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Re: favorite painting techniques?

From: Tony Christney <acc@u...>
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1998 01:03:48 -0700
Subject: Re: favorite painting techniques?

[snip]
>What I'd like to know are specific techniques people prefer for
>the painting of their ships. What kind of primer do you use?
>What color patterns and details seem to work well for you? Do
>you use decals? Do you kitbash or add other accessories to your
>ships?
>   Any other tips for a newbie painter are welcome as well.

While I don't have any ship painting experience, I do have a fair
amount of experience painting miniatures in general. Painting
usually consists of several stages: cleaning, priming, basecoat,
shading, highlighting and detailing. The amount of time spent at
each stage, as well as the techniques used, will determine the
overall quality of the job.

I'm not going to bother with in depth descriptions of each stage,
but I will go over some of the more technical stuff.

Shading:
Basically there are three ways to get shading on a model: an
overall wash of thinned paint or ink, selectively adding shading
to particular parts of the model, or by highlighting. The first
two methods are very similar, differing mainly in the method
of application and consistency of the paint. Washing is
accomplished by painting the surface of the model with a
very thinned down layer of paint. The paint will accumulate
in the recessed areas of the model. When you first try this out,
you will likely be tempted to apply too much paint, flooding the
detail. This will look good when the paint is wet, but once
dry it won't look so hot. You shouldn't need anymore paint on the
brush than you use to paint the rest of the model. I usually use
a mix of ink and paint and water when shading.

Highlighting:
This consists of painting lighter shades of your base colour on the
raised portions of the model. As an example, to highlight red, you
can either mix a bit of yellow in the red, or alternatively you
can mix white with the red. Note that highlighting is not the same
as drybrushing! In general, highlighting takes longer, but IMO gives
a much nicer finish, especially on flat surfaces like starship hulls.
Good highlighting techniques lead naturally to blending of colors,
which is _very_ tricky to do well.

Drybrushing:
This works best on rough surfaces like chainmail. On flatter surfaces
it tends to leave a rough texture on the model which some may find
undesirable. This is much less noticable on small miniatures since the
flat surfaces are very small. The key to drybrushing is to get the
brush _really_ dry. I use an old towel to remove the excess paint.
The thinner the paint you use, the longer it will take, but the
surface will be less grainy. If you use more than one stage of
drybrushing, remember to use a lighter touch on each successive
stage for the best results. A lighter shade will help, too.

Details:
Use a very small brush ;). Another helpful tool is the technical pens.
They come in a variety of colours and are very helpful for lettering
and insignia designs. Makes blacklining a snap! The main drawback is
they don't work very well on dark colours. The way to get around this
is to paint the area white and then make the letters in reverse with
the pens. I have also known people to carefully cut out letters from
stickers, paint over the stickers, then peel them off. Works very
well but takes forever. Imagine doing "New Anglian Confederation" this
way...

>-trapper
>PS: Mark Siefert,welcome to the HGML!

I hope this helps you out some. I could go on for a lot longer in
private
if you want.

************************************************
  Tony Christney
  acc@uvic.ca
************************************************

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