Help!

[Kaboose]

Well Iv\'e been out of the painting game since last fall and finally decided to start getting more serious about it, My older models were painted sheerly for gaming purposes hence me being satisified with scores of 4-5.

But now with School winding down I would really like to start buckling down and get some 6\'s and dare I say 7\'s?

Tonight I sat down for the first time in months to try and paint a Blood Ravens Sergeant heavily inspired by Tom Schadle\'s work.
http://www.minivault.com/BloodRavensGallery.htm

Anyways I spent about an hour and on just the red before i took a good look at it and realized its crap. It was grainy and there was no highlights showing at all...

So I come asking for help from some veterans here...
1. How much should I thin my paint? Right now my standard is to just dip the brush in the paint then in the water cup brush off the excess and start painting.
2. How do you get highlights, Iv\'e been told just doing thin coats of succesively lighter colors should create highlights but all it seems to do is brighten the coat (not thinned enough?)

Crappy Picture to kinda get an idea of what im talking about

I\'m using GW and Reaper Pro Paints if it matters,

Any help is appreciated,

Thanks,
Josh

 

[Broke n English]

Hi kaboose...

...I\'d say thinner.Paints that is lol Do you use a palette? Just mess about with mixes (of paint and water on palette) until you find a good working consistency for you.Mine\'s always too thin,always cursing myself out for putting too much water in the mix but nevermind I use an old cardboard video casette case as a palette,I\'ve had it for years and now it\'s nearly an inch thick in some places lol There are so many highlighting techniques you could employ,the articles here on the site cover this much better than I could

 

[Modderrhu]

You\'re painting red. I like red, but many people seem to have trouble with it. Now it looks like you are using a black undercoat, I\'d definitely suggest going with white, and then washing with a very thin black to fill the recesses. Why white? Red hates to go over black, it ends up looking grainy. You have to put so much on, and the temptation is to thin it less to get better coverage.

Get yourself a palette. And when you thin your paints, try a 1:1 mix with water. This might be too thin for you, but give it a try anyway. I\'d not go any thicker than 2 paint to 1 water. In fact, I like to use 1 paint to 2 water most of the time.

Highlighting red isn\'t hard once you got your base colour down properly. Highlight it with orange and not white, unless you want pink space marines. My standard red goes something like this;
- Start off with a white undercoat
- A single coat of GW Red Gore or GW Scab Red, depending on how dark I want the red to be
- A wash with brown or chestnut ink, depending on how vibrant or dark the result is to be
- Another single coat of GW Red Gore
- Highlighting then starts with Blood Red. If this is your main colour, then you can do two or even three coats with it. Just leave the darker reds in the recesses well alone
- Further highlighting is done with a 1:1 mix of GW Sunburst Yellow with Blood Red.
- Next highlighting with GW Blazing Orange
- Final highlighting is with Sunburst Yellow on its own, but very judiciously, just to catch the corners. You could easily leave this one out if you\'re happy with the orange

Phew, that\'s quite a bit of work, and once you\'ve done some highlights, you might decide you\'ve gone too far. Don\'t be afraid to go back to the darker colours to tone down the mini though.

>>here<< is a scorpion that I eventually decided to practise reds on, and I did it with the method I outlined above. Probably too bright for what you want though.

 

[ahreanna]

I was going to give you a hint on how I do my reds until I read what Modderrhu had written. That is a tried and true method for reds. Work\'s for me everytime. Good luck with it.

 

[vincegamer]

Hey, someone is being my doppleganger!

Josh,
From what you said, I have a question. It sounds as if you are saying you just covered it with successive layers of lighter paint. Make sure each successive layer covers a slightly smaller area. The most shadowed areas will not have anything on top of the darkest base color.

I use browns as undercoating for reds, and I find Snakebite Leather makes a nice highlight.

As to thinning, I use FFW:water 1:4 and put that mix anywhere from 1:1 with paint to 2:1 with paint.

 

[Kaboose]

Thanks for all the replies,


I dont use a palette, i normally just use it straight out of the bottle with a dip in my water

What should I use for it? Would just a blister or paper plate work? And whats a Wet Palette and how do I make one?

Thanks a ton for the Recipe Modderrhu, thats pretty much exactly what I was looking for on that scorpion guy maybe just a bit darker, I\'ll try that when i get home and try to put some more pics up tonight.

As far as the priming black i was told thats better because Its makes natural shading, I\'ll try undercoating white on this one though.

Im guessign FFW stands for Future Floor Wax? For the life of me I cant find any of that stuff, Know of any alternatives or places that carry it in Southern California?

Again Thanks for all the replies and I\'ll again tonight and hopefully put up some more pics.

Thanks,
Josh

 

[Equus]

Practically anything that you can mix paint on, doesn\'t get little bits of whatever in your paint, and doesn\'t end up leaking onto your table can be used as a palette. I\'ve used a lot of the blisters recently, but you can use the plastic tops off of yogurt containers or whatever. Wet palettes are a type that usaully have wet layers of a kind of paper, so your paint doesn\'t dry on the palette. You can usually find them in art stores or make one yourself. I just bought a simple ceramic \"flower\" palette recently, and that seems to work well enough.

You could always use a technique where you prime black and put a spray mist of white over it, if you really want to. The black vs. white primer argument will rage throughout eternity...just pick whatever works for you. I usually primer white or a really dark gray, depending on what colors and tone I want.

You can\'t find Future in Cali? You should be able to just go to a Safeway or something and find it. It\'s sold under Future Floor Polish, I think, and is usually found near all the...well...floor stuff. i.e. Pine Sol, mops, whatever.

 

[vincegamer]

Yeah, Safeway should carry it. I think it\'s actually Future Floor Finish. I\'ll have to check the bottle. It\'s not a wax but an acrylic. It also works well as a glossy coating painted full strength on top of something, though that does cause some paints to bleed.

For a palette, you can use anything smooth and non-porous: so a paper plate no, but a plastic plate yes. For years I used a square of aluminum foil. However, I went to an art store and bought a plastic pallet for 99 cents and it\'s actually far better than just rigging something, and well worth the cost. I got the kind with little round cups in it. I can drop paint and water into it and not worry about it running off or drying out because of being spread too thin. I also use an old plastic kiddy watercolor brush to swirl the paint/thinner together in an instant.

 

[Modderrhu]

Originally posted by Kaboose
As far as the priming black i was told thats better because Its makes natural shading, I\'ll try undercoating white on this one though.

True, Josh, it is better because it gets into the recesses and makes them black - right where you want the darkest colours. Well, that\'s the theory. My black primer never made it into all the recesses, and always required a wash afterwards.

So, I figured I might as well prime with white and THEN wash the whole mini with black or brown - best of both worlds, in my opinion.

Originally posted by vincegamer:
Yeah, Safeway should carry it. I think it\'s actually Future Floor Finish. I\'ll have to check the bottle. It\'s not a wax but an acrylic. It also works well as a glossy coating painted full strength on top of something, though that does cause some paints to bleed

Our local equivalent - Mr Muscle - has ammonia in it to remove the previous layer of floor polish i.e. previous layer of acrylics... I\'ve noticed that ammonia does tend to liquify the acrylic a bit, so perhaps proper FFW also has ammonia in it?

 

[Kaboose]

Thanks Again for the replies, I did manage to pick up some FFW at my local Safeway,

I havent really had the chance to work on any painting in the last couple days as finals for school just started so ive been pretty busy.