"Painting meta-techniques?" Topic

I am interested in a general sense about how people go about painting figures and scenery. I don't mean specific individual techniques like washes or drybrush, but descriptions of the overall process, as a whole.

Following is a list of my current understanding (or perhaps my misunderstanding) of some of the processes available. I am assuming people start with basic prep of some kind, washing, priming, trimming flash or whatever is needed for the type of model, so I left those out.

The names are either made up by me or what I have found others to call them. I am happy to hear if there are better known formal names for any of them. Of course, these divisions are artificial and real painters will frequently combine them in various ways.

Some Techniques:

1) Basic base colors only. This is what I started with back in the day, learning to paint on my own.

2) Base/Wash/Drybrush Starting with base colors like #1 and building up shading by one or more applications of washing and drybrushing, in any order. I learned this at a workshop at Origins (or maybe GenCon, can't remember) many many moons ago, from a great guy named Joe Miceli who was a game and rules designer and also on staff for the late, great Courier Magazine. This is still what I am most familiar with.

3) Sketch Painting Monochrome shading topped with glazes or washes to add hues. I guess zenithal priming could be considered a specialized subset of this technique.

4) Dark to Light Starting with a very dark base coat (or very dark primer) layering on successively lighter layers of paint. There is a paint company (can't remember which, anyone know them) that promotes a version of this and providing various triads of colors (i.e. dark red, medium red and bright red) to make color selection easy (and expensive). I have been experimenting with this a bit, the layering, not the pre-selected triads, and like it so far.

5) Stain Painting This is, if I remember correctly, an all-wash technique and was promoted in the late 70s-early 80s (I think) by Heritage Miniature's Duke Seifried, of Der Kriegspielers fame, as a "fast" method of preparing tabletop quality armies. Citadel Contrast Paints (if used as the sole paint) seem to be a technological update of this--when Duke was evangelizing stain painting, a wash was just thinned-down hobby paint. The main difference between this and sketch painting, to my mind, is that stain painting tends to "shade as the paint flows" making concavities dark and convex areas light whereas in sketch painting, dark and light are more according to the painter's intentions, frequently simulating light coming from above.

6) Dip Technique I am not super familiar with this, so I a guessing a bit. It sounds kind of as though one lays down the base colors, a little brighter than intended for the final look, and then dips the figure in a dark wash, to add some definition and shading. It sounds a bit like a different approach to accomplish similar goals to stain painting. I lack much info about this, so I would not be surprised if I am missing something.

That's my current thinking. Have I left anything out, blurred any lines, offended any higher powers? How do you paint? Does it fit into, or overlap any of these categories, or do they lack relevance to your techniques?

Thanks!

Thank you for posting, I've been meaning to write some things down

For "meta" painting, I think about what I want to achieve, rather than a particular method

One concept is increasing contrast. Increased contrast makes the figure "pop", particularly as the distance between the viewer and the figure increases and also increases in importance with smaller scale figures. You will see some discussions on the importance of contrast on websites such as cmon

How to increase contrast

• Use brighter colours. Where you have a choice of colours in a colour scheme, choose colours that contrast each other
• Increase the difference in tone between shadows, mid colours and highlights
• Black lining. A dark coloured line between regions of contrasting colours. I more usually use dark brown or Paynes grey rather than black
• Edge highlighting. Exaggerated highlight at the boundary of a colour

Another concept is to create the impression of 3D. Artists do this, using shading and the effective direction of the light to give the impression of 3D. Although our models are (mostly) three dimensional, using artists' techniques can greatly improve a model. Think of the light coming from above the model. This means that the undersides of surfaces will be darker. Simply washing won't do that, although a single "preshade" layer before washing will go a long way. Also take the direction of the light into account when edge highlighting

This is also how drybrushing got a bad reputation. If you drybrush all surfaces at 90 degrees to the model, then the highlights will look subtly wrong. The zenithal airbrushing concept is the right way to do this, the paint sprays only from a high angle.

Another "meta" concept is tying a unit or army together in some way. For a historical army after about 1700 this isn't such an issue as the uniforms are well documented, but for other armies it helps to have some consistent ideas such as

• Common colours. Not necessarily the main colour, but a specific colour that is present somewhere
• Will all units look weather beaten and scruffy or ready to step onto the parade ground ?

All good points. Perhaps my post would have been better title Painting Technical Workflows?

I had completely forgotten about air-brushing, mostly as I have never had the opportunity to try it. I am not sure how it fits into the schema which I described, aside from being a handy way to do zenithal shading. I have heard it being done with canned spray-paints, but I suspect that airbrushing would give greater control, and waste less paint.

Your "basic" is what I've commonly heard of as "block" painting, but yes, I think you've about covered it. You do block, you do successive lighter colors over a dark base coat or primer, you do successive washes and glazes over a light base coat or primer, or you do one of each--base coat, wash and drybrush. Other things are variants on those themes, or a sub-technique like black lining.

