ftp.ee.pdx.edu/2014.02.ftp.ee.pdx.edu.tar/ftp.ee.pdx.edu/pub/frp/general/paintguide

Internet Message Format | 1991-07-03 | 26KB

From pitt!cadre!pt.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!agate!codon1.berkeley.edu!allen Thu May 25 15:33:58 EDT 1989
Article 11978 of rec.games.frp:
Path: pitt!cadre!pt.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!agate!codon1.berkeley.edu!allen
>From: [e-mail]
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp
Subject: Painting Miniatures
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 16 May 89 07:16:03 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail] ()
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 425

This is a very long post.  Please hit 'n' now if you don't want to read
a long piece on figure painting.

This helpsheet on painting lead figures was written to introduce a
novice painter to the process and bring that person up to speed as
rapidly as possible.  Therefore, a lot of the information is not about
color scemes and the like, but instead includes basic information that
assumes the reader knows nothing, hopefully steering the person away
from some of the mistakes I made learning the hard way.  I hope it
includes a useful tip or two for the more knowledgeable reader and doesn't
leave too many gaping holes that will trap the utter novice.  I'd welcome
your feedback on how well I did, and other ideas or contrary opinions you
would include if you were writing the piece.  Please pardon the imperative
tone of some of the comments. Some are that way because of the damage that
could result from the alternatives and some are for the sake of
brevity.

1) References - Most miniature wargame and roleplaying magazines run
articles on how to paint for beginners.  Try looking at some back issues
of the Dragon and if its available there, The Courier, which is a
miniature
wargames magazine, also Wargames Illustrated from England showcases some
of the best work done there, although they don't have many how-to
articles.  Right now, the magazine with the best coverage on how to paint
is White Dwarf, the house organ for Games Workshop. Since about issue 90
or so they have been showcasing more and more color photos (often in ads)
of top quality paint jobs by their staff artists.  They also do a lot of
how to articles so they can try to inspire novices to buy lots of Citadel
figures to practice on until they paint that well too. Manuals on color
theory available in art supply stores can be helpful in showing you which
colors work well together and how to mix paints to get what you want
instead of muddy approximations.

2) Brushes - Get the best brushes you can afford.  It will help you learn
to paint much faster.  This is especially important for the detail
brushes.  They have to be firm enough to put the paint where you want it
and not squish away.  My personal favorites for detail work are Winsor and
Newton series 7 artist's picked sable brushes. I like to have a good 000,
an 00 and an 0 size from them for doing detail.  Their #1 and #2's are
also good but in that size range you can afford something a bit cheaper.
W&N series 7 cost about $6 a brush list (gasp!), but are usually on sale
for about $4 to $4.50 in art supply stores.  They are expensive but
they'll outlast the comparable Grumbacher or similar brush at least two to
one if well cared for.  That makes up a lot of the difference.  Pick and
choose your brushes at the art store.  Don't let the clerk hand you the
first one they grab.  You want one that comes to a nice point before
wetting, with no extra longer hair or hairs that hang out beyond the main
point.

3) Brush care
Clean the brush frequently.  Don't let the paint dry to a crust in the
brush.  Don't stick the brush down into the paint bottle and get the metal
ferrule gunked up. When paint gets dried in down among the hairs at the
base of the hairs where they meet the ferrule it usually means the death
of a once useful detail brush because the hairs will tend to splay out and
not come to a graceful point.  To clean the brush, dip it in the thinner
solvent or water (whatever goes with your paints) and brush out gentle
dragging strokes onto a kleenex.  Repeat until the color doesn't come out
any more.  Don't swish the dirty brush around alot in the thinner.  It
gets fouled really fast that way.  (This is not so strict if you use water
and don't mind going for another jar of clean water frequently.)  Never
stand brushes up on their points, they'll dry splayed or bent permanently.
Stand them on their back ends in a cuffe mug or something or lay them down
on the table flat.
Brushes will eventually collect bits of dried paint in them even with good
care.  This can be removed with brush soap obtained at art supply stores
or with a strong solvent like Floquil's Dio-Sol.  Don't use these any more
than necessary so that the hair retains its natural oils as long as
possible.

