Good News/Bad News about painting miniatures and my wife

[Conquistador]

This is serious so I will not use any smiley faces/icons...  I also am going to be opening myself up a bit more than i am comfortable doing in ths thread.

First, for the comedians and grammar nazis, I am not painting my wife - the subject line only has a limited number of characters.

The good news is my wife wants to paint some of her miniatures - her Bunnies and Burrows mage and story teller figures first; then some AWI Teddy Bears; and possibly a few gnomes.  She has collected some miniatures since her OD&D days in the 1980s but depended on others for the completed figures for gaming - a friend in Sacramento converted a male gnome to a  female gnome ans painted it in camouflage colors for example.  We stopped gaming over 20 years ago but I kept them in a couple of small boxes for her on my hobby shelves.

The bad news is she wants me to teach her how to paint miniatures (this is her idea on the process of repairing and strengthening our marriage which could work out to be a good idea but scares me more than a bit) and I really only 'slap paint' on lead at best. 

I had her wash, clean (flash/mold lines,) and prime her figures (white.)  Next we went to Michael's [I used craft paints exclusively for budget reasons until recently - currently adding Reaper paints to my collection - so she chose craft paints in part since I use them and in part because I gave her $300 worth of gift cards last Christmas at Michael's, Hobby Lobby, and Jo-Ann's] and she bought the paints in the colors she wants. 

The part I am most concerned about is she wants the sculpted fur on the B&B rabbits to be a kind of 'brown grey like the wild rabbits in our yard' color and I am thinking maybe the grey she chose with the brown she chose as a wash so it would be darker in the recesses?  Already out of my depth here...

I am researching "How to Paint Miniatures" on the Web to find ways to make her painting achieve the results she wants but any help would be appreciated.  I want her  to succeed and if this helps our relationship I want to use this as  a springboard into a strong relationship in our pending retirement years.

Gracias,

Glenn

[northtroll]

I'd start with getting some good pictures of wild rabbits for reference material. Some craft paints come in a brownish grey so there is some hope as to color. Brown washes muddy up grey pretty well usually. I'd drybrush instead, maybe a dark base, brow grey mid tone, and highlight with a lighter grey. If it doesn't work out, I suppose it's time for the dip in simple green.....

[robh]

Don't know if this would help you or not as it is pretty much the opposite of what Northtroll suggested (one of the downsides of asking a group of people for an opinion.....)

For a graduated colour change: brown to grey a wash would be the best approach, but to keep the transition clean you need to block the underlying layers to stop the colour bleeding. So white undercoat, grey paint, varnish, mix a thin wash of brown with a tiny (really tiny) dot of washing up liquid (or acrylic flow improver if you want to buy the posh version) and apply to the fur, varnish again, repeat the wash in the lower parts of the fur, varnish......and continue until you have the depth of colour you want in the recesses and at the base of the fur.
The varnish will serve to stop the grey you apply first staining brown.

[Cubs]

First thing I thought was a dry-brush. I've been doing that with animal fur lately, starting with a standard black-grey base, putting a single layer of grey drybrush in then going over that with quite a reddish-brown to make bear fur.

It's not so much your standard drybrush to highlight, but rather to suggest the way fur is sometimes one colour by the skin of the animal and then another towards the tips of the hairs. I like it.

[FramFramson]

Very light, layered, drybrushing seems to work for me to give a nice natural variation in colour for fur.

Sounds to me she wants the sort of "tabby" colour common in nature. It's really more of a sepia overall than a grey or a brown.

[Hatemonger]

If you're looking for tutorials on painting animals, try searching for wolves. I imagine there aren't as many wargaming guides for rabbits, but wolves pop up everywhere from D&D to 40k. The colors may not be exactly the same, but the principles will still work.

- H8