Exploring contrast in miniature painting

Since Salute I’ve been painting a Poxwalker in preparation for my next workshop so I’m very happy to be able to announce that tickets are now on sale for the 2018 Sproket's Painting Masterlcass at Element Games

Exploring contrast in miniature painting 

 

The importance of contrast in miniature painting cannot be overstated. I will be teaching my approach to this subject and demonstrate how I have applied it to my miniatures. The workshop will consist of a combination of theory, demonstrations and practical experience.

Timetable:

Friday 1st June 12noon – 11pm
The Element Games Shop, Bar and Gaming Centre will be open for casual painting and gaming. Masterclass participants will be able to collect their Pox Walkers and can assemble and prep the model ready for the morning. If you can’t make the Friday don’t worry as time will be available Saturday morning for assembly.

Saturday 3rd June 10.00am – 5.30pm
The focus for day one will be on the use of colour & tone to create contrast.

• Introduction with a (very) brief background and history.
• Establishing global lighting/contrast
• Discussing colour theory & the colour wheel
• Creating a colour scheme

Saturday Evening 7pm – 10pm
Painting Seminar. 'My 10 favorite painting materials and techniques'
A presentation showing how and where I have used my favorite materials and techniques on my award winning models. Followed by a Q&A session.

Anyone can join the Seminar but if they’re not part of the Masterclass there will be a fee to pay on entry (TBA)

Sunday 4th June 10.00am – 5.30pm
During day two we will continue to develop our colour schemes and explore other types of contrast using different techniques and materials.

• Painting texture & freehand detail
• True metallic/Non metallic metals
• Surface finish - matt/gloss/satin
• Finish – highly worked/loosely worked and creating a focal point
• Adding texture & special effects to a painted miniature

We will round the weekend off by looking at ways to bring together different types of contrast on the same model and achieve a balanced effect that creates overall impact.

Spaces are limited, you can reserve your spot through the Element Games Webstore

https://elementgames.co.uk/Sproket-PM2018

Salute 2018

It’s been a long busy Easter, but it’s also been a very good one! The two week break started on Easter weekend with my partner Mark breaking up from school (he’s a teacher) and our friend Terry arriving to spend a long weekend. Then, on the Thursday, Mark, myself and our friends Sue and David flew off to Athens for a five day break where, by a quirk of contrasting religious calendars, we had Easter weekend all over again! Athens is a city I’ve long wanted to visit and it didn’t disappoint. We hit the ground running hiking up various rocky outcrops and roaming the streets to visit the monuments. Then on the final weekend of the Easter break there was Salute 2018!

I was already a little weary going into the day and this year Salute seemed bigger, noisier and hotter than ever! But I had a great time and really enjoyed the opportunity to meet up with my fellow painters and hobbyists. Of course from my perspective the main event was the painting competition.

In my last post I wrote about how I revisited my Abyssal Warlord to improve the details on his cloak fixings. I did this specifically because I wanted to enter him in the painting comp at Salute. One of my major personal painting goals since returning to the hobby has been to expand my range to include larger scale models. It’s been quite a learning curve!

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the experience and I’m very pleased with the paint jobs I’ve produced. But this has been a journey to an aspect of the hobby where I had no prior experience and it’s taken me out of my comfort zone. So much the better for my development and growth but it’s had its frustrations!

I’ve had to swallow my pride and learn from my mistakes. I quickly realized that I couldn’t simply apply what I’d do on a 35mm mini to a bust. Over the last four years I’ve tried to introduce a touch of realism into my painting of larger scale models. It’s a subtle shift but I’ve found it can make a huge difference! It’s an approach that’s spilled out into all of my painting and I think the result can be seen in my painting of the Death Guard and Horticulous Slimux.

I was surprised at just how nervous I felt the morning before Salute this year. I’ve had some competition success over the last few years with my larger scale projects winning a couple of bronzes and a silver. Gold, however, has eluded me and Gold is the standard I want to achieve! I had hopes that I might pull it off with the Warlord but the standard was high and there was some stiff competition in the cabinet. So I braced myself for a disappointment.

