I\'ve been called out (Part II)

[sivousplay]

Thanks again to Temperance for the questions about my Red Lioness or as may be more appropriate for the 2nd of his questions, my Pink Lioness.

Q: How\'d you get the great pink armor?
A: Well, I don\'t know how great it is, but everyone who comments on the figure seems to mention it. So, it\'s at least noticed.

I\'ll run through a quick set of painting steps that I used for the armor:
1). I prime all my figures white, and use very thin washes to slowly build up color. I think it gives the figures a soft, watercolor-like look. I use Krylon white primer.
2). The base paint (and if you\'ve seen this color, most of you will not believe it) is Calvary Brown from Vallejo. It\'s a reddish-brown for those of you not familiar w/ all of the Vallejo paints. I used several very thin washes and by very thin, I mean thin to the point that the red & brown pigments in the paint kept separating and I kept having to re-stir the wash to keep it consistent.
3). After that was very dry, I used a technique that I believe I\'ve developed (I\'ve never heard anyone else talk of something like it, but I could easily be wrong and would be happy to give credit to whomever did it first) that I call \"polishing.\" It was something I experimented with with two ends in mind: 1). How to make cloth look like Jennifer Haleys & 2). How to make NMM armor glisten. I don\'t know if it answers #1, but it seems to make non-metallic paint have a shine to it, thus the name, polishing.

Polishing is pretty simple. I mix a very,very,very thin wash of white, and I use a drybrushing technique to very slightly whiten the highest points of the figure. To do this, I use very rapid brushstrokes and almost no paint. It probably took 2-3 hours to polish the armor on all 3 figs in the set. You\'ll note that the calvary brown was faded by this tecnique to make it look much pinker and the highlights (of which there are tons on this figure) on the armor were whitened, and the entire surface of the armor was brightened such that it has almost a luminous quality about it.

The technique is not very friendly to your brush. So, if you\'ve got a brush that\'s getting a little long it the tooth, it\'d be best to use it instead of ruining a good brush.

Finally, I matte finish all my miniatures w/ Krylon Matte Finish, and will use varnishes after that to hit things like gems etc.

That\'s it ... the only trade secret I had. I hope it helps someone out there. Again, if you have questions, feel free to msg/email me.

jim

 

[McAnally]

I was curious about this

I have often wonderd how you achieved that lumunous quality with the armor. It reminds me of porcelain in the way of it that it\'s color looks very delicate. I\'m going to give your technique a try..and I\'m sure this won\'t be your last trade secret you\'ll end up sharing.


Ohhh..also, thanks for saying you use Krylon! I have been looking for a much cheaper way of priming and varnishing than Citadel and am definately going to give Krylon a try!!

 

[cypher]

You do everything with washes? That is an interesting way to do it. I painted some orcs with inks once. They were real bright and green. They didn\'t look to bad but nothing like what you do. You must do ALOT of washes or something

The polishing technique sounds interesting. I tried that before but when I drybrush it turns into a chalky mess. How do you avoid getting it all grainy and chalky looking (like little paint balls on the surface)?

Thanks for sharing that was very nice of you to do I appreciate it!

 

[sivousplay]

Cypher,

Just wanted to make it clear, that doing stuff with washes does not imply inks ... your comment about your orcs made me think that you may have thought that. Thinning down your paint and applying thin washes of it allows you to slowly build up color which can give a lot of depth to your painting ... much the way one would paint on watercolor paper.

As to the polishing technique and not getting lumpy paint ... again, I thin down the white to the point where it\'s just barely thicker than water. Then when you dry the paint from the brush, you\'ve got very thin paint on your brushes. So, no clumps ... you also don\'t affect much change with just one pass so it takes many, many passes to get an effect like the one on the lioness.

hope this clears some things up,
jim

 

[ZaPhOd]

The chalkiness can be avoided somewhat if you thin your paint enough and mix your water about 3:1 ratio with Future floor wax. This makes a nice thinning solution and should help smooth things out.

 

[sivousplay]

Good call Glyn!

Didn\'t want to supply too much info at once, but Future is definitely a good thing ... reduces surface tension and all those bubbles that you could get from a thin wash will go away thus you don\'t leave any ugly stains.


jim

 

[ZaPhOd]

Right on. I wasn\'t exactly sure why it works but it does wonders! Keep in mind also that you would want to shy away from drybrushing and try to blend your highlights and such using your newly mad e thinned out washes. Drybrushing is half of the problem alone when it comes to chalkyness!

This is kind of fun Jim!

 

[elouchard]

The style with washes is really distinctive and from what I\'ve seen here, only Sivousplay and Dirk Stiller seem to use it extensively. The watercolor analogy is a good one also. The same technique, roughly, is used there too with thin washes and the paper as the highlight.

