Underpainting? (not to be confused with undercoating)

[Rhoderic]

The miniatures that I was talking about in the "'Softening' highlights that are too stark?" thread have now been stripped, and I'm about to start again. I have half a mind to try the technique known as "underpainting" this time. Does anyone have experience with this? I'm mainly wondering what kind of colour to do the underpainting in, so that once I overpaint it with glazes, it'll carry both cold and warm colours well. Grey? Umber? "Verdaccio"?

I've seen at least one tutorial for underpainting miniatures, and I've searched around for it, but can't find it or remember where I saw it.

[matakishi]

These are underpainted:



Tutorial:
http://www.matakishi.com/paintingrezolutionfigs.htm

I use greys or flesh tones depending on whether I want a cold or warm finish respectively.

[Rhoderic]

Oh yeah, I'd totally forgot about those, and they were my first encounter with underpainting!

Did you ever accidentally get any blotches of other paints over the yellow? If so, was it hard to fix? This is my main fear with underpainting.

[matakishi]

I can't remember, I'm sure it happened though. It's easy to fix by spotting on the under colour(s), which is often just the dark tone if it's near another colour, and then re-applying the top colour.

I underpainted my Somalis (and I'm doing more atm) it's quicker than highlighting up from a base coat of red or yellow.



article:
http://www.matakishi.com/paintingsomalis.htm

[Rhoderic]

Now I've got the underpainting all done on my test figure, but I'm really hesitant about actually applying the glazes. I've stopped thinking of it as a "test" figure over the course of painting it, so I don't want to ruin it. I'm considering painting up another figure to experiment on, before committing to applying glazes on this one.

I'm sure that once the technique is learned, it won't be hard anymore, but I'm not at that stage yet.

[matakishi]

Be brave!  ::

[Rhoderic]

Well, I went ahead and tried it, and as expected, it didn't turn out very well. I'm really stumped here: To make sure the glaze isn't too strong, I need to water it down. This makes it too runny, so it gets extremely blotchy when I paint it on. I tried thickening it again with varnish and Vallejo Glaze Medium, but it didn't help much. It looks absolutely nothing like your awesome APACs :cry:

[Lowtardog]

Well, I went ahead and tried it, and as expected, it didn't turn out very well. I'm really stumped here: To make sure the glaze isn't too strong, I need to water it down. This makes it too runny, so it gets extremely blotchy when I paint it on. I tried thickening it again with varnish and Vallejo Glaze Medium, but it didn't help much. It looks absolutely nothing like your awesome APACs :cry:

I read through Matakishis technique and I am sure there was no mention of glaze? could that be the issue? perhpas you need to use thinners with a glaze rather than water as the glaze may be separating out?

[Rhoderic]

Perhaps I'm using the word incorrectly. In Matakishi's tutorial, what I took for the "glaze" was the mix of yellow paint and ink applied over the grey. Coming to think of it, there's no mention of thinning it down with water. I just took that to be a given.

[Lowtardog]

Perhaps I'm using the word incorrectly. In Matakishi's tutorial, what I took for the "glaze" was the mix of yellow paint and ink applied over the grey. Coming to think of it, there's no mention of thinning it down with water. I just took that to be a given.

I think maybe he is thinnning down with the ink?

[Rhoderic]

Yes, but a 50/50 mix of paint and ink still sounds like it'd be quite opaque. Perhaps it only works because of the exceptionally low pigment count in yellow paint. Which raises the question, how do you duplicate this effect with other paints that have better coverage, such as blue? Using less paint and more ink would turn the glaze/tint runnier, which is bad.

Transparent paints perhaps, but there doesn't seem to be a great variety of these.

[Lowtardog]

Yes, but a 50/50 mix of paint and ink still sounds like it'd be quite opaque. Perhaps it only works because of the exceptionally low pigment count in yellow paint. Which raises the question, how do you duplicate this effect with other paints that have better coverage, such as blue? Using less paint and more ink would turn the glaze/tint runnier, which is bad.

Transparent paints perhaps, but there doesn't seem to be a great variety of these.

Not sure Rhoderic it may mean upping the % of ink to paint ratio, I certanly agree there would be colours that would just not work well especially blues and Browns?

[vikotnik]

Not sure Rhoderic it may mean upping the % of ink to paint ratio, I certanly agree there would be colours that would just not work well especially blues and Browns?

This seems right to me, Lowtardog!

Rhoderic, try it on a white sheet of plastic before applying the paint to the miniature. I use white ceramic tiles as mixing palettes for that reason, so that I can mix and check the consistency in the same place.
A drop of glaze medium cannot be wrong when using this technique.

[matakishi]

I only use this technique for reds and yellows because of the difficulty of layering these paints normally.
I chose a particularly transparent paint (Games Workshop) and then added coloured ink to strengthen its colour without adding opacity. Yellow doesn't need as much ink as red does.
If you want to underpaint other colours you need to use a stain which is more like a glaze. This is achieved with greatly thinned, good quality (artists' not hobby) paint, preferably oils, applied in successive coats and is quite a difficult technique to master.
If you're looking for speed I wouldn't bother

[Rhoderic]

*Sigh*  And I was so hopeful this would be "the" technique for me. I suppose there's a reason it doesn't get used more, though.

The problem I kept having all the time is that the paints are too runny. This is bad for two reasons. First, it gets too blotchy when I paint it on, second, it pools in all the recesses (even when I make sure not to load the brush with paint), messing up the shading. Ultimately, I don't see how this technique can be made to work, without paints that are thick but transparent nonetheless. If I had paints like that, I could apply one thin coat and have it stay even over the whole surface. I'm not going to try looking around for this kind of paints, especially if it means ranging beyond the world of acrylics.

Back to layering the normal way, then. It feels really bizarre to repeatedly strip miniatures that I've spent so much effort on painting. I suppose I'm going through a "kill or cure" phase right now. It's wearing me out, but at least I can hope to come out a better painter.