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Author Topic: My rumbling on painting for Golden Demon (long)  (Read 4186 times)

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Offline Skeeve

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My rumbling on painting for Golden Demon (long)
« on: October 16, 2009, 03:32:35 PM »
First of all it is long. ;D. Second, I would like to thank GlauG for permitting me to post it. This  is a compilation of several PMs between me and GlauG about a miniature that he painted for the GD (This thread  http://www.40konline.com/index.php?topic=190307.0). This whole piece contains both analysis of his miniature (I reproduced pictures below), as well as certain general ideas that people who want to try for the next year GD might find useful.



When we talk about a GD entry one have to realize that this is gonna be a dedicated competition level model. You will hear from different people that their gaming models won this or another demon but don’t be deceived by this – it only means that their gaming models are painted to competition standards. The fact that I play with my wining models (we had an event, and we plan another one in local GW of presentation army battles where whole armies are painted to near-competition standards), doesn’t mean that they were not painted with competition in mind. So.... what I am trying to say is that if you want to enter a model. Sit down and chose this model carefully and concentrate on this model. You have to really like it for you WILL spend quite some time working on it. Don't try to finish this model in one sitting. I rarely have time to paint long so I break models into many small elements that could be finished within thirty minutes to an hour and paint that one element only. Example, this morning I had about 20-30 minutes - during this time I finished left boot of my terminator I was working on  ;D.

Judges look at several things including
1) techniques used. This should be understood broadly – “freehand” is a technique too.
2) execution of these techniques.
3) conversions. Flawlessness of conversions is very important. Poor conversion even with a superb paintjob will be looked down upon.
4) colors. Very subjective. There are a number of rules that tells you which colors go together well and which do not. There are combinations that annoy just too much. This part is more or less irrelevant if you reproduce “standard” color scheme
5) detailing
6) Presentation. As far as I understand very important in European demons – much less so in the US.

Beyond this, what tends to add to a model is attention to details – not only detailing of the model itself, but detailing the environment. In other words, a space hulk blood angel terminator with mud weathering (saw it two days ago) looks, um, strange, and slightly out of place.

Now, specifically about your mini. First, a disclaimer – any opinion expressed below is mine only and as such remains just this – an opinion. It is also limited by the picture. I am well familiar with models that look amazing in person but are next to impossible to take a good picture of.

1-2) Techniques used and execution. I see: Highlighting (mostly edge highlighting), shading (mostly by doing washes or at least it seems like this) and attempts at blending.

Highlightings: I am not a big fun of pure edge highlighting and in my experience neither are judges. You need a blended “lead up” that culminates in edge highlight at the brightest point.
Look, for example at these guys http://www.coolminiornot.com/194610  or this one
http://www.coolminiornot.com/232343 . Notice that all armor plates are edge highlighted, but there is a small area leading from base armor color to the edge that gets progressively lighter and culminates with the brightest highlight at the edge.

The easiest way to achieve this: On your palette put some paint for your base and separately for you highlight. Then create three mixes on the same palette Base:highlight 2:1, base:highlight 1:1 and base:highlight 1:2 so in the end you have 5 pools of paint. This is where using wet pallet really helps otherwise, by the time you finish with you lat mix the first will be dry.

 Starting from your base you apply you darkest mix in short strokes directed toward the edge you want to highlight. You might have to do it in more then one layer but make sure that what you just applied is completely dry before you apply the next layer; otherwise you paint will develop streaks that will be VERY difficult to get rid of. Then you do the same with 1:1 mix and then with the brightest mix. Every time you use brighter mix you start slightly closer to the edge. In the end you do your edge highlights. Now, to make this whole transition smooth(er) you might have to give it all a glaze of either your base or 2:1 base highlight. This glaze has to be well diluted (at least 1:5) and applied sparingly – make sure that you remove as much water as possible from you brush or it will form pools that look nasty and almost impossible to get rid of. This is where new GW washes help a lot. They are so dilute that you have almost total control over brightness.

About your edge highlights. They should never be uniform. In other words – highlights are reflections that are given by hard edges. Some hard edges (facing the sun or you source of light) receives a lot of light, reflect a lot of light and should be made BRIGHTER, others do not receive any light and should not be highlighted at all. Circular edges (for example the outer edge of a gauntlet or an arm guard) are a special case.
Look at this http://www.coolminiornot.com/111346  . If you look at his edge highlights on all convex elements you would notice that the edge directed toward the sun gets the brightest highlight that then fades almost to the base color. Or here http://www.coolminiornot.com/53349 look at boots, edge highlight is brightest from the “sun” side and much muter on the other side.
You are trying to do it but you are not very consistent. For example, gun barrel – essentially the highest point of the model – it has to reflect, yet, there is no highlights there. Highlights on the back pack – they are uniform from top to bottom, although the upper part definitely gets more light then the bottom
You can do highlights transition in the same way you do edge blending, actually even easier. Make sure your brush doesn’t contain excessive water put you highlight using the edge of your brush pulling from the area with lowest light to the area with highest. If your “darkest” highlight is still too bright you can either apply your base wash or one of the intermediate colors in a reverse direction

 Shading with washes works great for TT miniatures not because it looks good but mostly because it is fast. The major problem with washes (unless you use oils) is that they often create very sharp transitions and tend to pool creating sharp edges that never look good. Also washing, unless applied multiple times does not create depth. On you robe, for example, deepest shadows need to be darker.

