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.

When I am painting the shading on a face or something it feels like I am making microscopic brush strokes at the limit of my vision and it looks like im doing a great job. So I take a photo and zoom in to the size of which most people post pictures of their minis.....and it looks like a 2 year old painted it with giant swathes of paint blotting huge and inaccurate areas with shade. Will I eventually learn to see the mini better while i'm painting or is my eyesight just poor?

Photos are the enemy.

To clarify aphoto will show up details that you would never see without some kind of magnification (like on some lamps or visors), it can be a cruel experience zooming in on a model you have spent days on to find the picture exposes all your faults. However can give you the chance to go back and touch areas up

 Melcavuk wrote:
Photos are the enemy.

To clarify aphoto will show up details that you would never see without some kind of magnification (like on some lamps or visors), it can be a cruel experience zooming in on a model you have spent days on to find the picture exposes all your faults. However can give you the chance to go back and touch areas up

So is it assumed that people who paint something like this are using magnification?

 surixurient wrote:

 Melcavuk wrote:
Photos are the enemy.

To clarify aphoto will show up details that you would never see without some kind of magnification (like on some lamps or visors), it can be a cruel experience zooming in on a model you have spent days on to find the picture exposes all your faults. However can give you the chance to go back and touch areas up

So is it assumed that people who paint something like this are using magnification?

I think that would be a cropped picture with a high resolution camera, as opposed to zooming in with a smart phone, or other lesser camera, which at least with my own work exposes many additional flaws.

I know I'm not an excellent painter by any means, but I've found that my models look MUCH better when my girlfriend shoots them with her professional camera (she doesn't have a macro lens, but still) than when I shoot them with my camera phone. Higher quality cameras can help and obviously just keep practicing.

To overcome that, I'll randomly stop and view my models through the viewfinder of my camera of iphone. You'd be surprised how the colors change! Another great thing to do is try to have a window with natural light coming through near or over your painting area. A lot of the details you're missing or can't see pop out in natural light, and that will help the photos.

 Bobaram wrote:
To overcome that, I'll randomly stop and view my models through the viewfinder of my camera of iphone. You'd be surprised how the colors change! Another great thing to do is try to have a window with natural light coming through near or over your painting area. A lot of the details you're missing or can't see pop out in natural light, and that will help the photos.

That or a good natural light bulb in your lamp. Or if you have the money an LED painting lamp. I like taking pictures of things as I progress because for some reason I always catch things that I just don'e see in person (errant paint lines, usually that on gosh darn mold line that I totally missed ect).

Niexist wrote:

 surixurient wrote:

 Melcavuk wrote:
Photos are the enemy.

To clarify aphoto will show up details that you would never see without some kind of magnification (like on some lamps or visors), it can be a cruel experience zooming in on a model you have spent days on to find the picture exposes all your faults. However can give you the chance to go back and touch areas up

So is it assumed that people who paint something like this are using magnification?

I think that would be a cropped picture with a high resolution camera, as opposed to zooming in with a smart phone, or other lesser camera, which at least with my own work exposes many additional flaws.

it doesn't take the use of magnifiers to paint that smooth, at all...
it does, however, take a lot of practice, and skill with the brush...

cheers
jah

To be honest, looking through a zoomed in camera lense is bound to degrade the quality of your work.

Think of it like this: You're sat up at 20,000 ft in a Lancaster bomber (Or a B-17 for the Americans amongst you ). At 20,000 ft, looking through the bombsight, your target is just a tiny rectangle - barely distinguishable as a building at all. However, back at ground zero (No doubt at this point you'd be legging it away from the area - not stopping to consider such trivia as eyesight ), the factory is a huge blocky mass ruining the view from your garden.

My analogy's point is that your work is bound to look sloppy, huge and overall rubbish at a very close level through magnification. However, take consolation that when you look at it with your mere 20/20 mortal's vision then if it looks good to you, chances are it'll look good to everybody else (20/20 being considered 'normal' vision). Plus, I wouldn't zoom in too much to take pictures as Dakka will re-size for you anyway - thus avoiding the obstacle of low resolution cameras (aka less pixels) marring and degrading your work (i.e: The low res camera doesn't have small enough pixels to accurately display the fine colour change and sharp lines - it just blocks them up into one mess).

Hope that helps