4) Choice of paint.
There are basically three ways to go, with themes and variations.
If you haven't invested in any paint yet, get a bottled water based
acrylic.  These are easiest to work with and don't smell as bad.
I mostly use Polly S, but have been experimenting with Citadel and Ral
Partha brands.  There are some larger bottles of various brands of this
kind of paint in art stores at cheaper prices but so far I haven't found
one that has the necessary pigment density to be opaque in one thin coat.
Of the minatures specific brands, Ral Partha is probably the trickiest to
use, it has some of the same pigment density problems in several colors.

Model paint enamels are the second choice, Testors and Pactra and Humbrol
are the names you are most likely to see.  These are smelly and harder to
get to work well than the water based paints.  Avoid the gloss enamels
until you know what you are doing, stick to the more natural tones among
the military camouflage lines and it will be easier.  Enamels are good for
wash technique shading but bad for dry brush shading.

Artist's oils - some people get marvelous results with these, particularly
on larger figures like dragons.  I've avoided them because of drying time
considerations, so I don't know too much abouthow to use them.

A good way to start is to get a Polly S or citadel starter kits with about
8 to ten little bottles of paint and maybe get one or two extra bottles
for
specific colors you want.

Oh, all the foregoing concerns Colors, you will also need some Metals for
doing armor, weapons, belt buckles, jewelry etc.  For these I usually use
enamel model paints or model lacquer based paint from Floquil.  The Armory
makes a line of acrylic metallics but I've had very mixed success with
these.  Their metal particle size is large and leaves a noticeably grainy
look to the metal bits.  The particles also don't stay in the binder well
when drybrushed and can leave you with these tiny metal flakes flying in
the air and sticking to wet bits that shouldn't sparkle.

5) Preparing the figure for painting

I do the following things to most figures:

Trim off metal flash and mold lines with an exacto knive, modeler's
rattail file, and toe nail clippers to take off big hunks'o'lead  from
imbalanced bases.  Replace exacto blades as they get dull, Dull exactos on
lead are a real good way to cut yourself deep.  I've got the scars of
proof.

Wash the figures in hot water with dish soap and rinse well, this gets rid
of your fingerprint oils and mold release agents that impede good paint
adhesion.  Let them dry well before proceeding.

Assemble if required.  Fit the pieces together and do any necessary
trimming to get a snug fit.  Your choice of glues is superglue or epoxy.
Both come in a wide variety of styles.  I prefer five minute epoxy for
most tasks, It's stronger and less brittle to bending stresses than
superglue, and fast enough in hardening to get the job done in a
reasonable
time with multiple joints.  Mix up a little 5 minute epoxy glue with a
toothpick. Be extremely careful to get matching amounts of the two parts
to get a good join.  If iI have to be off by a little I 'll err in favor
of too much hardener.  It's less sticky in the result than too much resin.
I
like to use the plastic fronts of blister packs as disposable glue
palettes.
Set up something to prop the figure pieces up against that will hold them
in
place unless you have strong and steady hands and five minutes to hold the
pieces.  Lately I've taken to using one of those little modeler's spare
hand
gizmos from Xacto.  They're useful for holding pieces for glueing, but the
teeth on the alligator clips should be covered with bandaids or tape so
that
they don't dig into the figure.  Generally let one joint set before trying
to
glue the next one on the same figure. This avoids messy collapses.
Some side points:
A) I assemble figures after washing them even though it leaves new
fingerprints because the fresh epoxy glue bonds soften in hot water and
the
joints sometimes bend or break.
B)  Large multipiece figures like dragons almost never fit together well.
Epoxy putty is the filler of choice for closing the gaps.  It handles
well,
dries strong, and its fairly easy to remove the excess when it is
partially
hard and to sculpt in some surface texture that is close enough to that of
the figure to be disguised by paint.
C)  The trickiest joins seem to be wings on dragons and the like.  This is
because they stick out at funny angles and often result in long lever arms
of lead depending from a fragile glue joint.  For the tough ones, the best
thing I've found is to drill out both pieces with a pin vice and put a pin
cut from piano wire into the joint.  You get piano wire from hobby stores
that cater to the model railroad construction crowd.  This pinned joint is
then tacked in the middle with a bit of superglue to hold it in place with
epoxy surrounding that for the strong final bond.