For better look you can use washes for really small recesses, for example elements of a helmet. For large one you have to go for blended or layered shadows. Avoid straight black in your shadows for more often then not it looks like dirt. With you minies you have two problems: 1) Brown paint that you used fro washes pooled and created these very sharp really unnatural boundaries. 2) Whatever paint you used for shadows is very glossy and reflects like mad. This creates a very unnatural bright “highlight” inside of your shadow.

Blending. This at the moment is your weakest point. Essentially you are avoiding it. In all frankness I doubt that it is possible to paint a competition level miniature without mastering blending – be that layered blending or wet blending (better both – they have different uses). To some degree I touched upon blending above when I discussed highlighting. On this mini, if I painted it I would blend the robe. The color you use is a good midtone and in my opinion need brighter highlights (white or light gray). Try layered blending first, I find it easier.

Conversion. I am a poor judge of it. I don’t know marines very well. I see that this is not stock because I couldn’t find it but how much it is converted I cannot say. It looks very seamless, so, if it is a conversion it has to be good. This, essentially, is a point. If you cannot make perfect conversion don’t make it at all – just stick to stock (this is what I do in about 90% of my miniatures – I suck at converting)

Colors: Now ,this is another area that requires work. Colors are very important even if you reproduce standard color scheme and this is an area overlooked by many painters. Colors could and should be interesting and eye-catching. It doesn’t mean they have to be bright but they should provide good contrast and supply focal points for an eye to stick too. This is how you make judges to look at you miniature for the second (third, forth…) time.
I suggest reading up a bit about “color theory”.
This site http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/wcolor.html
Has a VERY comprehensive treatment of the subject, if you have time you can read through all of it, but be warned it is VERY technical in places. So often you should just skim through looking for ideas rather then for specific information.  I would focus on these first, though
Warm and Cold colors  [url=http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color12.html]http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color12.html] [url]http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color12.html]http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color12.html]http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color12.html] [url]http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color12.html[/url]
An Artist Color wheel http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color16.html

Somewhat more concise and less technical site is here http://www.worqx.com/color/ . On this site I would suggest reading everything – it is very short.

We can talk about specific colors at length. In this miniature you go mainly for black and white contrast, but I see a small problem - you have warm white and cold black. Yes, you can try double contrast like this (both brightness and temperature) but in my experience it is not easy to pull off and works well only with certain colors. An example of this is my avatar ( http://www.coolminiornot.com/232945 ) where you have black-white and warm-cold contrast on the same elements. For your model I would go for a colder robe. Instead of bleached bone/brown I would try very light gray with dark gray-blue shadows and white/very light blue highlights. Black also needs to have some color variation. There are a number of ways to do it.

1) For example Black with gray area highlights http://www.coolminiornot.com/198925
2) Black with brown weathered patches and grey highlights http://www.coolminiornot.com/217156
3) Black which is not black at all. This is mine, so there is some description inside. http://blog.coolminiornot.com/blog.php?user=skeeve&note=756
4) Black with a lot of green and blue glazes over http://www.coolminiornot.com/208361
5) Black glazed blue  http://www.coolminiornot.com/153207

6) Black with a number of colored glazes http://www.coolminiornot.com/65553

Essentially you need to start thinking about black as a color rather then as an absence of one. Try different colors for glazes. Green actually looks very good. It has to be very dilute green though.

Detailing. I would really to stress the importance of this part. Let me just say that details are on the model for a reason. A single reason, in fact – to be painted. I number of people who do they table top miniatures are painting nothing, but details. They basecoat their mini with something relatively dark and then do detailing with contrast colors – no shading, no highlighting. The idea is to create such a stark focal point that people will not care about the rest of the model. I used this approach on brother Goriel, the thread should be somewhere down there – people who know how I usually  paint yelled at me ;). Same approach could to be used for a competition-level model. My rule is to NEVER leave ANY details with the same color as my base. This is where you can really captivate judges and make them look at you model over and over again.

On your models contrast between details and the background is simply insufficient and details are lost in the background.