What hasn't been mentioned yet is size and quality of casting. As you go from 2mm to 54mm and from Scruby and Britains to the Perrys, the appropriate techniques and level of detail vary, and not always together. As an example, you can put huge amount of detail on an old Scruby, but washes and dry brushes don't get you very far in castings without a lot of paint-catching surface detail, while block painting and black lining work well. A Stadden or Suren of the same vintage responds well to careful dry brushing.

Shifting from, say, 15mm to 5/6mm means learning and using a whole different range of tricks to make your unit stand out at tabletop distances. My last two units were 5mm H&R Spartan hoplites and 28mm Victrix Guard Grenadiers, and there wasn't a lot of overlap in technique.

Which is why I'll never learn everything I need to know.

I am interested in a general sense about how people go about painting figures and scenery. …descriptions of the overall process, as a whole

25mm to 54mm figures

I usually start with forming a general idea of who they are and what I want them to look like. I typically work on groups of miniatures, like a squad or platoon, or a group of adventurers/operators/mercenaries.

Overall process for 25mm to 54mm figures is basically:
preparation
priming (spray can)
main base color (brush)
additional base colors (e.g., camouflage) (brush)
wash (brush)
details (e.g., insignia) (brush)
drybrush (brush)
basing (usually clear plastic)
matte finish (spray can)

Vehicles:

Vehicles for figures at that scale start similarly, with review of available materials for hulls (computer mice, soap dishes, shampoo bottles, etc.) and rough conceptualization of result. Then I prepare the hull, primarily by washing with dish soap to remove any grease or oil.

Then I do several coats of spray paint, all from ordinary spray paint cans. I don't care if it wastes a little paint. Paint is cheap. Spray cans are very easy to use, and don't require any technical skills or dedicated space for a compressor.

Spray painting is just spray-mask-spray until I'm done. White primer is often the base color for countershaded undersides. I'll use different kinds of masks (tape, strips of cloth, nylon mesh), depending on the force and the expected terrain.

Table covers:

I go kind of Jackson Pollock on table covers, twisting them up, splashing very wet paint that will bleed in interesting ways, spray painting from a distance, etc.

Buildings:

What is it and where is it? That decision will determine colors and, to some extent, technique.

Select box, cut openings, make doors, attach other greeblies, spray paint.

Hope you found that of interest.

@robert piepenbrinkYour points about scale and style of sculpting are well-taken. I have mostly only painted25-28mm figures, so my understanding is rather limited in how this topic would apply to other scales.

Interesting that you should mention Scruby's and Staddens. Those two were the first unpainted metal figures I ever saw, being some 30mm Napoleonics belonging to my older brother. I don't think they ever got painted, sadly.

@Oberlindes Sol LIC Indeed it is all interesting. It sounds as though you use a permutation of Base/Wash/Drybrush for figures? Also, are you scratchbuilding a lot of vehicles? That is another equally complicated topic!

Dip Technique is what I used to call "Sloppy Wash" or "Overall Wash". I'll let you choose the name for your list. It's a speed painting technique where the same color wash shades the entire model, so it can be "dipped" (although most painters use a brush and don't literally dip). Usually it's a heavy wash so it also stains the figure darker.

A related subject is adding binder to the wash mix as well as thinner; the binder collects pigment in the recesses better. 1) GW's How to Paint Citadel Miniatures recommends adding PVA glue for this. 2) Aircraft modelers who used Future Acrylic Floor Varnish for clear canopies and other gloss effects discovered it was also a great wash additive; this is "Magic Wash". 3) "The Dip" is using furniture stain (which is pigment + varnish). 4) We can use acrylic varnish or acrylic media as well, since these products are essentially binder + thinner.

Most painters that use Dip Technique have a followup lightening / highlighting step which corrects the stain effect where it is unwanted.

Which segues nicely to …

I'm not sure where it would fit in your list but some painting procedures use a detailing step, or may use more or less detailing depending on the desired time/results tradeoff. This can be targeted highlighting, blacklining, picking out details like buttons, belt buckles, eyes, etc. This applies to several of the approaches you mention, e.g. Basic / block colors, Base/Wash/Drybrush, Staining. Even Dip Technique if you consider the cleanup/lightening/highlighting step a form of detailing.

To clarify, Magic Wash is Future Floor Polish (now Pledge Floor Polish) + Acrylic Paint of the desired color, to create custom shades of wash and sealant.

The Dip Technique and Magic Wash are what I consider to be high speed painting techniques. I use both as my primary techniques.

With The Dip Technique combined with assembly line painting (organize figures by poses, applying the same brush technique on each figure, in succession), I average 10 minutes of painting, per figure, including applying the Minwax Polyshades Urethane Stain.

It is a very quick means of getting figures done for an army. The figures look good at arm's length.

Both The Dip Technique and the Magic Wash Technique coat the figures with a durable layer, making them highly protected from handling. Cheers!

@Pocho Azul:

You can call what I do a permutation of base/wash/drybrush, I suppose. I think of what I do as applying the concept of base/wash/drybrush as needed to get the results I want.

I have scratchbuilt a number of vehicles. There are other frequent contributors to TMP who are far more skilled and productive than I.

You may find my blog, where I post pictures of things that I've finished recently, of interest:
oberlindessollic.blogspot.com

Interesting discussion – thanks for sharing your ideas and experience!