Painting question

[Butterflygypsy]

Hello!

 

I just bought the learn to paint kits and have started on the journey of learning to paint the figures in the kits. My question is this: do they have guides somewhere for the various figures that are not in the kits for suggested paint colors or recommended paint colors? In the kit even once you have learned the basic skills it tells you the colors to use for the base coat, shading and lining for instance. Is there guides to tell that for other miniatures? Just curious as I really liked how the guides told you what colors were needed for each figure. 
 

thanks. Have a great day

[BLZeebub]

Hello and welcome!  There aren't official guides that I know of for non-kit minis, no.  You can kind of experiment and look around for recipes and try to match things you like though.

 

If you're still building up your paint collection you can get more Learn to Paint kits and get guided practice with different colors, different techniques, and just generally broaden your paint-sense at the same time. 

 

Finally, find painting videos, where someone paints a mini from start to finish, or at least tells their recipe, and look for colors you want to imitate.

 

Good luck!

[Serenity]

The Craft section on Reaper's main web page has some painting guides included, among other types of crafting advice.  The tutorials for the Dungeon Dwellers minis are particularly well done.  Links are below, but they're under the Craft menu, too:

https://www.reapermini.com/craft and https://www.reapermini.com/dungeondwellers

[Cyradis]

On 7/13/2021 at 3:12 PM, Butterflygypsy said:

Hello!

 

I just bought the learn to paint kits and have started on the journey of learning to paint the figures in the kits. My question is this: do they have guides somewhere for the various figures that are not in the kits for suggested paint colors or recommended paint colors? In the kit even once you have learned the basic skills it tells you the colors to use for the base coat, shading and lining for instance. Is there guides to tell that for other miniatures? Just curious as I really liked how the guides told you what colors were needed for each figure. 
 

thanks. Have a great day

 

I think the expectation is that the LtpKs show you the methods, then you use the methods in your own way on other figures. Think of minis like small 3D coloring books; you can do it how you want.

 

Some Youtubers/Patreon painters will state the specific colors they use when painting a figure, but it is a guideline, not a necessity.

[Gadgetman!]

Yeah. There's a wizard in one of the kits... 

He's supposed to be painted red...    

 

I have him as blue and as green also.. 

His cape is just wonderful for practicing highlights and shading.   

 

 

[PhantomAsh]

I'll second the others saying the kits are a good point to branch off into other sections but I will also add; I believe there is an ongoing event called miniature Mondays (or something similiar) from Reaper's twitch streams, where at the beginning of the month they sell a kit with the colours and/or miniatures that you'll be painting, and then over the month the streams have a professional painter doing the kit, and you get to paint along and ask questions.

 

That is, however, my understanding of a stream I have only peeked at a few times, so I could be dead wrong on it. At the very least, however, they DO have a series of videos from their streams where their pro artists go over a miniature over several sessions and paint it - you could get the paint colours and miniatures yourself and then follow along the already finished videos.

 

I also find searching the product code or name of a reaper miniature on the forum here or in Google gets me plenty of good WIP or finished versions of that mini, and I can usually then replica parts or all of it, if I can't come up with my own thing.

[Inarah]

I believe Miniature Monday was cancelled earlier this year.  The videos are still up on YouTube if you search, but the kits are no longer available. You can still buy the individual paints and figures from the store if you want to follow along.  

 

 

[Serenity]

1 hour ago, Inarah said:

I believe Miniature Monday was cancelled earlier this year.  The videos are still up on YouTube if you search, but the kits are no longer available. You can still buy the individual paints and figures from the store if you want to follow along. 

As an aside, last I knew, Josh Davis, who hosted Miniature Monday, was still doing his own miniature paint-alongs on his own channels (minipaintingstudio) .  I have not been following them, however.

[Butterflygypsy]

Thank ya’ll for all of the wonderful answers! I will check out the various links and videos suggested. I am just starting out on this journey and I am having a lot of fun with it so all of the advice and suggestions have been very useful. 
 

have a wonderful day!

[Zloyduh]

Hi Butterflygypsy and welcome to the hobby!

I introduced myself to the hobby the same way you did, with the use of the two Learn to Paint kits.  From reading your post, it sounds like you're struggling with the same things I struggled with.  Thinking back to my own experience, here are some things that I did.  I hope sharing these would be helpful.

 

The kits are there to teach you some of the basic techniques of mini painting.  The kits are not there to dictate the color palette.   After I painted the orc from the first kit, I picked up more orcs from Reaper and painted them in the same way following the kit instructions.  By the time I got to the Timur figure, I felt like the instructions were holding my imagination back and I started venturing my own way while painting him.  So what you can do is pick up a few similar figures and use the same instructions to paint them.  The point here would be to practice the techniques.  Pay attention to how darks and lights play together and overall just kind of disregard the palette that is "forced" on you by the manual.

 

When I picked my first non-kit minis from Reaper, I browsed through pages of minis and picked some.  Why did I choose the ones that I chose?  Because they resembled something.  I had some sort of a point of a reference in my head:  like that elf is totally from the computer game that I played years ago or that dwarf is like the dwarf on some picture that I saw and liked in the past, etc.  (you get the point?)  So then, just find the reference images and try to match those colors.  I used this tool from Reaper to pick the colors:  https://www.reapermini.com/powerpalette  When I got my new minis and new colors, I just applied the techniques I learned from the kits to paint these.  This was a good way (in my opinion) to start building my paints collection.

 

If you want a bigger paint collection quick, look into paint sets from reaper.  They usually go by themes.

If you're watching online videos, make sure you take advice from mini painters and not terrain builders.  That's a mistake that I made.

There are various ways to find inspiration:  watch mini painting videos, browse online for photos, or this forum is actually a great place to find inspiration, too.

 

Well, that ended up being way longer than I though at first 🙂  Hope some of this helps!

 

 

[Zloyduh]

I just had an idea! 🙂

You can pick up paints and figures from the leftovers of the Bones 5 Kickstarter!

The Pledge Manager opened again this week.  These are higher prices than the original, but still an awesome deal comparing to the regular retail.

 

Go here:  https://pm.reapermini.com/
Register

Login

Pick what you want and pay for it.

I believe they said this will be delivered by January of 2022.  But still, a great catch for the hobby.

 

So you can grab 12 paints for $22 - that's like $1.83 per paint when the regular price is $3.59??? or something like that

You can grab these villagers for $24 - that's $1.2 for a mini, and the regular price is like $3 - $4?  Depending on if it's Bones Black, USA or regular.

 

This does not answer the original question, but just a good way for a new "painter" to build up the collection faster and cheaper.

 

Cheers! 🙂

~Z