Mount on painting bases.  You save a lot of frustration from fingerprints
in the wet paint if you have a good large base to hold the figures by.
For Citadel figures with big slottabases I just install them in their base
at this point, with epoxy glue, and use epoxy glue or putty to fill in the
extra slot holes at the sides and to model up the surface of the base
some.  For other kinds of figures that usually have smaller bases, I
mount them on strips of cardboard about 3/4" by 4" with four or so figs
on a strip.  These strips are just cut from whatever corrugated box flap
is handy.  I glue them down with rubber cement for ease in eventual
removal.  I used to use elmer's but sometimes damaged the fig if the glue
stuck too tight.  Sometimes the rubber cement will give out later and have
to be redone but I live with it. These strips of mounted figs are also
useful to keep half painted figs intact if you have to put them away
before finishing.  Just line them up on the bottom of a cigar box.  You
can usually get cigar boxes at tobacconists for about fifty cents to a
dollar.  They are also the cheapest sturdy storage boxes I know for
finished figures.  Pad with cotton wool or glue in those little spongy
things from the backs of figure packs.

Prime the figures with white or gray paint.  This can be real primer or
just Polly S Dragon white or something like that.  This serves a few
purposes, it helps the other paint go on better, it allows colors like
yellow to show clearly without gray lead showing through, (Prime with
white for figures that will have much yellow.)  It also protects figures
from lead disease- oxidation of the lead by chemicals in the brighter
pigments that can rot the metal away after ten or forty years.  You are
going to keep these around for a lifetime, aren't you? ;)  The key thing
to
doing primer is to put it on thick enough but not too thick, you don't
want to fill in detail crevices.  Let the primer coat dry good and solid
before continueing.  Overnight is good, you can get away with a couple
hours if its a water based primer and not to thick.

6) Painting the figure - Finally!

Look at the figure closely and try to visualize what it should look like
when done.  At least work out what the major color areas will be.  You can
change plans if things don't work but having a plan will help avoid put
garish color combinations together or having adjacent parts bleed together
visually from overlapping with the same color.  Expect that the figure
will look uglier before it starts to come together and look good at the
end.  Use real life clothing examples for ideas as to what color schemes
look good, what color looks good next to what.  Because of scale, you will
often have to simplify things from real life example, if you want to do a
patterned fabric, the print will ahve to be large, simple and not too
subtle.  I learned a long time ago how to paint straight stripes and have
gotten a lot of mileage out of simple stripes as detail.  Samurai look
good with a few large simple flowers on each sleeve, etc.

Block in the major color areas.  The first ones that don't overlap can be
done quick and sloppy so long as everything that is supposed to be that
color gets the paint.  Later areas that abut them will have the border
painted in more carefully.  As you choose which shades of the colors to
block in with, decide first which shading method you will use in the end.
If you are going to drybrush for highlights as the main shading method,
block in darker, if you are going to put dark washes on for shading, block
in light.  If you are going to use blacklining, block in with bright
middle tones.  If you blob over onto an adjacent area while blocking in
that's okay, you can repair in one of two ways.  If you act fast, you can
wash away the mistake with second brush full of clean water with a few
swipes and then soak off the extra water with a tissue or dry brush.
Otherwise you can always get out a dab of the other color and go back over
the boundary edge later.

Shading and detailing - the order in which you do these depends on the
method(s) of shading yu choose.  In general, drybrushing is done before
detailing because its messy and can obscure cleverly painted details and
washing is done after detailing unless you are just putting in a wash on a
particular area and not the whole figure, then you will often want to hold
off on adjacent details in case the wash swamps over out of the area its
supposed to be in. Stains, likewise, are usually noticeable enough
that you want them on before the detail to avoid obscuring it. Blacklining
is just a special form of detail painting so the particular order just
depends on how stuff is laid out on the figure.
So what are these three shading methods I've been talking about?

Washes and stains are thinned out paint spread liberally over an already
painted figure or part of one so that they will settle into the folds and
crevices.  They can also be done with inks instead of thinned paint.
The basic rule is paint light, stain or wash darker.  This makes the folds
the darkest bits the way the should be.  The difference between a stain
and a wash is a wash is applied very thin (often7-1 or 10-1 solvent or
water to paint) and just serves as shading effects mostly, while a stain
is maybe 2-1 or 3-1 and can significantly darken a region.  To try out
staining as a technique, pick some blue garment on a figure.  Paint it sky
blue, much lighter than the color you want, then when that's dry, mix up
some dark blue stain and spread it over the light blue.  You'll probably
be surprised how nice it looks.  Washes are often done with black or dark
brown to pick out small details.  Keep them thin so you don't muddy the
colors of the figure too much.  Black will pick out the details sharper
but it also deadens the colors more.  Experiment to taste.

