Light Miniatures Never be afraid to paint outside the lines

Time 2020-10-06 16:06:28

Web Name: Light Miniatures Never be afraid to paint outside the lines

WebSite: http://www.lightminiatures.com

ID:72520

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I ve wanted to paint the Origen Art Siren for ages, but getting my hands on the figure itself proved a challenge. How I hate limited edition figures!One of my goals with this figure was to achieve a really realistic water effect on the base. Since I d never done anything like this before, I knew this would involve a fair bit of trial-and-error. I looked for water tutorials online, and while I found several on YouTube and elsewhere, none had quite the look I was going for. To get the result I wanted, I felt that two things would be critical: the transparency, and the shape of the waves. All of the tutorials I found failed on one account or the other. Some had you sculpting waves out of an opaque material and varnishing them, which lets you get the shape right but not the transparency. Others involved sculpting with layers of thick gloss gel over the flat surface of a resin pour, which gives the right transparency but not a realistic shape.Instead, I chose to follow an approach which was not in any of the online tutorials I found, but which must be something like the way Robert Blaha did the water for Frutti di Mare. My approach was to first sculpt the waves out of Kneadatite putty, use that sculpt as a master to make a mold, and finally make a cast using clear resin. Since I was using a technique that was totally new to me, and working without a tutorial, I knew it would take a few tries to get the effect I wanted.The sculpt of the wave forms was fairly simple. I made sure to look at examples, keep it from being too regular or symmetric, and sculpt more than I needed in each direction so I could cut it down to the size I wanted. In addition to sculpting the water s surface, I also sculpted a bit of the rusted iron shipwreck to mate with the pieces that came with the figure. I decided against casting those figures into the block, since I wasn t expecting to get things right with the first attempt.To cast the water, I took the easy way by using instant mold. Instant mold is great for ease of use, but doesn t produce a very accurate cast, and doesn t work at all if you need more than a one-sided mold. For the water, neither of those drawbacks mattered. I used plastic card for the sides of the water, cut to rectangles of the right width to slightly overlap each other, and forced the instant mold down as hard as I could to fill all the recesses, using a second resin cube as a plunger.The completed mold was mounted to a resin cube for stability, and had plastic card sides. I covered the inside of the plastic card sides with packing tape so they would release the resin more easily, and carefully taped all around the outside to keep resin from leaking out while it was hardening.In the end, it took me three attempts to get the water looking right. In all three casts, to get some color variation in the final result, I mixed up resin in two separate cups, colored them differently, and mixed them together in the mold. In the first attempt, for the darker resin, I used a mixture of process cyan and payne s gray inks from Daler Rowney, and for the lighter I used a mixture of process cyan and dark green inks, with a drop of white acrylic paint.This one had three issues: it was too dark, it was too thin, and it had flecks from the white paint I used. For my second attempt, I tried oil paints instead of acrylics in the hopes that resin would mix better with an oil-based material than a water-based one, but actually it was even worse.So for the third attempt, I left out the white entirely, skipped the payne s gray, and just went really easy on the inks to maintain a lot of the transparency of the plain resin. This proved to be the right approach, and I was very happy with the third pour.My one challenge at this point was how to manufacture the submerged part of the shipwreck. The obvious way to do it would be to sculpt and paint it ahead of time, and do a fourth the resin pour around it, now that I had figured out how to get the resin pour to work correctly. But I figured, I have a successful resin pour, so I might as well use it if I can. So I decided I would try to hollow out the right shape with a dremel tool, and fall back on the other approach if that didn t work.In the end, the dremel approach worked quite well. I tried to make the shape really random and disguise the shape of the tool I used, and it mostly worked. Once the shape was hollowed out, I shoved a bunch of different rust-colored paints inside the hollowed-out volume, using lots and lots of paint and a large crappy brush I was not afraid to abuse. Then, to give a solid anchor for the rest of the shipwreck, I filled in the hole (using a kneadatite brown in case any of it showed through the resin), before mounting the rest of the shipwreck above the water using a nice thick brass rod pin. Finally I hid the join and matched the surface texture of the shipwreck with putty.To prevent one of the disasters of the second pour, where I couldn t even get the water free of the plastic card mold sides, I used clear shipping tape to cover the plastic of the mold. This