This topic contains 23 replies, has 7 voices, and was last updated by 
sundancer 3 years, 2 months ago.
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I think I’m going to try oils.
Yes, just about every other miniature painter on Youtube has been raving about how awesome painting with oils is. And I’ve not been convinced – til now. I discovered a while back that zenith highlighting can not only look awesome, and not only really brings your minis to life but – if you’re brave enough to allow yourself – leaving lots of dark areas also speeds up painting time.
For example, here’s a mini I painted a while back when I first discovered zenith priming. It took me all I had not to paint over every area with base coat colours. I could never imagine leaving black areas on the face – the one part of the mini I wanted to draw attention to; it just felt wrong, not painting it all!
But once I built up the confidence to leave dark areas, my painting really sped up! After all, I could confidently leave the undersides of arms and legs black, knowing they’d be ok. Suddenly, about 25% – 30% of my mini was already done, after the zenith base priming stage! Just paint what you can see – and if only two-thirds of your mini is visible from a view point, you’ve just cut your painting time by a third!
I’ve got to the point now where I’m ok with my painting. It’s not stunning, but it’s good enough to be quite happy with. A bit cartoony, sure, but I like the high contrast look (and, seriously, they look much better IRL, since the camera does tend to pick up on every little fault and error in the painting!)
But one thing I always struggled with OSL. Adding it at the end of a painting session felt too much like “destroying” a paint job. And when I tried to add it, it was always a bit “half-hearted” because I don’t want to over-paint my lovely black-lining and all those nice, bright highlights I’d spent so much time over. I also never quite went bright enough with it – instead of nice, vibrant bright patches, they tended to just look discoloured (instead of a bright light shining on a mini, my OSL tended to look more like spilled gravy stains).
But this video has changed everything for me.
This guy *starts* with OSL. And he uses oils. And they blend beautifully. And they’re super-opaque. And he’s really messy, and fast, and just throws it around. And by doing the OSL first, he can also tidy things up at the end if he likes.
And the end result looks stunning. And he painted about five goblins in an hour and a half.
I think I need to try oils.
Guitar tutorial videos get played at x1.
I don’t think I’ve watched any other kind of video at anything less than x1.25 for more than a couple of years (x1.5 is default for me). The timings on Youtube videos are only a guide. You nede to get your ADHD under control and watch things that are longer than a cartoon
😉
You’re missing loads of cool stuff!
I finished…ish…the Marine I was working on. Going to get a project post up soon. There’s a few things I’m not 100% happy with. I might have to redo the Chapter badge because it’s not central to the pad, but there is also the battle damage sculpted into the mini that makes that difficult without modifying the decal a bit, so we’ll see. I might also run some Black Templar into the bigger dents in the armour to make them stand out a bit more as well. I tried to go for a First Nations theme for him, though I’m not sure if I got the skin tone quite right for that. The white a purple worked quite nicely, though. Not truly Haudenesaunee colours, but a fair homage.
Also the black arm and helmet is the old school colours for Chaplain trainees, and I liked the look, particularly with my extra red markings. 😛
Have some music:
Still need to prime that dead ork to finish him…
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