Head and eyes in particularly.  Almost universally, regardless what else is out there head, face and eyes are the focal point of any miniature. In your case the brightest element is the area under eyes. Why?  I would make eyes much brighter. If you want them to be red, fine but make them brighter red highlighted to orange/yellow, possibly even white. That also would allow you to go for either glowing or glassy eyes. The first you achieve by applying highlights of colors slightly darker then eyes to the helmet. Say, if your eyes are bright orange to white, the highlights on helmet will be either dark orange or 1:1 orange:red mix. Glassy effect is somewhat more difficult to achieve by painting but much easier if you simply gloss varnish over eyes with good contrast to base but not really bright. I would avoid highlighting those – you varnish should take care of this and double reflection (one from your highlight one from varnish) never looks good

The re-breather grill should be cleaner and highlighted more differentially – top and bottom brighter a with darker middle. If you go for glowing eyes the top of the grill should be highlighted by the color of your eyes. Thing like this grill could be used to make a great focal point. It doesn’t have to be white – it could be gold, silver, green, red or say glowing red (red with orange-white highlights).

Chest-plate and the belt buckle. All elements should be brighter. Skull needs to be highlighted especially frontal bone, cheekbones and the jaw. The buckle should be much brighter and you need some colors here. I would make the sword kinda NMM gold (Snakebite leather to yellow to white) and the wing would remain white but highlighted ALL the way to white. Alternatively you can make the sword golden red (bestial brown – to red to orange to white), or white-blue.
 I would keep the heraldry consistent and whatever combination you use here I would repeat it on the shoulder pad and crosius pendant.

Brown hoses are rather out of place and need more highlighting, but I would keep the intensity of highlights lower then the skull of the belt buckle.

The shoulder pad. The green is too tentative. If you want it to be green make sure that it is actually green. You really need a contrast trim for this green. Either gold or white/gray would work. As I said before the emblem need much more detailing. At the least make it brighter with good shading, better still try to sneak in more color

Crosius. This is my most favorite part of this model. Very crisp painting. That being said the detailing is neglected. Again you want this robed dude on the tip to be green? Perfect. Make it so. Green/gold/white is an amazing combination. White wings, green dude, gold sword. Assume that the dude is actually pure emerald – that would allow you to do some really crazy white reflections and, possibly, even glowing effect. Same with the pendant. It is such a nice eye-catcher and you just let is “hang there”. The crosius handle needs detailing as well. Brown you use is fine but you have to highlight these little squares more (snakebite leather to blreached bone)

Gun. Making plasma gun slightly green/blue/red is very common but if you want to do glowing effect you need to go much further then this. This is an extreme case but here is what I did for the plasma gun
http://www.coolminiornot.com/188734

If I painted it now I would make area around glowing parts MUCH darker to increase contrast even more.

Finally, people tend to make way too much out of competitive painting. I personally believe that wining that statue is more methodology and patience then “talent” (whatever this is). If you make yourself believe that it is “talent” then you always have this convenient excuse that you cannot do it because you don’t have it. Very good proof of this point is a slayer sword that Vincent Hudon won in 2004 (http://www.coolminiornot.com/64201). This is his, I think, 4th model ever painted. He spent several hundred hours on this one. He mentioned somewhere that if he painted this mini NOW to this level it would take him a fraction of this time. It is very difficult to make things right when you do it for the first time. He broke down this mini into multiple manageable elements and simply proceed from one element to another making sure that each element is completed to his satisfaction and only after that moved to another one.

PS. I spent some time trying weeding out errors, but I am sure in the text off this size there will be many. So, corrections are more then welcome
 

« Last Edit: October 16, 2009, 04:29:50 PM by Skeeve »

Offline Fugitive

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Re: My rumbling on painting for Golden Demon (long)
« Reply #1 on: October 16, 2009, 06:08:48 PM »
This should be made in to an article for the site.

I found this very interesting to read. Even though I have no intentions of entering any professional painting contests.  :)

Thanks for sharing Skeeve (and GlauG).

I survived the "CoC Crackdown".

Offline tryanotherone - smurfernating

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Re: My rumbling on painting for Golden Demon (long)
« Reply #2 on: October 16, 2009, 06:12:05 PM »
Thanks for posting this tutorial. Perhaps it should be stickied as it contains many good hints.




...




Is that a limited edition mini? Never seen it before.
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Offline Fugitive

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Re: My rumbling on painting for Golden Demon (long)
« Reply #3 on: October 16, 2009, 07:17:33 PM »
Is that a limited edition mini? Never seen it before.

It's a conversion. GlauG described how it was done in the original post.

I survived the "CoC Crackdown".

Offline tryanotherone - smurfernating

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Re: My rumbling on painting for Golden Demon (long)
« Reply #4 on: October 18, 2009, 10:08:29 AM »
Ok, I missed that part. It's a very nice conversion. I like it.
Taking a very long break.

The Rumour Mill - bending the fabric of time and space

Remember Brimstone - legends live forever

 


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