What's up guys, welcome back!
This is the second installment of my new series where I critique miniatures sent in by my
Patrons.
Today's model is this Werewolf painted by Lina Witzner.
I'm probably not pronouncing that correctly but in my defense I do suffer from a debilitating
speech impediment...
It's called being Scottish.
Looking at the model I would say you've done a good job at being neat, all the colours
seem to be where they're meant to be and I can tell you've thined the paint correctly
because you don't have any tell tale glossy parts where the paint has been applied too
thickly.
Also, you get bonus props for choosing such a light colour for the skin.
Light colours can be very difficult expecially over such a large area.
My first, and main criticism is to do with contrast.
If I just increase the contrast about 60% you'll see what a dramatic difference that
makes.
When we look at them side by side you can see just how much more intense and imposing
the one on the right appears.
Without that level of contrast the model looks quite flat and a bit lifeless.
A pitfall most people fall into when painting light colours is that they don't go dark enough
with their shadows.
I think you can develop a bit of a mental block that can be hard to get over. It stems
from the idea that because you're painting a light tone you don't want to make the shadows
dark, because you think you'll make the whole thing dark, but that's not the case.
If you look at this white cloth for example, you can see the shadows go all the way to
black yet it still looks white.
In miniature painting you should always be thinking about how to make the shadows darker
without going muddy, and how to make the highlights brighter while retaining vibrancy.
If we take a colour sample of the darkest and lightest colours on the skin, we can see
there's actually only a few shades of seperation between the two.
Here's an example of one I painted, you can see the model type and colour scheme are quite
similar.
but if we take a swatch of the dark and light colours, and compare them with yours you can
see the difference between them is quite dramatic.
And we can fix that quite easily by simply making your shadows a few shades darker.
If we apply that on the model you can that gives us more definition to the muscles and
even though we've used a much darker colour we haven't altered the overall lightness of
the skintone.
In practice you can achieve this by painting a little dark blue wash into the recesses.
The next part is the hair, again, we have the same kind of issue in that there's not
enough seperation between the colours.
To fix that we can apply a wash of either black or a a nice dark purple.
And then if we bring the highlights up it'll look something like this.
I'm not great at drawing with a mouse so I've done the hair quite crudely, but I think you
get the idea.
Now that we've done that, it's actually had a knock on effect by making the shadows on
the skin appear less intense by comparison, so we'll darken them down a little more to
bring our definition back.
When you're painting a miniature it's always good to be aware that finishing one section
might alter the look of the rest of the model.
So if you paint section by section, it's worthwhile to take some pictures and try to look at them
objectively to see if you need to go back and do any alterations.
Next up we have the gold and the little bone spikes. I think the gold is fine colour wise,
you could up the contrast a bit by adding some more shadows with a dark brown, something
like Vallejo Armour Brown or GW Rhinox hide.
Just thin it down with some water and apply it as a glaze into your shadows.
But a simple way to improve the look is to mix a bit of bright silver into your brightest
gold and use that to edge highlight the armour plates.
So if we do that now we'll get something like this. Notice I've only hit the upper edges,
where they would be catching the light.
I've also darkened down the base of the bone pieces, it's easy to do, just run some sepia
wash along the bottom to increase the contrast.
The last thing I want to look at is the leather sections. When it comes to painting leather
it's all about the texture.
I'm not skilled enough with photoshop to be able to show this on the image so instead
I'll just show an easy way to get a cool leather effect.
Start with quite a light brown, I'm using Vallejo Khaki here.
Then we're going to grab a ripped bit of sponge, this is a piece of packing foam but you can
use whatever you like, even a bit of brillo pad would work.
Get yourself a few different brown tones and simply sponge on each colour.
There's not a lot going on here as far as technique goes. You just dip the sponge into
the paint, wipe a bit off on a paper towel then press it onto your model.
Once you've built up a nice pattern with a good mix of colours. Wash the whole thing
with some Army Painter Soft tone.
Then once that's dry you can use some Strong Tone to darken down any spots you think need
it, so stuff like folds or cracks in the leather.
I used the same process for this guys waistcoat, you can see it gives you a really nice leather
effect, it doesn't take long to do and it's really easy. Give it a try!
So yeah! I think that's everything, maybe we can up the contrast a couple more notches
for good measure.
Alright guys so, I think the main points are always think about contrast, don't be scared
to make your shadows dark when you're painting light colours and always remember to edge
highlight your metallics.
A big thanks to Lina for sending in the pictures, I hope you're not discouraged, if you focus
a bit more on contrast your models will be kicking mine up and down the street in no
time.
Thanks also to the rest of my awesome patrons, your support has been amazing.
Next up we'll be continuing the technique series and I'll be showing how to approach
feathering, so stay tuned for that.
If you'd like to have your own models appear in this series you can do so by signing up
to my Patreon for as little as $1 a month.
Thanks again,
Bye for now...