colours/mixes you've used here and the painting order? That might help with giving some specific advice.

Einion

 

[TomasP]

Many thanks for the replies, I really appreciate the help.

I basecoated with a few very thin coats of tallarn flesh, then added a dab of black to the mix, began to paint in the shadows, in thin washes trying to drag the paint to where the shadows are deepest then added scab red and scorched brown to the mix, about five or six layers in the depths (i sort of quite liked the reddish hue), then I put back a couple or three layers of the tallarn flesh basecoat, I haven't started with any real 'highlighting' yet (going above the base colour), I just know I going wrong somewhere.

 

[TomasP]

To Dustin09 - Thanks for the colour recommendations, I think I'll try the VMC's basic skin tone. I also think that maybe as I do thin the paint quite alot, ( I used to paint a lot in watercolour) maybe I'm overworking it over too much surface area and also not letting it dry enough, kind of dirtying it up. I don't know, I think I'll strip it and start again. again.

I did like the doors on your drop pod btw

 

[TomasP]

Not too bad.

3. when highlighting, use the edge of the brush instead of the tip. Hold the brush at about a 45 degree angle to the surface and let the flat surface of the brush just hit the higher points of the skin..

Thanks for the advice, and the 'not too bad'!, getting the consistency / translucence right has been the biggest issue for the last 6 months and I've far from got there yet, and I think you're right about the brush I should be 'painting' more, rather than just dabbing at it in a sort of random way.

Thanks again

 

[Einion]

One general thing to watch out for when painting skin (and some other colours*) is to be careful about any lighter mixtures going over darker areas where they really shouldn't go. Practice helps with this, but the basic way to avoid this is with careful planning and an ordered painting sequence.

These mixes have a lot of white in them so you'll automatically get a kind of veiling or smokey effect, which is what is generally described as chalky - try a dilute coat of white on top of a dark brown and you'll immediately see the worst this can look.

If you have five basic flesh colours, from light to dark - 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 - you should be okay if a bit of 4 goes over 5 but it'll tend to begin to look odd if any 3 goes over the 5, and particularly bad if any 2 or 1 goes on top. So try to only apply 1 where there's already 2, 2 only where there's already 3, and so on.

The reverse thing with the painting order tends to work a little better by the way - dark over light - but still be careful with going directly in with 5 over 1 or 2; can tend to look better if you do a layer of 3, then 4, then 5. But it does depend on exactly what colours you're using.

Einion

*It's the same basic deal with any colours which contain a lot of white - lighter blues, beige, pale greens, light greys etc.

 

[TomasP]

Hi Einion,

Thanks for the advice, it makes very good sense.

Careful separation between layers and and ordered painting sequence and stay away from white:

I looked at some very good work on this site, (particularly an ogre by yellow one, that has mind blowing skin) and sampled the skin tones and broke it down into a rough 3 colour gradient. I then concocted a 5 colour set based on this and Dustin09's advice, and matched it with the paints I have available.

The list is: (VMC)

Mid tone: Basic skin tone
1st Shadow: Basic skin tone / German camo pale brown (50/50)
2nd Shadow: 1st shadow / English Uniform (50/50)
1st Highlight: Basic skin tone / Light flesh (50 / 50)
2nd Highlight: Light flesh

According to the colour charts it should look like this image (with the gradient I sampled for a reference):

View attachment 4976

The question is does this mix seem ok? I'm going to mix it up and have a look on a card, and I feel greens or reds can be added as needed in specific areas as 'washes' / 'nuances', but where's it best to start, 1st highlight and down, midtone and out in both directions, or shadows and up. I like to work over a white primer.

If dark over light is best do I 'basecoat' with the 2nd or first highlight and work down?

Thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks, cheers.

 

[Einion]

Welcome, glad to try to help.

Careful separation between layers and and ordered painting sequence and stay away from white:

Not that last bit. Virtually all flesh colours have white in them (lighter mixtures will be mostly white). It's just to be careful about how/where you use any mixtures like this when layering; ditto with straight white too.

The question is does this mix seem ok?

Try it and see, best way to find out. Apart from anything the results have to be what you like.

...but where's it best to start, 1st highlight and down, midtone and out in both directions, or shadows and up. I like to work over a white primer.

That's up to individual preference but I don't think it's common to work light to dark a lot of the time. I would generally recommend only working that way where the final colour is very light to begin with (similarly only working dark to light where you want to end up pretty dark).

Midtone in both directions is a good middle ground that a lot of people use most of the time and some people use all of the time.

BTW:

According to the colour charts...

Totally can't trust those. Some are better than others, but generally speaking any chart that shows simulations of the paint colours is approximate at best; some colours are way off what's shown!

Einion

 

[TomasP]

BTW:

Totally can't trust those. Some are better than others, but generally speaking any chart that shows simulations of the paint colours is approximate at best; some colours are way off what's shown!

Einion

Oops, I've just found out what you mean about the colour charts.. (that was a bit of a pointless exercise!) I think I'll just try to mix what I see on the screen from the sampled gradient I want and then try to remember how to mix it.

 

[IdofEntity]

Oops, I've just found out what you mean about the colour charts.. (that was a bit of a pointless exercise!) I think I'll just try to mix what I see on the screen from the sampled gradient I want and then try to remember how to mix it.

Something my wife suggested (she does this with her pastels)

Make a few gradient bars of your own on a test piece of cardboard. Range it from darkest flesh to lightest flesh. On each bar try varying up the sequence or paints you are using, but next to them right down each paint you used and the sequence. Pick the winner. Oh, and prime the cardboard like you would the model. Saves you from stripping anything, and you can use it as a permanent reference.

Not perfect, but close enough to be educational.

 

[TomasP]

Make a few gradient bars of your own on a test piece of cardboard. Range it from darkest flesh to lightest flesh. On each bar try varying up the sequence or paints you are using, but next to them right down each paint you used and the sequence. Pick the winner. Oh, and prime the cardboard like you would the model. Saves you from stripping anything, and you can use it as a permanent reference.

Not perfect, but close enough to be educational.

Hi, thanks for that - I've started doing it and straight away it's been very helpful. Just laying out all the possible colours straight has been an eye opener!