Re: [Epic] Painting

From: Tyler Provick <bprovick_at_...>
Date: Fri, 05 Sep 1997 14:42:47 -0400

Hmm, how to explain painting.

I'll first say that a friend of mine is very jumpy/shaky, and cannot sit
still for more then 5 minutes (When he enters your house you have to tell
him to sit, otherwise he will wander around in a circle, looking at the
walls, the ceiling, your cabinets, or he will follow you around) He only has
1 brush set, citadel. That includes fine detail, normal, and small drybrush.
He has a total of four paints. He has painted a total of 8 figures in his life

He is very talented.

I won't get into drybrushing. I won't get into anything people already know,
because they would have told you already.

I will tell you one thing about drybrushing. If you read most of the 'Eavy
Metal painting guides, they will tell you that drybrushing is used for
"Hair, armour, and other heavily detailed areas."

Basically, if you drybrush something that has flat areas, like skin, of a
Space Marine, then you are going to get a very chunky finish, and this does
not look good. Another thing about drybrushing, unless you have very good
hand eye coordination, and can drybrush to a point of 1 mm, then forget
using the drybrush method to highlight to more then two colours. You will
add too much paint, and your model will get chunky, and it is impossible to
differentiate between more then three colours, after awhile, you just cover
the orginial highlight with your final colour, which is useless.

What you do to add detail is this. This is how I did it for a ratskin (The
last detail work I've done) and it was the first time I didn't use
drybrushing as the main higlighting method.

First, paint base colours. Do them all, because you want to correct mistakes
on straight red, not highlighted red. For example, on my ratskin, we'll talk
about his skin.

Paint it caucasion flesh (is that spelt right, I didn't think so) Then,
using a brown wash (Flesh wash) add it straight to any parts you want dark,
like under the armpits, between muscles. If you were painting cloth flesh
for some reason, you would put the wash in the crevices. It is important
that you basically are painting the dark spots, not applying liberally and
allowing it to run into the detail.

Now, apply highlights. This helps if you have an art background, but look at
flesh, or whatever you are painting for ideas on how light flows. It is
worth it, especially if the flesh you are looking at is attractive. Anyway,
lighten the highlighted areas by painting on lighter shades. Start with a
large area, and then shrink it as the paint gets lighter.

Now you can apply a very thin wash. Once again, add the wash to the detail,
crevices, folds, whatever. Then, while that is still wet (But not right
away, it should stay wet for a minute, so count to 20 or something.) apply
another watery wash to the whole area being painted. Because washes are
sometimes affected by moisture, the lines from your initial wash should be
softened to look more natural.

As this dries, touch up any sharp terminators (The place where shadow meets
light) that are unrealistic with more thinned wash. Washes work best because
the different layers of wash should merge to form a single layer, making
blend lines smoother. During this step it is important to "Step back" from
your model to the usualy viewing distance. Put it on the table and stand up.
The furthur the distance, the more it will blend. Even if you look at the
Mona Lisa from close up, it will not blend as well as from the normal
viewing distance

Tyler
Received on Fri Sep 05 1997 - 18:42:47 UTC