Hello guys, welcome back to Not Just Mecha, it s Marco here and today is again homework time!
Veterans of the channel already know the endless
artistic cycle in which I m trapped, but if you are a new subscriber here s the big secret;
even pros need to exercise and practice! Often you ask me in the comments for practical
ways to improve your painting and the one I m going to show you is one of my absolute
favourites. Choose your model and find a cool artwork
depicting the figure in action, give yourself a single painting session to complete the
project, something like three of four hours and paint the model using only an extremely
limited palette. --- With this workflow you don t have to stress about schemes and composition
putting all your efforts in the manual, technical part of the process. You can t overthink the
project because you don t have the time to do it and you are obliged to rely on the information
from the artwork that s the ideal, aspirational version of the little plastic toy you are
handling. Plus, you have to create and mix your own colours that s a skill miniature
painters too often overlook and using only three or four tones this is the perfect exercise
for beginners with a small paints collection! Don t forget to subscribe and hit the bell
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my videos consider joining the community! Thanks a million guys!
For this exercise I chose to use again the Zorn limited palette! If you never heard about
the Zorn palette check this video up here for all the technical details and an extended
example on how to use its basic iconic version. Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Red Medium and Ivory
Black are the primary tones of the scheme and you use white to regulate values and saturations.
Ivory Black provides the bluish notes but if you really need a proper blue like in some
of Zorn s landscapes with a lot of sky and water you can introduce Viridian, and or Cerulean
Blue to cover better that role and as consequence expand your final gamut of hues.
This is my starting point, a quick general and diffused zenithal light, the kind of thing
you can easily do with a spray can. I ve been a little more precise only on the sword to
define a couple of strong lights and their consequent shadows and save some work later.
You can see from the number of little dots that I wasn t careful as usual in this step
and this because it s not so super important with the workflow I want to use.
From now on keep always an eye on the side because all the interesting and really important
stuff will happen on the wet palette! Yellow ochre and red make a soft natural orange
that with a pinch of white becomes immediately a perfect basic hue for any Caucasian skin
tone. Adding blue you introduce the green note of
a more realistic skin in the internal mix of blue and yellow, but you can unbalance
the recipe pushing more on the red and blue block bringing it into the territory of magenta
and soft violets. I love to use this kind of warm saturated colours to base the skin
of female characters especially if I need a versatile mid tone that I can easily turn
into warm and cold hues simply unbalancing the same basic recipe. I have a countdown
to beat so I immediately sketch the shape of the shadows and since I ve been quick using
a good dilution I can also wet blend the edge softening the transition.
Similar process painting the face but here I thin down the base tone a bit more. I use
the transparency of this mix to exploit the luminosity of the white underneath and give
the idea that the face is more exposed to the main light. Thanks to the higher dilution
I can easily wet blend the basic shapes of the shadows. I use the same tones in a more
precise way to frame eyes, the sides of the nose and the shapes of her lips.
I want to quickly fill the main large areas so I mix red with blue and a microscopic pinch
of black to create a vibrant burgundy tone. I don t want an oversaturated cartoony red
but a realistic and deep royal red; red can catch the eyes of a viewer miles away and
that s great to move the attention on an important focal point but here the cape is just a frame
for the core of the figure so the lower saturation and the more natural tone will be less invasive.
As you can see, I m not really worried about the smoothness of this basic layer. Lights
and shadows will make everything smooth layering on top of this. Plus, I want to catch this
sensation from the artwork using the brushstrokes. For the base tone of the non-metallic silver
armour I mix a grey desaturated pastel violet from a basic black and white plus red, blue
and a bit of the light turquoise. I want to catch the warm vibe of the artwork s silver
but using a value slightly darker in this stage to be able to work only on its lights
and highlights and create a very light metal. Still, I don t need to start form black or
a value darker than this one for the extremely light silver I have in mind. Later I ll push
a lot on the cold tones of reflective steel, so a warm base creates an interesting contrast
from the very beginning. I use a similar train of thoughts for the
non-metallic gold. I create a greenish hue mixing yellow ochre with the light blue and
I use it as mid-tone for a contrast of temperature both internal between shadows and lights and
external between the yellowish gold trims and the rest of the cold armour.
I start the layering of the blond hair form an orange tone very similar to my initial
mix for the skin. Red and Yellow are much more concentrated here and I use a bit of
blue to desaturate the mix and tun it in more realistic peach notes. I m aiming to a natural
strawberry blond so staying in the realm of pastel tones helps staying away from cartoony
yellow hair. I base the remaining metallic elements with
a mix of blue, turquoise, a good amount of black and a tiny bit of red to make it deeper
and more interesting. Again, a good dilution keeps some of the black and white sketch underneath,
so I don t have to start from a flat base, but I have a bit of modulation guiding my
brush. The base colour of the fur skirt is the most
complicated to mix because its main components are the same of skin, hair and even the non-metallic
gold so I have to create something new. The recipe cannot be too different so I change
point of view and I make it something new playing with the value.
Using an alternative starting point as my base I guarantee that the full modulation
will be different at the end. Painting with the Zorn palette colour harmony is always
a guarantee, but you must work seriously to create contrast.
Every now and then I check my refence to be sure I m moving in the right direction! Again,
one of the main objectives of the exercise is to move out from my comfort zone following
the vision of another artist in another medium and learn how to render it absorbing everything
in my mental library. For the core of the blade I first mix a bluish
grey like the one I plan to use for the edge, but I add a bunch of red to turn it into the
oxidised version of the same metal. The whole model is about smoothness and reflective surfaces
but here I can unleash heavy textured brushstrokes to create from the beginning the rough sensation
of something like cast iron. The colour is quite diluted, and I use the natural pooling
of the paint around the tip of the brush to create the texture.