Sivousplay, ever try doing a watercolor-esque banner to go with the figs?

 

[sivousplay]

Watercolor Banner

Elouchard,

I don\'t paint 40k as often. So, I don\'t find myself doing banners much, but it\'s definitely something I\'ve thought about; although the style of watercolor stuff I\'ve done in the past is more fitting for a clan war kinda figure than a 40k fig. You\'ve got me thinking on it more seriously now though ... thanks ... just what I needed, another project floating around in my head. :^)

jim

Oh, BTW, thank you for even mentioning my name in the same sentence w/ Dirk.

 

[elouchard]

watercolor and other shenanigans

Jim,

This may sound strange too. A piece of silk instead of paper for the banner. It\'s tougher to paint on silk, unless you are good with the reist that holds the ink between lines. Silk has a fine enough weave to look good at mini-scale. I haven\'t actually tried it but I\'ve painted large silks before. There are also transfer films that can be used too. I think it would just be a cool look.

Eric

 

[sivousplay]

Wow ... I\'ve never done anything like that before. Is there an \"artists\" silk, or will any old piece of silk do? Definitely sounds interesting and worth a try ... real, cloth banners would be cool.

thanks,
jim

 

[elouchard]

silks

Jim,

You can buy \"artist silks\" for painting from some art stores such as Pearl art. Most come in scarf size or squares. There are fabric paints and inks for silks also. It\'s a pretty significant hobby/art but I haven\'t seen anyone try to do it on a small scale. I have painted a some non-fantasy stuff, marine shots etc., on silk. They make better presents to women than figurines holding severed heads.

Eric

 

[sivousplay]

Eric,

Thanks ... my wife would probably kill me if I started painting things for other women, but the next time I\'m at my local art supply store, I\'ll definitely see if they\'ve got the right stuff.

Very cool. Thanks for the all the info.
jim

 

[cypher]

I avoid drybrushing except where it works (textured surface like hair etc). It is too bad it is such a simple technique I wish it worked on everything. I would drybrush everything than.

:innocent:

 

[ZaPhOd]

No doubt. With patience however, blending becomes pretty simple as well. It is just realizing you light sources for highlights and shadows....

 

[cypher]

Well I have come across two ways at blending and I suck at both. Wet blending and Layering.

I am better at layering than wet blending. But I find wet blending (in practice) more fun to do. I am a messy person so the thought of mixing stuff around appeals to me. I just can not see the details well enough to wet blend without some sort of magnifier glass.

 

[hagness]

number of coats & polishing vs. drybrushing

I just finished Reaper\'s bugbear chieftain. I typically use pretty thinned-down paints anyway, but for this I thinned even a little further and went for the Jim Jackson look. lol The results were pretty good, but I put at least 10 coats and 5 different shades on the skin alone. Is that typical?

I also did a little polishing, but instead of armor, I polished the hair. It turned out to be a real interesting and nice effect that won\'t show up in pictures unfortunately. Pieces of the hair have a real silky effect to them, instead of the normal dull flat. I just used fast, short brushstrokes across the grain of the hair with a thinned white paint. What I want to know is, is polishing different from drybrushing, and if so, in what ways?

To attempt to answer my own question, I\'d say that the difference is in the paint thickness, but I don\'t know if using thinned paints is still called drybrushing by some.

 

[ZaPhOd]

I don\'t know much about Jim\'s beautiful technique (except when wiping my black wash off of the silver engine nacelle\'s of my 1:72 scale Sukhoi Su 27 Flanker) but I have found that my patience is really expanding when it comes to the number of layers that I do. For instance, on the red on my Hawkmoon (or Avatar) if you like, I have done a base Blood Red, several layers or progressively darker shading using brown ink to darken the mix, and then a heap of highlighting layers, starting with a touch of yellow to brighten it just right, then alternating between white and yellow until I get to my final highlights. They are almost yellow themselves though the scan makes it hard to see. All in all, I have probably done at least 15 or more layers on the red. The same goes for the green but half as many as the areas covered are way smaller :moon:

 

[cypher]

Sivousplay I think your style is called Aquarielle or something like that. I read that today.

I still can\'t understand how you make them so good looking with just washes. I don\'t understand how to paint this way at all it is rather awkward to me it seems very hard to do. I really like washes they are magical stuff (sometimes). I got some of that Future and it does work nicely it keeps it from drying on the raised parts and make it look less blotches and stuff.

 

[ZaPhOd]

With time I think you will find that the Future makes all of the difference. I started thinning my paints with just water and this was like stage \"B\". After the Future, I pretty much skipped stage \"C\" and went right to \"D\"! I just figure it allows smoother transitions between your layers....