Layering highlights - Green Troll - need some help

[Greg Ellis]

Hi folks. I\'m new here, and for those of you who\'ve had a peek at my minis you\'ll know that I\'ve got a very long way to go.

:redface:

I\'m hoping to get some advice on layering highlights. I\'ve taken a stab at it on a new piece of work (see pics) but somehow it just doesn\'t look quite right to me.

Any insight on what\'s going wrong here and how I could improve it?

Thanks in advance,

Greg

 

[Fists of mortis]

The trick to layering highlights is to not go too bright on your first highlight, just add a little bit of the brighter colour at a time and as you get brighter, you must only add the highlights to the uppermost areas. Where the light would directly hit.

For your model you could try glazing the model with a dark purple/dark green to start to blend in the highlights and create more of a shadow and contrast.

hope it helped :beer:

 

[Talonicus]

I think the gentleman above has hit the nail on the head.

You need to make the transitions much smoother. Green is probably the easiest colour to work with. It blends very easily and works with so many colours.

Glazes, washes etc can help, but i find very thin paint and patience is the key.

Something I was painting green and have just started again can be found here. It will give you and idea of what I am talking about.

Nigel

 

[Greg Ellis]

Something I was painting green and have just started again can be found here. It will give you and idea of what I am talking about.

Thanks Nigel. Wow, that looks great!

If I understand your notes, you started with white, and gradually washed down with many many layers of thin green? So it\'s the same color paint every time, and you build up more in the crevices over time, while leaving less in the ridges? Or did you alter the color of the paint from glaze to glaze?

Very cool stuff. I used a much more primative, yet similar, approach for my Cave Troll Champion, washing brown/black mix over bright orange to work down to the orangy-brown tones. Of course I didn\'t use nearly as many coats, and your demon looks WAY better than my troll, but I think it\'s a similar idea.

For this green fig, I thought I\'d try something new (new to me) by building up the lighter tones over a dark base. The only way I\'ve done that before is by drybrushing, which gives, well... predicable results.

Maybe I\'ll blank it out and start again. At a wild guess, how many tones should I plan for to get from the deepest shadows up to the brightest highlights? 5? 10?

Thanks for taking time to help the newb!

 

[Greg Ellis]

Originally posted by Fists of mortis
The trick to layering highlights is to not go too bright on your first highlight, just add a little bit of the brighter colour at a time and as you get brighter, you must only add the highlights to the uppermost areas.

Thanks for this! I did a bit of reading about this today. I think I should have done an all-over color just a shade lighter than the base coat, leaving just thin dark lines between the parts. I forgot about that, and jumped right into the highlights.

Live and learn, right?

 

[J2FcM]

It looks like your mini is \"over shaded\". Your highlights are just on the tips of everything. For instance, you know WHERE to shade, but lets say the bicep. On the bicep you just put a highlight where the actual muscle forms that \"bump\" on the arm.

Now, if I make a muscle and the lighting is from above, my whole bicep will be the equivalent of a mini highlight, and the shading would only be between my bicep and tricep. In other words, you should expand your highlights ALL OVER your mini, then go back, and shade in the recesses.

 

[Greg Ellis]

I wiped out the troll with a couple of coats of midtone, to give this another shot.

I\'m using a different approach this time, starting with the midtone instead of the deepest shadow.

I hit a couple of problems - the shadow I used was a bit too opque (I think) and the highlight a bit too transparent (hardly noticeable, actually).

Any comments or input? Is this an improvement over the first try?

 

[Rigged4Mini]

I think the layering is pretty good..but I\'m not sure if its the pic or not..but the greens are all faded now....maybe a glaze might bring them back up.

 

[Rocky Rulz]

Your second attempt is much better!

I think at this stage you should keep the highlights at what they are!

 

[Greg Ellis]

Thanks guys. I\'m still not really very happy with it. The transitions seem overly abrupt to me, and I\'m still struggling with effects of the ambient light vs. the overhead light.

I\'ll keep plugging away at it. This is just a practise fig anyway.

Rigged, I think it looks darker because I used a different paint mix. I custom-mixed all the shades (even the midtone) both times, and I didn\'t bother to keep track of the constituent colours or portions. Bad habit, I guess...