worked well to make the walls of the mold release the resin, but the packing tape wasn t quite flat and it showed in the cast. I wanted the resin sides to be perfectly smooth, so I had to sand them down to remove the imperfections. I then used finer and finer grits of sandpaper, down to 2000 grit, followed by polishing compound to get the sides as smooth and shiny as possible. I couldn t completely remove all of the sanding lines, so I made sure to do my final round of sanding (with the 2000 grit sandpaper) against a metal ruler to keep all of the lines horizontal.The final step to complete the look of the water was to finish the surface. For this, I used a mixture of white paint, gloss gel medium, and snow effects, painted onto the water s surface to match reference photos I found online. This was a relatively quick and easy step compared to the rest.I painted the bottom of the resin blue, and used multiple thick layers of paint for opacity. Internal reflection has weird physics, and even though you don t really see the blue paint, it has a surprisingly large impact on the final appearance of the water.I m really happy with the effect I was able to get through this approach. Eventually I may write a tutorial with a more step-by-step explanation, but sometimes it s more interesting to read about the process of figuring things out.Wow, it s been almost a year since I updated the blog! I m really sorry about that, but between moving and my social life for the last year, I haven t had as much time to blog as I would like. At least it s been for good reasons. But since I m #socialdistancing and staying home this weekend, it seemed like a good time for an update.I haven t been completely unproductive. I have been working hard on a two-part article on a mermaid piece I finished last year, which won best in show at KublaCon 2019. The first part focuses on the water, which came out really well, and I hope readers will find it interesting and potentially useful. Expect to see that within the next week.In the meantime, I thought I would share a quick little primaris marine I painted.The inspiration was the three-color rule that some tournaments use to judge when an army is fully painted . Some people seem to regard this as a challenge, rules-lawyering a legally fully painted army with the minimum amount of effort.I decided to tackle the reverse challenge: how can I get a good looking result with only two colors, so it s still not legally fully painted . I used only two colors, black and white, with no blending, and I even tried to apply the paint as opaquely as possible so there s not even the slight blending effect you get when translucent layers overlap.I think it s interesting what sorts of effects you can get with miniatures when you decide to depart from the usual style. The model looks really interesting in person, almost like a three-dimensional pen-and-ink sketch. I had planned to incorporate this marine into a joke diorama to enter into the US Golden Demon at Adepticon, but alas that is not to be. I ll just have to satisfy myself with sharing him online instead.This was one of my two entries for Crystal Brush this year, and made first cut in the toughest Crystal Brush field we ve seen. The figure is Hobgoblin, from Beyond Miniatures. I imagine the Hobgoblin as a treasure hunter, so that s how I titled my version of the bust.One of the things I focus on with my miniature painting is light, and Treasure Hunter is no exception. I decided to set the figure in bright sunlight, and paint shadows cast by some parts of the figure on other parts. In this view, you can clearly see the cast shadow from both the hobgoblin s head and his glove. I m happy with how the shadows came out on both Treasure Hunter and my other Crystal Brush entry (which did not make first cut but that s a story for the next article).Treasure Hunter was painted very quickly. The photo above was taken after the first day of painting, and already you can see that the face is almost how it looked the final version (albeit with much worse photography). In total, I probably put only about 25 hours of work into the piece, which is tiny for a competition entry. Really it s not adequate when you are competing at the level of Crystal Brush. I was thrilled just to make first cut with this entry, and knew it wouldn t get anything better.The face was a huge amount of fun and almost painted itself, hence the fast progress. But I sort of ran out of steam on the other elements, especially the dragon tattoo. At a certain point, you just have to call something finished, even when you know there are things you could improve. Since painting is a hobby for me, it has to be enjoyable, and one thing that determines how much time I put into a piece is how much I m enjoying the process.My original vision for Treasure Hunter was a pirate treasure seeker with an Asian flavor, hence the multiple tattoos, including a dragon and a compass rose. Not only does this go with the pose holding up a gold coin, but it also suits the model. Unusually for a bust, Hobgoblin has two full arms and a large amount of torso, leaving plenty of room for tattooing. Pedro Fernandez sculpted both Hobgoblin and my other Crystal Brush entry. His sculpts have an interesting style, with lots of gritty realism, despite the fantasy subject matter. I ve