I finally did it and the Abyssal Warlord won me a Gold in the Large Scale category! I have a huge feeling of achievement and pride to have finally achieved my ambition.

There is, of course, so much more to learn and I’ve still got a long way to go on this particular painting journey. But I feel I’ve reached a significant landmark from which I can continue to develop. I need to step up my game and level up on the neglected, but not forgotten, Akito bust!

A fishy tale!

Last summer I painted the Abyssal Warlord from Scale 75 for my workshop at Element Games. Although he started out as a demo mini I decided to try and finish him to competition standard, and I was pretty pleased with how he turned out. I took the finished model along to the Golden Demon winner’s day, at Games Workshop HQ in Nottingham, to get some feedback from my fellow painters.

Having successfully smuggled a non-GW model in, without setting off the alarm at the gates, I put him out on display. The reaction was very good but there was one bit of very helpful feedback. Put simply, the rings that attached his cloak to his armour were the weak link in the paint job and didn’t match up to the rest of the model.

I believe that we are all our own toughest critics and deep down we always know when something isn’t up to scratch! However, I’m very good at deceiving myself, and it’s all too easy to think that it’s ok and no one will notice. Thank goodness someone did notice and gave me a, much needed, push to sort it out!

The root of the problem was in the casting, which wasn’t great in this area. However it’s my job to spot such issues before I’ve glued the parts together and base coated them – my bad!

This required a little thought so I put the Warlord in the cabinet and took plenty of time to ponder the issue. I decided the solution was to remove the offending rings and replace them so that I could then repaint the area. It would be straight forward enough to replace them and sculpt some new fur and fixings. Straightforward in principle but bloody fiddly to do!

I took a little more time to think through a plan of action and I’m very glad I did. I gradually began to rethink my idea of replacing the rings like for like. This seemed to me to be an opportunity to add something a little extra. My thoughts came together very slowly but, in the end, I decided to work with the fish theme already on this model and put fish head terminals onto the cloak.

At this point I remembered the fish familiar in the Silver Tower box and I had my solution. The fish familiar was the perfect size and, because it’s made from plastic, easy to cut and carve to fit. With Horticulous Slimux done I decided this week was a good time to get the Warlord out and make the changes to him.

The Warlord is a weighty, top-heavy model and this made the whole process much harder than it should have been. To cope with this I had to proceed very (even for me) slowly and carefully.

I began by carving away the old rings and a little of the adjoining fur. It was a horrible job but by proceeding with extreme caution I managed to remove the unwanted parts without causing extra damage to the paintwork. Then I had to cut the fish down to size by removing the head, filing off the back half of it’s face and re-carving this surface to fit onto the Warlord’s shoulders.

I glued the new, pre-painted, fish head terminals onto the Warlord’s shoulders with epoxy glue and, once this had set, sculpted new fur to connect the old and new parts. I finished off by repainting the fur to blend the old and new together.

To say the least it was a tricky change to make, and I hate doing this sort of work on a ‘finished’ mini at the best of times! But I think the effort has paid off and I’m very pleased with the result. The new fish head terminals add to the under-sea theme and I think they also improve the overall composition. They help to bring extra focus to the face by framing it with areas of the cold gold. They also create a subtle triangle of gold within the overall colour composition that I find very satisfying!

Thanks to Ellis Kaye for giving me the feedback that prompted me to make the changes!

Horticulus Slimux – Part 5

Horticulus Slimux is finished, and it’s been a hard slog because I‘ve pushed myself hard to refine the textures and transitions to the best of my ability! The experience has been quite intense and I found I could only really work on this mini in short bursts, of an hour or two, at a time. But I think the hard work has paid off and I’m very happy with the finished result!

