Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Yeah of course, but I would hope the teacher is giving you some basics of HOW to paint the cubes and not just letting you have at it (I mean, that is one teaching style, let you struggle for a bit and then show you a better way... but hopefully they don't let their students struggle for years ).

Some direction, yes, but there's really a limit to what can be taught. A lot of building the foundation is where you know what you're supposed to be doing but need to repeat it a bunch of times to get the level of fine brush control, blending, etc, required to make it work. And after the very first steps teaching becomes less and less relevant as it's more about finding the specific techniques that work for the individual artist. There are a lot of ways to get to the same end result and you really have to find your own.

Things like painting cubes and spheres is a skill that I reckon many hobby painters lack. Some really skilled painters (in terms of brush control and blending) wouldn't know the difference between a diffuse reflection and a specular reflection, or if they do they don't know how to use it on a model (that's I think why so many NMM attempts look more like stone than they do a metal even though they might have the smoothest blending in the world).

Agreed 100%. Most of the "pro painted" work people fawn over is first-year art major level at best. Yeah, there's some clean blending or nice straight lines or whatever but there's zero artistic merit. OSL doesn't behave like real light, there are elaborate freehand scenes on every flat surface just to prove that the artist is capable of doing them, etc. It's like a CGI artist's demo reel being presented as a finished film. And it only gets worse when you look at commission work where the painter isn't willing to spend the time to do it right but feels compelled to check off a list of "advanced techniques" and prove that they own an airbrush. But because it's a niche hobby where most people have minimal painting talent people don't recognize just how bad most of it is.

(All of which makes it hilarious when miniature painters "discover" techniques that have been in the scale modeling and model railroad hobbies for decades and in traditional painting for literal centuries. Who could have guessed that you could represent metal objects without putting metal flakes in your paint????)

The best way to learn is through trial and error. Guides can help you learn new techniques but they require a lot of work to understand how and why they work. It adds to the point of the amount time you see NMM in a “pro painted” or commission setting that looks like it’s been done for the sake of it. Different techniques do have their places, and the difference between a good painter and a great painter is learning when to apply them.

Jandgalf wrote:
I am really enjoying getting back into miniature painting. Painted in my teens about thirty—god I feel old—years ago and picked it up again last year. My technique is already SO much better than then and has improved fast because there are now so many resources out there on the internet. Especially Youtube videos. And this site is great for posing questions - I've got some very helpful advice here.

But I'm very curious how other people have taught themselves or been taught to paint. There are some really incredibly talented people on here. Have you all learnt by watching videos and reading about painting? Or through trial and error? Or do you meet up with other people and learn from friends? I'm pretty much painting on my own and learning from videos and even though they're great I keep coming up against things that I can't get from videos:

Thin your paints - okay, but how much is just right? Do I really need to thin on a wet pallet or not? Am I even using my wet palette right?

Apply thin layers - great - but WHERE should I be putting them exactly to get the effect I want?

Look after your brushes - I am trying everything I see on the videos but no matter how hard I try the hairs still keep splaying out after a while. WHY?

I'm seriously interested in finding a painting course to watch a master close up and try to learn how they paint. Has anybody got any experience with painting classes/workshops? Are they worthwhile and does anybody know of any in western Europe?

I'll just add my two cents so you can have even more varying viewpoints.

Thin your paints? - this is very dependant on the brand of paint and application and as such there is no single answer. I paint using Kimera Kolors and I usually thin them on a wet pallete. If I'm doing hand painted base coats I'll go thicker than if I'm glazing or feathering. For this, watch tutorials on techniques and practice to find your mix ratios.

Where to place layers? - again this is dependent on your desired effects. Every piece can have its own environment with its own settings like a cold light or the heat of an explosion nearby. Once again, go to the internet to find examples and try to watch videos on tutorials for placement of lights and shadows.

Brushes are a controversial topic in all but one way... care. Get a paint puck and hang your brushes point down by putting them in the holders on the side. Paint brushes no matter how you clean them will retain paint and nothing kills them faster than the gravity pulling it into the ferrule. Also, I suggest some of every brush. Get some artist opus alongside some cheap synthetics so you can use them for different applications like stippling and mixing vs fine detail.

