There are Some Very Good Painter's on the LAF.........How D You Do It?

[Orctrader]

Yes, that gent is highlighted! Much more so than the WWII gestapo officer in your gallery, whose black leather coat is, to my mind, absolutely perfect.  Obviously you paint to please yourself and so I was wondering, if you put the gent and the gestapo side-by-side, why did you adopt what I think are slightly different approaches?

Lots of ways to paint "black" and I enjoy experimenting with paint. The Gestapo man was a quicker job.  I actually prefer the Detective and that figure looks better to the eye, as it were.  (I paint so that it pleases the eye - decent photographs are just a bonus.)

As a point of note, your approach to painting leather is jaw-dropping.  The doublets on your border rievers are outstanding.  The leather coat and the DM boots worn by the following figure from your Haslefree gallery are, as I have said, jaw-droppingly good!

Thanks.  Leather, I find, is quite easy to paint.  Just take any brown, mix in a darker one then a lighter one or off-white/Ivory.  Recently been using the CDA Leather triad.  Even easier, though I personally intermix the colours.  And Hasslfree figures, being some of the best sculpts on the market, almost paint themselves...

[Silent Invader]

Thanks for the explanations.  They are very helpful. 

[revford]

Seems to me that really good painters are also really good photographers.

That is 0 for 2 for me.. 

I tend to think the fact my shaky handed photography covers up my slightly iffy paint jobs to be a bonus.  When you're an enthusiastic but unskilled painter like me, some bad photography can really help to hide the worst of it. 

[Hammers]

I don't always use the technique, but often.  With the officer I used less highlighting than, say this

In the main though, when I think a highlight is finished, I go up another notch.     As varnishing will affect the appearance.

If you browse my gallery, take a look at WW1 Renegade Germans.  I went extreme on those.  Some don't like it.  I do so that's how I paint.

I am very much in two minds about extreme hilites. In the above case, I don't think it works (you know I love your work, OL) and I think it is because it is supposed to be a black suit.

[Michi]

There are some very good painters on the LAF; The Prof.,Admiral Benbow,Michi et al,how do you get such a smooth finish? My painting is I think average,tho' I love doing it,one of my friends Konrad Hawkwood suggests I have a 'muddy style' and up close my work looks like an impressionist painting,not smooth at all, very rough.
      So chap's how do you do it?

Thanks for lining me up with such brilliant painters, but I can assure you that your own painting method is exactly the one I use myself. Mostly layering with a bit of blending, strictly no drybrushing and washing on figures, but sometimes on vehicles. A steady hand, good brush and paints, some sense for colours and highlighting, extremely much patience and a lot of practice make me do what I do. I am pretty sure that you are on the way. I used to paint like you ten years ago and thought I was good then. So are you already. Never forget that eyesight makes a big difference too. I am a bit short sighted. This helps perfectly when painting details, because I never need magnifying lenses.

[Blackwolf]

 I'm also short sighted,tho' getting long sighted as well,need two pairs of glasses and for close up work I take them off altogether.
   Michi our styles are similar except your nipples are bigger .It will be interesting to see what people make of my first LPL entry,practice,practice etcetera.

[Alfrik]

Understanding how colors influence those put on top of them, and practice, practice, experiment, learn will take you far

[Jules]

Ok one thing to consider.  When you look at a figure the thing you see most of is the base as demonstrated to me by a very old friend Dave Watson of Harlow.  I walked into a club night and Dave had painted some figures and i thought as I approached the table wow.  On close inspection I realised he had painted the figures in a very impressionistic fashion and detail did not exist.  At 5 foot they looked fantastic at 1 foot they looked awful.  The thing he had spent real time on was the bases they looked great. 

I think your figures are splendid and I much prefer them to the over painted examples that sometimes are displayed here.  They are not to my taste, excellent work but just not my thing.  Your figures look lived in and that is what I want from a figure.

For me if the figure looks right at 5 foot it is ok with me.

[Schogun]

If you browse my gallery, take a look at WW1 Renegade Germans.  I went extreme on those.  Some don't like it.  I do so that's how I paint.

Do you mean the LAF Member Gallery? I don't see "Orctrader" there.

[Silent Invader]

Do you mean the LAF Member Gallery? I don't see "Orctrader" there.

His gallery is outside of LAF.  Click on the link at the foot of his posts, or on the spinning globe beneath his member name.  It's well worth a look. 

[Schogun]

Ah! Thanks.

[ErikB]

Some recent examples so you know what I mean,and know what standard I'm at.
     
       

You are right at the level I am trying to achieve!

So take these thoughts with a grain of salt.

Your shadows are a bit too dark.  Looks like a nice opaque basecoat of black and then you seem to miss 2-3 layers of darker-tone color.  Then build up from there (which it looks like you're doing great - just missing an in-between layer or two).

This is exactly the problem I have been working on for the past few figures, especially with faces that tend to loose detail if I put on too many layers.

Do you use washes, by the way?  That tends to over-darken my work.  Very frustrating.

[Malebolgia]

It's all about what kind of "painting level" you want to achieve. Do you want superblended showcase miniatures which can take hours for a single miniature? Or do you want quicker miniatures so you can play with painted miniatures. In my experience it's often either one or the other. If you want to do showcase miniatures, you need to paint fulltime to get a good amount of miniatures painted.
For example, if I painted all of my miniatures like my Van Helsing (link) or the JMD Ghoul bust (link) there is NO WAY I can paint all of my Cthulhu miniatures to play Strange Aeons or Cosmic Horror fully painted.

Coming back to the main question: how do you do it? Use many, many thin layers and build up the shading and the highlights piece by piece. You really want to use a wet palette if you want to paint showcase miniatures. This allows you to build up the layers slowly. This allows you to do flawless blends. I prefer to do this with thin layers over a dry surface (so not by wet blending) as this is less messy and gives me more controll. Another technique which helps tons for highlighting and shading is glazing. By taking thinned paints to tint the underlying colours and to get two colours closer to each other (improving the blend) you can really get those blends going. Glazing can be difficult at first as glazes can be hard to work with. Try adding a bit of Vallejo Matt Medium and/or Vallejo Glaze Medium and the glazes can be applied much easier.
In addition, colour choice is also very important. Instead of taking the "standard" colours for shading and highlighting, you can use blue in your shades for a lot of colours. This will give a slightly colder, but also natural effect. You don't have to put a drop of paint in your shade, sometimes a brush tip of paint is enough to get that extra touch. Try highlighting to pure white. This can be very hard in some colours as white is very unforgiving and you can get harsh effects real easy. White needs to be built up very slowly and with careful blends.

For an excellent blending technique which is rather easy to do, but produces *excellent* results, I'd suggest reading EricJ's tutorial on "two brush blending":

http://www.jenova.dk/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=584c5102370d1729db99fac9f52fb500&topic=1508.0

[Silent Invader]

I am sure many are familiar with it but there's also a very good tutorial on the vallejo website.  It's geared towards the larger modelling scales but is still worth a read.

linky