enjoyed painting them. The other miniature, his Siren, will be the subject of my next two articles. I m excited to show her off, and especially show how I built her a water base. This year I will be teaching classes at KublaCon in San Francisco for the sixth year running! They must like me or they wouldn t keep inviting me back to teach. This year I ll be teaching Object Source Lighting on Saturday morning (May 25, 9 am) and Blending Techniques on Sunday (May 26, 4:45 pm). Details below the fold. Continue reading Adriana and Nymera s relationship with the other villagers had always been poor. Two women living together inevitably branded the pair outcasts and brought on whisperings of witchcraft. In this case, the rumors were true. Not that they had ever used their powers to harm anyone. In fact, on two separate occasions, villagers had miraculous recoveries from death s doorstep thanks to Adriana s unseen interventions. But far from helping the couple s reputation in the village, these miracles had instead cemented the power of the rabble-rousing preacher Fillius. As his sermons against the witches became filled with fire and brimstone, Nymera and Adriana made preparations to find a new home.* * *When Adriana approached the house and saw the door ajar, a spear of ice stabbed her heart. Silently chanting, please, no, please, no, she peered through the doorway. The disarray inside confirmed her worst fears. Turning on her heel, she rushed towards the church. Maybe there was still time to save her love. The blackened stake in front of the church burned that last hope to cinders, replacing the ice in her heart with fire.Listlessly, not knowing her purpose, she sifted through the charred wood and ashes. When she found the bones she needed, she realized why she had been searching. There was a book she had read in her youthful researches: one filled with spells she had sworn she would never use. One spell in particular, blacker than the darkest night, required a human heart for its workings. Life could be restored, but only at deadly cost.She knew just whose heart she would use This was a really fun project. When I was thinking about ReaperCon projects this year, and settled on painting this lovely necromancer (03784: D Vandra Lukesia by Bobby Jackson), I decided to do something a bit ambitious. D Vandra comes equipped with a shovel, and something about a shovel-wielding necromancer just cries out to be raising the dead. I began mentally composing a graveyard scene, but in the end I decided that I just didn t want to deal with all that dirt. So I swapped the shovel for a ritual blade, and replaced the graveyard with an unholy altar, upon which our heroine would resurrect her lost love.With the exception of the two figures and the urns, the scene is entirely scratch-built. The altar is composed of PC-Lumber two-part epoxy putty over a frame of cork tile. I like to use cork tile to test out shapes quickly and easily, and also save on putty. PC-Lumber is a great putty to use for terrain construction. It hardens very quickly, it cures rock hard, and it holds texture reasonably well. Its hardness makes it ideal for structural use, where a more flexible material like green stuff would bend slightly. It also means it holds crisp corners, which is useful for doing architectural details. For stone work, I like to alternate between adding material and subtractive sculpting, where I carve or break away material. I find that this process results in more natural shapes and textures. Because this particular putty cures hard enough to carve in about 45 minutes, I can do several cycles of this alternation in a day s work.The torches themselves are green stuff, as you can see in the photo above. Originally, I tied them to the stone pillars with thread, which is what you see in the photo. However, the thread was noticeably fuzzy when primed, so in the end I had to replace it with green stuff ties.I used zenithal priming for both necromancer and base, as I do for most of my figures. With the base, I did an intermediate step with a red oxide primer, after the black and before the white. I deliberately made the red oxide primer fuzzy and lumpy, by holding the nozzle of the paint can only part-way down. This makes the paint spray in larger droplets, creating a texture over the surface. This texture would be a disaster when priming a figure, but actually works quite well for rock and corroded metal. It was a bit of a problem for the flames however, and I ended up needing to use gloss varnish to smooth out the texture on the flames before painting them. Were I to do this over again, I would cover the flames with little blobs of blue tac when priming, in order to avoid that problem.I started painting with just the basic structure in place, and added more details as I went, such as the resurrected body, urns, and books. Partly that was because things were easier to paint separately, but mostly it was because I didn t have the parts I needed for the corpse when I started working on the project, and I didn t get the idea for the books until half-way through painting.The corpse is converted from 03639: Bella, Succubus by Patrick Keith, and Secret Weapon s skeleton kit. The spell effect I used to merge the two, showing flesh forming over bone out of ectoplasm, is made from putty over a brass wire