The one thing I don't much like about acrylic paints is the difficulty in
using them to do good washes, when they are thinned out alot, they will
look good at first and then just as they dry the dark stuff creeps up out
of the crevices by surface tension effects and dries as icky little drying
stains on the higher parts of the figure.  I've seen some people have some
success breaking surface tension with the adition of a tiny bit of
detergent to the paint, but the best solution I've found is to do washes
over Polly S paint with inks instead of thinned paint.  This has some
problems of its own, but they are manageable.

Drybrushing is the other quick and dirty way to get nice shading and
highlights.  To do this, get a stiff and scruffy old brush, NOT your new
Winsor Newtons or similar brushes.  This will damage the brush.  Pick up a
little paint on the tip of the brush and scrub it off on the newspaper
covering the work area or something like that until the paint is just
barely still coming off.  Then flick the brush lightly over the part of
the figure to be highlighted.  Paint should slowly build up on the raised
edges and surfaces and miss the valleys.  repeat even lighter with a
lighter,
brighter tone to increase the highlighting on a smaller area.  From the
description
you should be able to see that this works best if you have the bottom
layer of paint dark and successive layers of drybrushing lighter.  I've
even started figures by painting them black all over and then drybrushing
all the surfaces with successively lighter shades of colors until the
result is what I want.  Unless you like pink highlights, drybrushing reds
is tricky because adding white to red gets you pink.  You can try putting
down a really dark red with some dark brown or even a bit of dark blue
or green mixed in for the base, and work up to scarlet or even orange
highlights.  Try to avoid using black as a mix in for the darker
undercoats because it muddies the colors.  Sometimes its the only thing
that works, though, even if imperfectly.

When you've got all of the dry brushing done you can pick out the very
highest points with a bit of white or the very lightest or brightest color
shade in the series using your detail brush to paint in the highlight wet.
Drybrushing in general is a fast method, because you don't need to wait
for a drybrush layer to dry before putting on the next one.  Its almost
instantaneous.  The trick is usually in refilling with the right amount at
the right time.  Too little paint and you are scrubbing away for nothing,
too much and it'll blob off into the valleys, spoiling the effect.  This
will happen to you on occasion.  Just repaint in the valleys with the
darker shade and dry brush a little more later.

Blacklining is the technique of painting or inking in very narrow lines of
black or dark brown wherever there are edges or boundaries on a figure and
often at the bottoms of crevices.  This makes details pop out at you in a
more striking than natural fashion, but that's okay to an extent, because
the figures are so small they need to overemphasize things to be seen
well.  The difficulty is that it is hard to draw in lots of extremely fine
black lines all over a figure and not muck them up by drifting away from
the edge to be highlighted or make some too fat or just go stir crazy from
putting in so many little lines.  This is a difficult technique to master.
It is the one style I do not do well consistently so I use the technique
sparingly and not for whole units of figures the way one or two master
painters I know do.

Detailing - I can't think of much to say here.  This is a late step.  Try
to make details contrast well with what lies under them or next to them so
they show up well.  I usually do eyes last, by putting in a brown slash
across where the eye will go, filling that almost to the edges with a
white lozenge, and then dotting in the middles with blue or black or for
many monsters, red.  Some monsters get red in place of the whites of the
eyes and black pupils.  I will then mix up a bit more flesh tone and
carefully close the eyelids a bit particularly at the sides of the eyes so
that the eyes balance in size and direction of gaze and they're not googly
bugged out eyes. Metal details are another very late step, because regular
paints don't usually go over metal as well as metal over regular.