I highly suggest Marco Frisoni as a good resource for all facets of art. He covers everything from color theory to acrylics, inks and oil paints for minis. His channel helped me grow more than any other channel and I've watched all of them.

Just remember most of all to have fun!

My 2 cent remark on how to learn how to paint would be this

Gak around, find out.
Repeat Ad nauseam.

I found the following two books by Gurney to be highly instructive.

Color and Light - A Guide for the Realist Painter
Imaginative Realism - How to Paint What Doesn't Exist


Automatically Appended Next Post:

CadianSgtBob wrote:
I learned the basic techniques in traditional art so applying it to gaming models was pretty simple. Once you look at it with a little base knowledge miniature painting is just a high school Art 101 class, with a handful of high-end competition painters making it to first-year college art major level. There's nothing particularly new or innovative about any of it, master the fundamentals of painting and miniatures are easy. Even the weathering stuff that doesn't come from traditional painting is all just techniques from 20-30 years ago in model railroads and scale models.

Any good resources you'd recommend for generalist beginner art instruction?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

CadianSgtBob wrote:


Agreed 100%. Most of the "pro painted" work people fawn over is first-year art major level at best. Yeah, there's some clean blending or nice straight lines or whatever but there's zero artistic merit. ...

More or less agreed... Are there any examples of miniatures which you do think possess artistic merit? What I've noticed is that models painted by skilled painters tend to look technical and clean, but don't give off much in the way of emotion, they don't seem to be saying anything.

I haven`t.
But i am learning new ways to cheat.

But if there IS one thing i have learned, it is that neat and tidy lines is as good as fancy techniques, and for gaming minis, if you cant see the detail or effect on arm lenghts distance, it is not worth it to paint it.

I had the good fortune to have a high school art teacher who encouraged me to go beyond the minimum one-semester class that everyone had to take. I hit a ceiling well below what it would take to do art professionally but having a decent eye for color/composition/etc in painting and photography made it pretty easy to learn to paint miniatures. Base coat, wash, drybrush, that's tabletop ready with no more than basic painting skills. And then from there's just a matter of refining brush work over painting a whole army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 maeglin wrote:
Any good resources you'd recommend for generalist beginner art instruction?

The most important resource is time. Get a pad of drawing paper and sketch random stuff you see. Compare your results to the real object, repeat. Get some cheap art store canvases and paint a bunch of shaded grayscale cubes and balls until you can get the blending to work and your edges are nice and clean. If you want to do diorama scenes get a decent camera, take some pictures in the real world, and see what works with composition. As long as you're willing to be honest with yourself about how you're doing and put in the hours you should see improvement. You know what a basic household object or shaded cube should look like, you just need to practice until you make the pen or paintbrush go where you want it to.

More or less agreed... Are there any examples of miniatures which you do think possess artistic merit? What I've noticed is that models painted by skilled painters tend to look technical and clean, but don't give off much in the way of emotion, they don't seem to be saying anything.

Not sure what specific pieces CadianSgtBob was thinking of, but here's an OSL example. This is OSL done very well. The scene is appropriately lit for the glow, and the lighting sets the story of the lurking monster and its soon-to-be victim cowering in the one spot of light and desperately searching for that scanner blip.



Contrast that with this "tutorial" image from SpikeyClickbait. The glow effect is just some awkward green blobs sprayed on random bits of the model to prove that yes, that mythical tool known as an airbrush was used in the creation of the model. It doesn't behave like real light, it doesn't add anything to the message or composition or anything of artistic value, it just checks the "has OSL" box. And yet over and over again you'll see stuff like that getting hundreds or even thousands of upvotes on reddit.

That osl is indeed atrocious. No consideration for the light placement, the light intensity and the inverse square law.

The Tyranid scene is better, but the inverse square law still seems to be being violated with the light reflecting from the genestealers head. The brightness of the light source doesn't suggest reflections that high. Maybe the head would be ok, but the reflections from the upper limb joints are definitely way too high. The rest is good though. The darkness of the overall scene particularly.