What is sading and highlighting? I do not really understand people when they say its putting thin lines, making your models darker or lighter at sides. To me it does not really make sense. I need a visual scene. Is there any videos on any of the sites that show highlighting and shading. Or if there is not any, at least descent pictures that could help me understand and hopefully improve my painting. Or at least some simple english words that describe the two techniques. Help me expert painters, please.
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Highlighting and Shading
- Thread starter Knin
- Start date
To make things a bit more clear...
When painting miniatures of the small size we normally paint, we need to exaggerate the light reflections (and also the shadows) in order to make the mini look more life-like. A 30 mm mini just painted with base colours will of course reflect light like any object and thus gain natural shadows and highlights, but these will immediately reveal the miniature\'s true size and it will look like a 30 mm coloured object and nothing more.
So, what one should do is to decide a direction of light (usually from straight above the miniarture) and then paint any areas that are obscured from this imagined light source in a darker shade of the base colour and, consequently, any areas that are exposed to the light source in a lighter shade of the base colour.
Highlighting and shading are not techniques, but rather processes that can be performed with many different techniques.
When painting miniatures of the small size we normally paint, we need to exaggerate the light reflections (and also the shadows) in order to make the mini look more life-like. A 30 mm mini just painted with base colours will of course reflect light like any object and thus gain natural shadows and highlights, but these will immediately reveal the miniature\'s true size and it will look like a 30 mm coloured object and nothing more.
So, what one should do is to decide a direction of light (usually from straight above the miniarture) and then paint any areas that are obscured from this imagined light source in a darker shade of the base colour and, consequently, any areas that are exposed to the light source in a lighter shade of the base colour.
Highlighting and shading are not techniques, but rather processes that can be performed with many different techniques.
You can look at basically any decent photo on this site. See how areas that face upwards (mostly) have been painted lighter and areas in deeper crevices and folds are painted darker. If the shading and highlighting have been coherently painted, with regards to direction of light, a quite convincing illusion that the mini is more \'real\' is created. Look at my gallery in my signature if you like. I almost always chose the light source to be above the miniature.
Hi, Knin,
Shading and highlighting are among the most basic necessities for nicely painted minis. It cannot be said what they are by describing the techniques used to do them, because \"putting thin lines\" and \"models darker or lighter on the sides\" can be used to achieve many things.
Take a look at the shirt (or whatever) you are wearing right now, there will be folds in the fabic. In the interior of the folds, the fabric will appear darker. This becomes shading. At the edges of the fabric and the outer edges of the folds, the fabric will appear lighter, and this becomes highlighting.
Take a look at yourself in a mirror. There will be brighter points on your skin, like on the tip of your nose or on your chin, because that\'s where the light is most likely to catch - yep, that\'s highlighting. Under your chin and under your nose, there will be darker patches where the light does not fall - shading.
These are just two basic examples of highlighting and shading in real life. Things do get more complicated if you think of a drinking glass or gems, but take a look at a few objects right now, and see where (and why) the brighter and darker spots on the objects are.
For examples of shading and highlighting on a mini, just browse through CMON. Anything with a score of 6 and higher should have decent shading and highlighting. Look at flesh and cloth in particular, and compare the examples to what you see in real life. Note how on minis the shading and highlighting are both emphasised - if we did things completely realistically, we\'d never notice the changes on such a small scale. Also, shading and highlighting are taken to their extremes in NMM (using non-metallic paints to paint metals) - an advanced technique.
Shading and highlighting are among the most basic necessities for nicely painted minis. It cannot be said what they are by describing the techniques used to do them, because \"putting thin lines\" and \"models darker or lighter on the sides\" can be used to achieve many things.
Take a look at the shirt (or whatever) you are wearing right now, there will be folds in the fabic. In the interior of the folds, the fabric will appear darker. This becomes shading. At the edges of the fabric and the outer edges of the folds, the fabric will appear lighter, and this becomes highlighting.
Take a look at yourself in a mirror. There will be brighter points on your skin, like on the tip of your nose or on your chin, because that\'s where the light is most likely to catch - yep, that\'s highlighting. Under your chin and under your nose, there will be darker patches where the light does not fall - shading.
These are just two basic examples of highlighting and shading in real life. Things do get more complicated if you think of a drinking glass or gems, but take a look at a few objects right now, and see where (and why) the brighter and darker spots on the objects are.
For examples of shading and highlighting on a mini, just browse through CMON. Anything with a score of 6 and higher should have decent shading and highlighting. Look at flesh and cloth in particular, and compare the examples to what you see in real life. Note how on minis the shading and highlighting are both emphasised - if we did things completely realistically, we\'d never notice the changes on such a small scale. Also, shading and highlighting are taken to their extremes in NMM (using non-metallic paints to paint metals) - an advanced technique.
