The second set of videos I recorded at my last painting demo covers glazing, and my methods for painting white.
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Archive for the 'Hobby Content' Category
Here’s another one of the videos I recorded at my monthly painting demo. I cover washes quickly in this short tutorial.
Washes
After the merchant’s mosaic floor it was time to paint ordinary stone and wood floors. However I tried to make the floors stand up a bit by using not so common colors
Floor of the Inn
Over the Scorched brown base coat I heavily dry-brushed Bestial brown. Over this I dry-brushed Vomit brown. I also noticed that I had missed few white spots between the planks but this wasn’t a problem because I washed the whole floor with Devlan mud which covered those spots. That was quick and easy!
Sculpting Tartan Sashes for Trollbloods
The first step is admitting you have a problem so here goes.
Hi… I’m Autumn Stone and I love tartans.
Phew – it’s good to get that off my chest. The wonderful sculptors at Privateer Press have given us so much greatness in the trollbloods – their characterful models, their fine sense of humour, and TARTAN. Almost every single model can show their true colours provided you can bear to paint them. And that’s where it all starts to fall apart.
There are some models that just don’t want to get into the plaid. Or more to the point, they DO want to, but have been cursed with minis that don’t have a scrap of material with which to show their gang colours. Slag trolls, Pyre trolls, swamp trolls, a couple of whelps, and sadly the greatest hero of the entire trollblood army (the pyg who rides the bomber*) all suffer from this curse.
(* – Why is he a hero to be feared and respected? Well mine wears a kilt. Does no one look at the occupational health and safety angle? – well no – these are trollbloods after all – but if they did they’d realise – He’s holding onto a frenzied dire troll for dear life with one hand … Holding an open flame as big as he is in the other …Wearing a kilt …And we all know what a trollblood wears under his kilt …)
Oh I know you can argue that the slag troll would just dissolve his sash, and the pyre troll’s clothing needs to be kiddie safe and non-combustible, but really – these are trollbloods – known for recklessly trying the insane-est things.
So I made my pyre troll a sash
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And it caught fire. Bother.
It takes time to build houses. It takes more time to build interior parts on those houses. It takes ages to completely paint the outside and the inside of the houses. But hey, it´s all worth it!
Inner walls of the Inn
I had some problems figuring out what colors I should use on the interior walls. It´s good to remember that it´s quite easy to actually try some different paints on to the project than just wonder what to use. If it goes wrong, repaint it! Here is my first experiments:
This is it – the sculpting is all but done. Today’s guide is all about the fiddly bits of getting the thing together and turning it into a table worthy figurine.
Now it is time to take your jeweller’s saw and slice through her waist. Take your time and try to preserve any part of the pewter you want. File the rest of it to tidy up after your hack job.
Plan out your pin. I did a poor job of this, and had her slightly off center. I solved this by turning her so her right leg was forward like she was stepping forward onto that right foot.
I’m sure there’s a rule that you shouldn’t try to post a painting article on a site that the likes of Ghool and Althai write for.
If not, there should be. I mean it’s just common sense. Still, I figure that sometimes people may want to see the way mere mortals get stuff done, so Here Goes Nothing …
I’ll begin with my usual disclaimer – why are you asking someone still learning the craft rather than an expert like Arkentyre. His Brushthralls tutorial is where I went to, and what I’m aspiring to here. It occurs to me that my pyretroll from Beginner’s guide to sculpting viii is probably the worst model to base this tutorial on as when the paint job inevitably looks plain average, you won’t know if it’s the technique, my mediocre painting skills, or my novice sculpting skills. Anyway, here goes …
You need to begin with a plan.
Choose your tartan and work out what paints you intend to use to achieve those colours.
Things you should consider:
- How will the pattern look when contrasted with your troll’s skin colour / leather colours / metals. Tartans are often bright. Troll skins are often bright. The browns you use for leathers can often be very saturated. If you’re crazy enough to be painting a sash for a pyre troll, the fire and the trolls back are going to be very bright. That has potential to be a lot of clashing colours. This is why all of the studio tartans from the trollblood clans are variations on browns not vivid colours.
- Can I bear this tartan? If you’re painting trolls, you could be painting an awful lot of this tartan. Be sure you do like it.
- Do I have the colours I need? I’m going to give you the first of my tips – make sure your base colour comes straight out of a pot. Don’t make it a mix of two colours. You’ll be patching a lot of small botches with this colour, and you want easy access to it.
I’ve chosen Clan Gordon Tartan as it’s my old high school’s tartan and I like it.
Many painters struggle with their brushes, and have as many questions as there are types and brands of brushes. What brand is the best? What kind of hair should it have? How do I take care of them? How long will they last? Are the high quality brushes worth the price? I’ll attempt to answer all of these questions in this review.
In order to give the most objective opinion on which brushes I find to be the best, I placed an order for several different brands, and in several price ranges. I opted to include the ‘Big 3′ that all the professional miniature painters suggest; Windsor & Newton, Raphael, and Da Vinci. I have also included in this compaative review one less expensive brand, which is the same hair (Kolinsky Sable) as the ‘Big 3′; Rosemary & Co.
My brush for measure is the Windsor & Newton Series 7. I have used these brushes for over 5 years, and they are the standard against which all brushes I have used since are compared. I will concede that I used little else in my time painting professionally. But I found that I had no need to use anything else, as they were available locally, albeit expensive.
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Theme and Variation
“But wait a moment there Autumn Stone”-I hear you say.
“It’s all well and good you showing us techniques to make this one sculpt – we want to make our own personalised sculpt, and we don’t like the way you’ve chosen to do the [bodice/hair/trim/waist/arms - add or delete as appropriate]“
And you know – that’s a fair enough call. I’ve done my best to stick to generic principals that I’ve figured out doing all this sculpting, and using the WIP of what I’ve done to demonstrate, but when all is said and done, I’ve just shown you this one sculpt being done.
In today’s episode, I’m going to try and show some variations that you might want to try out – and specifically I’m going to talk about first principals of how to do them, so you can try out your own themes and variations.
!! Disclaimer !!
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I’m no amazing/professional/talented/artistic sculptor. I’m just some shlub who gave it a whirl. There is no reason you too can’t give it a go. What have you got to lose – the worst that will happen is you’ll have a small piece of greenstuff to throw away that never amounted to much.
In these two videos, I go over the basics of painting silver metallics, and briefly discuss some techniques for golds at the end of part 2.
Part 1