armature.After anchoring the wire to the corpse, I ended up playing with it quite a bit in order to find a design I was happy with. Originally it was spiraling out from left to right, but I decided I wanted more interaction between the corpse and the necromancer. Then it went through a phase where it it was coming in from her general direction in thin wisps.One problem I had to solve was how to ensure the viewer interpreted the spell being cast as resurrection, and not disintegrate. I combined several ideas in order to make this as unambiguous as possible. The first idea was to have the body forming from left-to-right in the main view, since English readers are used to things starting on the left. The second idea was using a cloudy spell effect, which I thought would look more like matter being formed from vapor, rather than being blasted into dust. I was also happier with the spell effect once I added a bit more structure to it, making it look like clouds rather than wires. The third idea (suggested by Chris Suhre) was to make the flesh parts quite red and lively looking. And the fourth was to put roses in the corpse s hand, which fits well with the theme and should dispel any notion of violence.Making the roses was actually surprisingly easy. I just bent some brass wire (since stems are never perfectly straight) and sculpted the leaves and petals with color shapers.In addition to sculpting the spell effect, I also had to sculpt the corpses hands and collar-bones, since those are not part of the Secret Weapon kit.It was a bit of a disappointment to go from a miniature were all surfaces were decently far along to one with bare metal and green stuff, so it was a huge relief when I had everything covered in paint again.The colors changed many times as I was feeling my way towards a composition I was happy with. Sometimes you just have to try stuff out and see how it looks to see what you re happy with, as visualizing miniatures in your mind s eye can only go so far. Even though I was fairly happy at this point, significant changes were still in store, including completely redoing the top surfaces of the rock, changing the color of the spell effect, and adding the books.Both books are scratchbuilt, using thin plastic card and a hint of putty for the covers, and parchment paper for the pages. Parchment paper, in addition to being smoother than normal paper, is more durable, and slightly translucent. I was lucky enough to have some brown parchment lying around which was a perfect color for old, worn pages.Lots of careful tweezer work during construction! Getting all of the pages the same size and lined up was a bit of a pain, but worth it.Of course painting these was extremely fiddly as well. This is damn close to the maximum resolution I can wield a brush at.With the addition of the books and some final work to bring everything together, I was ready to call her finished. But I m also a big believer in critiques, so I circulated photos to a number of my mini painter friends in order to get their takes, before calling things finished.The resounding comment from everyone I showed photos to was that they wanted some OSL. Even though there were four torches and a spell effect that could be casting light, I had depicted the scene as if the ambient light was bright enough to overpower the object sources. Ben Kantor s critique, in particular, was extremely helpful. He used photoshop to suggest a darker, grittier ambience, with much more of the light coming from the sources in the scene. I debated back and forth whether I should follow this advice, but in the end I decided to go for it.In order to make the OSL work, I needed to make the stone work much darker, with a bit of a greenish hue from the spell effect. This actually was not hard to accomplish: I grabbed a large brush, mixed some Reaper green liner with black pigment, and put a thin glaze over almost all of the stone. I avoided covering the upper parts of the columns with the torches, as I imagined they would receive some orange light from the torch glow to cancel out the green. I also used nightshade purple instead of green liner in the glaze in the places where the green light from the spell effect wouldn t reach.I also added a label to the base. This has two purposes: it clearly indicates what side is the front, and it informs the viewer of the title of the piece, which adds to the story. On the occasions when I include a title plaque, I try to tie it in with the piece somehow. In this case, I painted it as if it were a handwritten note from the necromancer to her beloved.I tried to squeeze in a lot of storytelling elements, which rewards the attentive viewer.I kept the OSL itself relatively subtle, in order to keep the focus on other elements. I made it most noticeable on the hair. It makes sense to do that because hair is shiny and tends to reflect light, and it s an effective thing to do because it makes the head more of a focus.I received many nice compliments for this piece at ReaperCon, and was lucky enough to end up with runner-up for Reaper Best of Show, and gold Sophie for best Reaper Diorama. I was hoping to improve upon the bronze Sophies I received in the last two years, so I was super excited to end up with not only a gold Sophie, but actually snagged one of the best-of-show awards, finishing after