All the base tones are done so from now on transparency and dilution and the control
they grant me will be more and more important. For this reason, I add to the palette a bunch
of mixing/ glazing medium. My first choice is usually Vallejo s glaze medium, mostly
because of its fluid consistency but this product from JoSonja that I've been testing
since last year it s slowly taking its place. Light sealer with extender that dries matte
you really cannot ask anything more than this! I move in another corner of the palette to
mix my pools of transparent filters and washes. I really don t like premade washes. I want
a perfect match with what I m painting, and a standard bottle cannot be that specific
in every situation. Plus, I play a lot with density and transparency to obtain different
behaviours; I use washes mostly to create a quick basic
definition and not for shading so a higher density, obtained adding more medium, is really
useful to catch lines and little details without altering the base too much.
When you apply a general wash you are not shading, you are simply darkening an entire
surface bringing its tone into darker values. Shading implies having a vector and a directional
movement of light, shadows and tones based on the position of your light source. You
can see on the lower part of the skirt how I use washes to shade. The general layer is
used to catch the shape of the strands creating some definition and on the wet surface I use
the darker colours to wet blend darker and darker shadow on the lower parts.
In this stage I also add the bluish glare on the blade s edge.
This is the first half of the palette and a faithful reflection of the first half of
the paintjob! Large opaque and semi opaque pools of the base tones and fewer, larger
and much more transparent pools of washes all from the same four tones and black and
white. I move to a new corner of the palette with a new row of my colours only for recording
needs, but I still have access to all the previous pools in case I need to take a step
back and fix something. The hair because of its volume needs a good
range of lights. To paint believable hair, you have to avoid painting the single strands
that ideally should be too thin to be focused by your eyes in this scale. You must work
on the general masses focusing on how hair reflects light working the volume like an
arm or a leg! Comics and manga are great references to understand how to create a visual synthesis
of something structurally this complex! Working on quick non-metallic metal a sketch
is the simplest and fastest way to fix the shape of light and its reflections. I use
a pattern of super dense thin lines to add visual interest to the flat armour. The result
will be quite smooth thanks to concentration of these lines but when you see the model
up close you get the sensation of machined metal breaking the flatness. You can find
this effect even in the illustration in the form of a super fine etching. With the sketch
in place, it s just a matter of adding lighter and lighter tones inside those initial shapes
with small increments of white! On the palette you can see the five value jumps I used to
reach the pure white of the highlights. Same process for the gold parts but with a
shorter range of values mostly because of their smaller surface that doesn t let me
do more layering! Again, sketching set the sense of the effect in a matter of seconds.
Here I want to be sure of the final position of the last highlight on the tangent of the
main light and in line with the one I have on the armour, so I apply it first and I sketch
the diffusion on the sides! When you have the colours on the palette you can freely
choose the order of operations that suits you better!
After the video about painting eyes where I used a bust to show my approach a lot of
you asked me what to do on miniatures lol those are the steps I use on miniatures, I
used a bust just because it s easier to film. I already have a light grey modulation on
the sclera from the value sketch, so I start framing it with black on top and a dark reddish
brown on the edge of the lower eyelid. Then a dark blue dot to position the iris. A concentric
light blue dot for the proper colour of the iris keeping the first one as its dark frame.
Somehow, I didn t record the little black dot of the pupil but here you can see the
little white dot of the fake reflection. I close adjusting the upper lid and at same
time making it a bit larger to give the idea of a soft make-up. My wife always tells me
that I m heavy handed with make-up so I use just a fine black line to avoid losing the
angelic Arthurian mood of the character. Like on the bust the eyebrows set the shape
of her expression and I can add a glaze of light blue between upper lids and eyebrows
to complete the make-up. To create a good visual separation between
fur and hair and give the idea of different materials I paint the whole light modulation
with thin lines and dense paint crating a micro 3d pattern, giving the sensation of
a rough mass of dense fur, very different from her light, shiny, satin hair.
I moved in the last free corner to film better this part, but again, I m still on the same
palette! Even in a quick painting session my priority is the sense of materials and
their consistency and here I want also to reinforce the illusion that the hair is softer
and lighter than the cape, so I create my highlights directly painting the fine texture
of the fibres. I increase the value little by little creating the modulation on red using
warm skin tones. To save some blending time and to tie the
model with the clouds of dust on the base I paint a heavy weathering on the lower edge.
First, I apply few glazed layers than I move to a fine dotting. The idea is to break the
uniformity of this block of red with a neutral colour and a lot of visual noise.
This is my favourite part. The edge of the sword has a good light placement but it s
too simple and smooth especially in the context of all the textures I used everywhere. I follow
the map I have introducing fine vertical lines to give the idea of the layers of folded metal
and the witness marks of sharpening. This is also useful to increase the weak saturation
and opacity of the sketch making the white super white, the black really black and deep
and make the blue transitions colder and more vibrant.
To simplify the handling of the soft OSL from the lanterns I kept this step as the last
thing to do so the fake light can interact directly with final tones of the elements
that s touching. You can use this shortcut at its maximum potential only if you have
very light values to tint with the colour of the light all around and here I m in the
perfect position to simply filter yellow ochre on the lantern to keep the full luminosity
of the white and then glaze it directly on everything falling inside the bubbles of light.
And here s the final result, four hours of happy painting in one of the the most pleasant
and natural flows I can remember, using only the four colours of the Zorn Palette and black
and white. This is a great way of painting if you need to release stress, or you have
only few ours to dedicate to the hobby during the week. This series is really important
for me because I tend to use a lot of paints and a ton of different products in my videos,
but I don t want to give the idea that you need all that stuff to be a miniature painter.
It s always fun to add paints to your collection and try new stuff but at the end you can literally
paint anything with the pots you can carry in your pocket!