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Continuing from this thread

Don't worry, I'm not going to be posting a thread for every Marine I paint, but I wanted to post my second one because he was painted using the advice I got from the other thread, and I just wanted to see if I could get some comments in that line... etc... Anyway, everything is painted but the metallic parts, which are being done now Here he is:




As you can see, I still paint a little over the edges, but nowhere near as bad as the first time. My brush control seems to have improved immensley since the last miniature, and the highlights are a lot more natural after taking peoples advice and mixing down paints. The paints I used for the green were Caliban Green washed with Nuln Oil as the base, Caliban Green highlight, Caliban Green:Warpstone Glow 2:1 highlight, Caliban Green:Warpstone Glow 1:1 highlight, Warpstone Glow, and extreme/edge highlight with Warpstone Glow:Moot Green 2:1. The only advice I didn't take was starting with Khorne red for the clip & pauldron decoration (double arrow thing, idk what its called) instead of Mephiston red, just because I want the red to be brighter. I actually feel like it's too dark in these pictures and would like it brighter - I found it difficult to get it to the right colour over the Caliban Green - maybe its just darker than I thought it was... Anyway, I drybrushed the highlights onto the red areas (with Evil Sunz Scarlet and Wild Rider Red) but wasn't really happy with it - since they were mostly flat areas I don't think drybrushing was too good an idea... But on the next one I think painting on those highlights will brighten the red up a little

Anyway, some of my problems are... well, I don't know what it is, but you can see it especially in the second picture, around the vents on the top of the backpack, and on the edges of the legs. White! It's the primer colour - paint just wont stick to those areas. It's primed, because it's white and not grey, but paint just wont stick... Idk why [shrug]

Also, I am having to add a lot of coats to the miniature. I think the basecoat was about 9 coats to get it to full coverage, and I mentioned before I had to continually layer up the red. Most people I see talk about two or three coats at most! I'm not sure exactly what I'm doing wrong? For reference, this is the first layer of paint I put on:



:/

Thanks for reading,
Laura

Looks much better, the improvement in obvious!

Looking at it and reading the problems you said you have, I think I may well be the first person on Dakka to say 'thicken your paint!' It seems you've gone to almost a wash/glaze consistency, which is too thin. You want it so that it won't run, but that it doesn't leave brush marks when you apply it. This consistency may well be why you're getting white areas showing through. So use a little less water/thinner. Ideally, you want to be covering the basecoat in 2-3 coats max.

Have you considered prming in black instead? I think it's better for darker colours (and also less noticeable if you miss bits )

But the highlighting is certainly better, much more natural than the last attempt. Really good progress.

Looks much better, the improvement in obvious!

Thank you!

I think I may well be the first person on Dakka to say 'thicken your paint!'

Laughed quite a bit at this I understand though - will try it. Still sort of confused about the whole thinning process. But yeah, it did feel like a wash when I was putting it on! So it makes sense it wouldn't stick to the edges. Seems to be a nice consistency for highlighting though.

Have you considered prming in black instead? I think it's better for darker colours (and also less noticeable if you miss bits )

Yeah, people keep saying that I have 3 primed in white, and have black primer. So I'll prime the next few in black and try that out I sort of like the fact that its more revealing though, for practicing. It shows me p. clearly where I've gone wrong

But the highlighting is certainly better, much more natural than the last attempt. Really good progress.

Thanks very much! (:

 Laura Marx wrote:
Still sort of confused about the whole thinning process. But yeah, it did feel like a wash when I was putting it on! So it makes sense it wouldn't stick to the edges. Seems to be a nice consistency for highlighting though.

First and foremost, it's a nice job you are accomplishing, keep up (and please forgive my grammar)... Now for the question quoted...

The right consistency is complex because of personal factors (as painting style) or random uncontrollable factors (the starting consistency). Thus, is kind of hard having a recipe with perfect ratios, but we stil may try

For base coating most of the time a paint:water* ratio of 1:1 or 2:1 should be enough (fluid enough to give full control of the brush and to deny strokes); even with the more diluted 1:1 two coats should cover smoothly.
A ratio of 1:2 to 1:4 then may be useful for building lights and shadows (or rebuild base after a wash).

* water, thinner, isopropilic alxohol, whatever the thinner is.

About priming, after having tried black and white I now prime grey (specifically, vallejo urethanic 1:1 with windex: it goes nice and even with brush and/or airbrush), but probably for spexific models (or parts of models) white and black may have their uses.