the legendary Doug Cohen. You can see all the entries and awards here.Number of blood sacrifices involved in constructing Come back to me, my love : One. Of course I sliced my thumb open at one point, since that s pretty much inevitable for any serious miniature project. I think it was while I was building the base. And of course I made sure to spill some on the model. For luck, and/or to appease the dread god Osiris. Shockingly, no blood sacrifices were needed to construct either Codex Daemonicus or Codex Necronomicon (the two books). I usually post the classes I am teaching on my blog in the spring, but this year I have been slow to get organized, and as a result, most of my classes have already passed or sold out by the time I posted this. Sorry about that! I promise to do better next year.I will be teaching 4 classes at Reapercon this year, which is coming up in just a couple of weeks. You can see all my classes here. Continue reading The sculpt is The Wizard of Agni, by Ben Komets Miniatures (sculpted by Lucas Pina Penichet), but I call my version The Alchemist. This was one of those figures that I fell in love with the second I saw it, and immediately knew how I wanted to paint it. The figure practically screams for OSL, and with the magical, alchemical vibe he gives off, using a magical flame color just seemed natural.When OSL is one of the main light sources, you can get very different results depending on whether the light is a natural light source (like fire, which gives off all colors of light) or a colored artificial light source, and if it s colored, whether it s a primary or secondary color. Using a light source of a secondary color, like the green fire I used for The Alchemist, lends itself to simple color schemes with a very limited color palette. This is because when green (or another secondary color) mixes with other colors, you will either end up with something quite similar to the original color, or a desaturated, muddy color.For The Alchemist, I decided to pair a strong saturated yellow-green with mostly desaturated colors, generally reddish and purplish browns in order to play with complementary colors. I also made very limited use of a saturated orange in just a few places: the eyes of the monkey and alchemist, the monkey s pipe, and the bead in the alchemist s beard.With a very large scale figure like a bust, you have the opportunity to add far more detail than you can in 25 or 30mm scale. So I think it s important to play with textures and freehands to take advantage of that opportunity. I generally like to do some of each. I had a lot of fun with the textures, especially the monkey fur and wrinkled hands. The monkey fur was very simple to do, just lots of little lines, but came out extremely well. The sculpt even has a tiny bit of fur sculpted in some places, to suggest the direction. I found the appearance was better if I painted the fur to be a bit matted, rather than smooth.For the freehands, I went with muslim geometric patterns, which I very much like and have used before. Not only do they go well with the Turkish vibe of the sculpt, they also fit the subject matter: alchemy and chemistry have a long history in the muslim world, and even the world alchemy derives from the Arabic al-kīmiyā’ (الكيمياء‎). The pattern on the alchemist s shirt was a bit of a pain to get right, since the lines need to be very precise due to all the regularity. I started with a square grid, then added the triangles, and had to do a number of minor adjustments to fix imperfections. On the other hand, the border on the vest was simple and easy. Both were painted before adding the beard and arms to allow easy access for all that precision work.I entered The Alchemist into the painting competition at Kublacon, and was lucky enough to take best of show amidst some of the stiffest competition I ve seen there. If you would care to voice your own opinion, he s up on Putty Paint and CoolMiniOrNot, or leave a note in the comments! I finished J ork Sparrow just in time for Crystal Brush—literally. I did a few final touches the day of the deadline, and was even painting at the airport a bit on the way to Chicago.When I last posted about Mr. Sparrow, he was mostly finished, but still missing his flintlock pistol. That was the slowest part of the project, as I am the world s slowest sculptor. It was fun though in addition to checking flintlock reference photos, I also read up on how flintlocks work so I could accurately depict the mechanism. I depicted it ready for loading, with the hammer down and the frizzen open, which I think is appropriate for a holstered lock—but please correct me if I m mistaken! I sculpted more of the flintlock than I needed, so I could leave a crisp plane where I cut it off. I also sculpted the parts of the mechanism separately. This not only made it easier to get some of the shapes, it also let me glue on the pieces and have them really look like distinct parts.The other main element I added since the last WIP is the label on the base. I usually don t place title plaques on my figures, but for this one I wanted to highlight the Jack Sparrow connection, and I also thought it would be fun to do a little treasure map as the label. The map is sculpted out of green stuff and torn slightly, in an attempt to get a naturally weathered appearance. The