The decision to focus my paint job on Slimux’s identity, as an ancient gardener, has helped me to keep an overall focus while working on the many small details. I feel it’s also helped me to create the feeling of Slimux being a distinct individual among the masses of Nurgle’s demons. And that is exactly what I wanted to achieve! Of course, no matter how happy I am with Slimux, he is just one element of a bigger model and I now have to start thinking about that dirty great snail and the base in more detail!

The Saturday before last I spent the day at Warhammer Salisbury as ‘artist in residence’! Recent events in Salisbury had, understandably, made things in town a little quieter than usual. However, you can’t keep a good hobbyist down and I enjoyed a full day of hobby related chat and demos. The morning in particular evolved into an extended Q & A and I hope I was able to share the benefit of my many years of painting experience.

A major talking point of the day was ‘How to take your painting to the next level’. What emerged from these discussions was the conclusion that attention to detail is crucial! This works on many levels but, for the purposes of this article, I’ll try to provide a simplified version.

By it’s very nature this hobby is all about detail but there is one VERY important thing to remember.

Don’t ever lose track of the overall scheme. Small details, like eyes, fingernails or jewelry, are important but the thing that holds it all together is the overall scheme. Global lighting, contrast, colour and composition are the things that provide a strong foundation for all the small details.

Attention to detail means paying attention to ALL the many factors that come into play in creating a successful paint scheme. You can’t cut any corners and ‘good enough’ is never good enough! Deep down I think we all know when we’ve not quite done our best and it’s important to pay attention to, and trust, those instincts.

You may well think “that’s easier said than done” and I agree. Taking things to the next level, regardless of you current standard of painting, requires you to commit to investing a lot of time and effort.

Horticulus Slimux – Part 4

Apart from the odd pimple all of Slimux’s flesh tones are all painted. It’s been worth the effort to achieve the finished effect but it’s been a very hard slog. I’ve had to spend a lot of time going back and forth between the various tones and in a few places the paint was beginning to build up. That’s a problem I’ve not encountered for many years.

When paint begins to build up on a mini it can result in a rough grainy surface that detracts from, and spoils, the finished result. It’s the reason I started working with increasingly dilute paint mixes and up until now that has avoided the problem. Avoiding heavy paint build up is by far the best option but if it does occur there are a couple of solutions I fall back on.

The first is to burnish the painted surface and flatten out any lumps and bumps. This needs to be done with a clean smooth surface for example the end of a paintbrush handle or, my favourite, the rounded end of a sculpting tool. This all needs to be done with extreme care as it can damage the painted surface and cause bigger problems than those you are trying to fix. However, when it goes well it can work like a dream!

My second solution is to apply several layers of varnish to the rough area. Each layer needs to dry thoroughly before the next is applied. Once again great care is needed as it’s all too easy to build up a lumpy surface but that may be less distracting than a rough grainy one!

Thankfully a combination of these techniques has fixed Slimux’s flesh and now the surface textures are as I want them!

At the same time as I’ve been painting Slimux I’ve been building Mulch. I now have enough of him put together to be able to start work on a base. This is something I prefer to do as an integrated part of the project in order that the model and the base work together as an overall composition. It’s early days yet, but I’m pleased with how things are coming together.

I’ve a good feeling about this project but it’s increasingly clear that it’s going to take a lot of time and effort to complete Horticulous Slimux and Mulch to the standard I expect from myself. As soon as I started this project I began to suspect that it probably wouldn’t be ready in time for the Golden Demon Classic in May and I’m OK with that!

I feel that over the last couple of years I’ve begun to fall into the habit of chasing deadlines. A deadline is not in itself a bad thing and I’ve always found that competitions are a great way of giving my painting year some structure and goals. But over the last year I’ve felt increasingly that my painting schedule was getting out of control and competition deadlines are a part of the reason.

When I’ve done my best work it’s always been because I’ve taken as long as I needed to do it. It’s time to dig my heels in and reassert my identity as a painter because I refuse to compromise the quality or the experience of my painting. I’m going with the flow and enjoying my painting for it's own sake!