A quick note on flesh tones.  The stuff they sell in most little bottles
labeled Flesh is some weird jaundiced color that doesn't look anything
like my skin when I hold it up to it.  It can often be doctored by mixing
in
some red and some other stuff, but usually I'll mix up flesh tones from a
burnt-siena-like red brown, white, a little red and yellow, and maybe a
tiny bit of blue or green for tinting.  You can also get interesting flesh
tones by starting with yellow browns like desert yellow and adding white
and red.  They don't have to be consistent from figure to figure.  People
have all sorts of different complexions.  You might want to make notes of
the recipe you use though so that you can make more if you need to touch
up.
Actually, this is a good idea for all paint mixes if you are organized.
If you put the recipe on a 3x5 card, include a spot of the mixed color for
reference.  Skin can be painted by drybrushing or washes, using a brown
base for drybrushing or a brown wash for finishing.
I've only found one satisfying combination for doing black people's skin
by
drybrush, haven't worked through the combinations for washes.  I start
with
a base coat of Polly S Ogre dark brown, dry brush heavily with dark red
brown, again lighter with red brown, and then some highlights with red
brown
mixed with white.  This gives a rich middle brown complexion with a lot of
shading.  I'd like to also have a nice scheme to get the really dark,
ebony
color of some people, and a lighter, duskier, tone that looks realistic.

To get good metals, you can paint them on straight and blackwash with
enamel or drybrush over black.  I usually prefer the latter.  Gold
drybrushes well over brown.  You can get varying steel like colors by
mixing various amounts of black into a little silver.  I like to give
elves real silvery swords, etc, and orcs get a practically cast iron dark
gray.  For strange fantasy metals, colored inks can be used as stains over
the metal.  If the ink doesn't stick by itself, try mixing some into some
gloss media or acrylic gloss finish.


Basestands - afterthe figure is painted its nice to dress up the bse stand
some.  For Parthas and other figures with narrow bases I will usually glue
them onto pennies, nickels, or washers so they don't fall over as much,
this helps a lot to preserve the paint job and weapons.  I'll glue them
down with epoxy and then make the lead base flow into the larger stand by
adding epoxy glue or putty around the edge of the lead base.  There are
all sorts of tricks for terraining a base, from mixing some model railroad
ballast into the glue for texture to covering the painted bases with
flocking, that green, ground foam used for grass in model railroad
displays.  You can even paint on or carve in brickwork on dungeon bases or
glue on oddments of foliage, sculpted plants of epoxy putty, skulls stolen
from Citadel skeleton packs, etc.  A well executed base makes a figure
look a lot better than just painting it green for grass.

Finish - After all of this work amounting to an hour or more per figure
you don't want the paint to chip the first time somebody drops the figure
two inches or handles it too much in a game.  So you need to protect the
paint job.  You can use model paint dull or gloss coats, but the thing I
like best is polyurethane plastic varnish.  This stuff is really tough.
Ace Hardware markets a house brand called Acethane that is really good.
It comes in gloss and satin which is sort of semi gloss but works well on
figures that would normally get a matte finish, like WWII troops.
Acethane comes in big spraycans and can be found in the spraypaint
section.  It's a lot cheaper per ounce than the tiny modeling spray paint
cans.
The only major caution about using Acethane is to make sure it has several
hours to dry.  It stays sticky for quite awhile.  You can't just throw a
coat on the new figs just before the game the way you can with testor's
dullcote.  All finishes should be applied the day after you are done
painting so everything has a good long time to dry before the finish goes
on.

Paint handling and storage - a final note on paints.  You don't want to
paint from the bottle because the paint will dry in the bottle and form a
skin.  Get a little out with a toothpick or the handle of a junky brush
after mixing well, close the lid, and then scrape it off onto a palette
 of some sort.  I find Pepsi and beer bottle caps left over from game
sessions to be ideal.
You can mix a few colors in one on different sides and then when it gets
grungy throw it away.  Make sure you close the lids tightly at the end of
a session of painting so that  nothing is dried out next time.  If the
paint gets thick add a little thinner or water to the jar and mix it in.
You can keep a jar going a lot longer this way.  Before quitting and
putting paint away for long term storage, add a few drops of water or
thinner to each jar so that evaporation does as little damage as possible
and then seal tightly.  Clean out the screw threads in the cap, if they
get caked up, air leaks through the cracks and the paint may be dry next
time you want it.  Like the matter of brush care, I'm a bit fanatic about
this because the supplies are so expensive.  At over a dollar for a little
half ounce jar of paint, the investment can add up fast.  I've accumulated
a standing supply of around one hundred jars of assorted paint and can't
afford to lay out another thirty bucks just because I was stupid and
ruined a bunch.  Its enough to replace the ones that get used up and try
out new things experimentally.

Well, that ran on a lot longer than I originally intended.   Let me know
how  useful the advice was.  I'd like to see questions and comments from
readers. If by E-mail, I'll collate my answers and others' suggestions and
post a followup.

Ed Allen ([e-mail])