map and lettering are freehand, which is why my kerning is slightly off and my glyphs aren t nearly as perfect as I d like them to be. I ve never been a good calligrapher.I added a couple of other pieces to reinforce the Jack Sparrow connection: Jack s sparrow tattoo, which also serves to add interest to the ork s otherwise rather plain back, and the bone shard on his head, which was another very simple sculpt. Other than that, the only changes since the last WIP are a bit of refining here and there, and obviously much better photographs. They really do a wonderful job of photography at Crystal Brush, and my poor home photo setup cannot really compare.I m really pleased with how this piece came out in the end. I think the sculpted additions I made are both characterful and also help to add some interest to the silhouette, and I think the piece works well compositionally, with a face that really grabs and holds your focus, but enough interest elsewhere.Voting links: Putty Paint, CoolMiniOrNot Scythe is one of those board games where playing it once can be enough to make you run out and buy it, and that was definitely the case with me. I think this is especially true for those of us who are both board gamers and mini painters, since the figures just cry out to be painted. Plus it gave me a chance to show off my work to a different audience—friends who are board gamers but not mini painters.Since these are first and foremost gaming figures, I made sure to use each faction s color prominently in the color scheme for the figure, as well as keeping the base rim the color of the faction. This makes it easy to see at a glance where each faction s pieces are on the board.My favorite figure of the bunch is Zehra Kar. The pose with the eagle is great, and the figure itself has both enough detail to be interesting and plenty of room for freehand. As a result, it was the only figure I spent two days on (~7 hours total), which is why she is the most refined of the group. All of the other figures were done in just a day of painting (roughly 3-5 hours each).The figures themselves are cast in that annoying PVC material which doesn t hold detail well, and which gets the worst mold lines (that are impossible to remove also). I ended up doing a fair amount of resculpting with paint to fix some of the casting issues, and practically had to freehand the face on Olga (the red faction leader). Zehra has a maroon scarf at her waist, which you can just see under her quiver. It was not part of the sculpt, and I freehanded it so I could use its edge to hide a particularly annoying mold line.For the rest of the figures I kept my painting fast and expressive, which is how I like to paint figures that are meant for gaming. There s no point in putting 20 hours into a figure which is going to get regularly handled. Fast expressive painting is a fun change of pace between more fastidiously painted figures, and helps one work on establishing overall light, composition, and volumes, which are after all more important skills than the ability to do smooth, careful detail work.I m a huge fan of Scythe and think it s a great game, but it s even more fun now that the faction leaders are all fully painted! I started J ork Sparrow in November, and so far I m quite happy with his progress.In the November post, all I d painted was his face and started blocking in the color of the bandanna. The next step was blocking in the remaining colors, so that at least no primer was visible. That way you can see the overall composition which helps keep things consistent as you refine the individual areas.As with many of my recent works, J ork is heavy on the textures. Because busts are a relatively much larger scale than other minis, you can depict surfaces with a much greater amount of detail, so it s really important to depict the textures of the various materials as well as their shapes and colors. You can see the neck wrinkles, the weave if the fabric in the cap. I ve even tried to replicate the texture of sun-bleached dreadlocks (which is not easy, I can tell you!)I wasn t quite sure how I wanted to do the vest, so I tried out two ideas, one on either side. One option was a slightly tattered fabric with gold embroidery on blue, similar to Jack Sparrow s vest in the movie. The other was a more orkish vest, weathered and textured black leather. In the end I decided to go with the leather texture, and keep my freehand limited to J ork s cap.Even more textures! In addition to settling on black leather for the vest and starting the freehand printed pattern on the cap, I ve also done some subtle texturing on the bone and the white fabric, which helps differentiate them. It s pretty subtle, but subtle details like that can add a lot of realism.At this point all of the surfaces are done to an acceptable level of detail, and the bust is approaching where I could call it finished. However, I have one large step remaining, which is that I really want to equip him with a musket, in a holster attached to his vest. So there s some sculpting to be done, as well, obviously, as more painting.Other than that, the main remaining work is simply refining the details I have already established, making them crisper and easier to read, and fixing any mistakes until I m 100% happy.

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