Alastria Redux

[Darkstar]

Cool Vhaidra, glad you like her! I'm glad when people leave me constructive criticism though as it always makes me double check things before I send them on their way. I like to make sure that the final piece is as smooth as possible and I swear that my eyes "gloss over" sometimes and I miss little details that to others are evident. Just usually takes a few moments to go in and correct small oversights, so it's no big deal at all. I'm used to it!

 

I write down all of my recipes for paint on any given piece (well, I type them in on my laptop at least) so it's easy to go back later and correct anything with the same mix of paints. I'm at a stage where I can just pour my 3 or 4 colors out directly on my wet palette and do all my blending right there and just "feather on" paint where it's needed.

 

Like, to adjust the edge of the cloak there where I don't think it's smooth enough, I'll just pour out the drops of paint I used to make my gold, then add a bit of additive to thin the paint on my palette, and start blending. Then I'll pick up colors from the palette with my brush and apply them directly to the spot that needs patching up and try to make it appear smoother. It's really as simple as that. Then re-seal her and she's good as golden.

 

I was gifted a Japanese flower ceramic paint palette awhile back and the small thing has proved invaluable for doing things like this as you can just do your blending right on the palette and cleanup is a breeze with just hot water.

 

Ok, off to Thanksgiving, take care all.

[vhaidra]

Hi Darkstar, I just started right now to write down my receipes because some customer like to get copies from my own minis, and iself also would like to do the one or the another copy for myself one day,lol. So it is better to write it all down I think.

 

I tried to use a wet palette but I had really trouble with the thickness of paint . Either it was too thin or too thick apart from that my wet palette go mouldy. Now I found another solution. My palette is made with metal and I put some Aluminium wrap around it, because I can remove the Aluminium wrap when it is covered with paint and so I never need to clean my palette. Apart from that I put something below/under the palette (don't know the english word. It is Ice in some plastik, you can use it for coolbags to keep the things in it cool) and that helps to keep the paints liquid for a very, very long time and I've got the feeling that the paints also dry not so fast on the mini, because they are soooo cold. That's very great, especially in the Summer time.

 

By the way, I also started to mix the midtones I use for blending directly on the palette. It seems that professionally painter, which probably tried a million ways of painting, get all to very similar ways in the end. It's intresting.

[Darkstar]

Yep, I use the foil on my palettes as well. I put out a ten well palette, then put my paints I want to use in each well, but first I cover the palette in foil so I can dispose of it when I'm done and there is no cleanup. I got that tip from the Vallejo website long time ago.

 

Then when I have my paint in the little wells and it's diluted, I fill another well up with my water mix, just purified water with some flow improver and retarder. When I want to blend between the colors that are in that palette, I transfer a bit to my wet palette then do my mixing there. I just pick up a little bit of paint at a time on my brush and get busy. I keep a painting brush seperate from my mixing brushes though, keeps the tips of the painting brushes alive longer when you're not using them to blend.

 

 

If the paint is too wet, then I add more pigment from the foil covered palette. If the paint needs more thinning, I transfer more water mix from the dry palette to the wet one. The main benefit of doing this is that it saves paint by about one third. Instead of pouring out and mixing all your blends for a color, when you might only need say, one drop for the whole mini, you can just blend on the wet palette instead, and hopefully it will stay open long enough if you need to pick that color up again later.

 

I used to use only a wet palette, and I used to use only a foil palette. Now I use three palettes, wet, dry and ceramic for glazing and tinting. I'm most efficient with all three.

 

*One last note about wet palettes that I "officially" found out last weekend. The paper that you buy from Windsor and Newton for wet palettes is just plain old wax paper. I bought some wax paper by 5,000 sheets for like 4 dollars from a store and it's the EXACT same paper that W&N sells as "Wet Palette Paper" for $4.00 for 12 sheets. So yeah, don't waste your money imho.

[IG88]

Hey Dark,

This is quite impressive, Your cloth is amazing, especially the freehand, yeeeehaaa! As for flaws people noticed, I wouldn't get boggd down on those, I didn't notice any, the piece looks perfect to me, people have to remember pictures are usualy magnified compared to actual models so unless you paint with a magnifying glass its hard to catch real small spots and those are usually not noticeable on the actual model in real life.

 

Its great that you write down the mixes of your paints, very smart, I m going to try to start doing this, it would be especially helpfull for dragons as they are large and you almost always have to go back and mix up colors again. Keep up the great work, your presentations on this forum are a blessing for others to learn from, I always enjoy seeing them.

[Astrochimp]

Wow I just learned about Wet Palettes in this thread. Had to go Google it.

 

Beautiful job on the mini too, darkstar!

[Orchid_Noir]

Wow, just wow.

 

That is stunning. I can only hope that when I am through practicing on other stuff and move to actually working on the minis that I will one day do free hand that gorgeous........ Wow.

[Darkstar]

Wow, just wow.

 

That is stunning. I can only hope that when I am through practicing on other stuff and move to actually working on the minis that I will one day do free hand that gorgeous........ Wow.

 

 

Awesome, thanks Orchid and the above posters. Reaper MSP's work better than any paints for freehanding in my experience so far, they are more forgiving and flow better from the brush. Build up layers slowly over time though. Once you get comfortable with your technique you can move on to the "chalkier" paints like Vallejos for less strokes, but higher saturations of paint. Hard to explain what I mean by that. It's "faster" using vallejo's, but you gotta be really confident with your brushwork, you gotta be sure that once you put your brush to the mini, that you won't pick it up again until your line is done using an opaque paint like Vallejo. MSP's work well though, go dark to light as a general rule of thumb. Start by creating your linework with almost the exact same tone you are painting over, but just make it a touch lighter so you can barely register the difference. Then keep tracing that line over and over again perfectly as you can each time adding lighter and lighter tones to your paint.

 

Here's an example of freehand using one color plus white from the Master Series paints using the above technique.

 

 

Took about, 6 hours or so listening to tv and retracing my lines over and over again with barely lighter tones each time. Maybe adding a brushful of white to my pool of purple each pass.

[IG88]

Ahhhyes, I remember this guy.

Freakin awsome freehand. I also like that you were able to make the sword look as old as the litch. Great rust. The Bright red, makes him look like royalty so you have olderthan dirt but important. Its always good to look at the type/race of the warrior your painting for how the weapons "Shine Factor" would be. This is an older than dirt litch so the sword reflects that, dull and rusty. For me a dwarf or elf on the other hand should nearly always have polished well maintained weapons as their races take great pride in the apearence of their equipment. Very nice as usual.