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Hi, I recently talked paint with someone that has much more experience and talent that teaches painting classes at the FLGS. I had been using citadel paints in the "recommended" way, base, wash, base again, highlight, edge. But the way he paints and teaches other paints is in "triads" which Reaper conveniently sells their master series paints in. A triad consists of a basecoat, shadow and highlight which are all the same color but differ very slightly in shade to give an even transition from low to high.

The difference between "regular" painting and his method is that after basecoating instead of just coating the whole model in a dark wash, you use a mixture of shadow color and basecoat to darken the unlighted portions and pure shadow to pick out the darkest parts of the model in a kind of reverse highlight. Highlighting is similar or even the same as in the "regular" method. He said this method plays very well with reduction painting and that it's a more skilled technique for painting rather than the base-wash-base method. I picked up two individual triads to attempt the new method on my next project.

I know I've kind of rambled and probably explained it badly, and this might be a super noob question but I was just wondering if this is the right way to go to get better as a painter? Do others on here use this method? What are your thoughts? Is it markedly more difficult? Are your results markedly better? Do Professional painters use this method or the wash method? I know the shades are still good for things like chainmail and fur, but are there times (like attempting a darker, more grim miniature) when one method is better than the other?

Thanks for any help or advice you can offer!

The short answer is no method is better than another in a vacuum. The purpose of the method will determine if it's more suitable for any given purpose.

You will generally find that the better a painter you become the more techniques you know and deploy in your painting. Saying that you will also become very good at techniques you focus on a lot which will lead to better results than just learning every possible way of getting the end result.

The painting hack for doing everything right is to practice and have really good brush control. All techniques rely on this one thing.

Using a wash for shading is primarily for speed. Manually painting the shading and blending them takes a lot more time.

A lot of people will paint the entire model with the shade colour and then gradually blend up to their main colour and then keep blending up to a highlight.

Many figure painters I've met will tend to paint the entire model with their mid-tone colour, then block paint in the shades and highlights without any blending, then spend a lot of time blending the shades and highlights afterwards in to the mid tone. This has the advantage that you plan out right from the beginning where your shades are going to be (where as the method I described working from shade -> midtone -> highlight sometimes you get half way through painting the model before you realise you have over or under shaded an area).

The other important thing which I suck at and why I'll never be a good painter is colour selection. Choosing the best colour to shade a model requires some artistic ability that most people lack, instead of relying on "triads" if you look at competition winning models they're usually more creative about their shades, using dark browns or complimentary colours to shade the model to increase the depth rather than simply using a darker version of the same colour.

TheBrushKnight wrote:
The short answer is no method is better than another in a vacuum. The purpose of the method will determine if it's more suitable for any given purpose.

Basically this. Even the two most basic techniques, washes and brybrushes, have their place in high-quality painting, perhaps applied in a slightly different way to how a beginner would use them, but still every bit as valid and useful in the right circumstances.

To get to your specific example of triads vs washes vs layers vs drybrushing, it's just a different way to get a result. Take a cloak for instance. Triads, layering carefully up and down from a mid-tone are going to get you a nice, smooth transition, but not necessarily the same depth of shadow you'd get if you used a wash. Wet-blending, meanwhile, would get a very smooth finish, but might tend more towards mid-to-light than dark-to-mid. Drybrushing will get you a stark, rough look, perfect for worn leather or frayed cloth.

Techniques are just the same as tools; each one does a certain job, the only time they're better or worse is if one is more suited to the task at hand than another.

Good answers above, so I won't repeat those points; I largely agree

I would also point out that it's not necessary to just drown your model when you apply washes. For most of my models, it's quite the opposite: I paint in my washes where I want them, the same way you would paint details if you were painting in a darker color. I use a pretty fine brush (size 0 or smaller), and control how much/where it goes. The reason I use a wash instead of a darker paint is because washes are more transparent, staining the original color but leaving more of the original color than a thinned paint. Because of their nature, when they dry, they leave a more diffused edge, instead of a hard one, without a lot of work. If I used a dark paint, I'd have to feather the edges or wet-blend them in, which is a lot of work.

Incidentally, when you use a triad system like Reaper, you don't HAVE to start with the middle color in the sequence. You can also start with the darkest color and work up (or if you want, the lightest color and work down...).

Generally, there are practical advantages to starting with the darkest colors. Most painters will agree that miniatures are generally easier to paint by finishing the hardest-to-reach, deepest areas first, working up to the easiest-to-reach, most exposed areas. It's just a physical limitation; if you paint the stuff on the outside first, and then try to reach the stuff tucked away, you'll get paint on the parts you've already painted. Although there are plenty of examples of good work to the contrary, the reality of most gaming miniatures is such that the recessed areas are darker, and the outer, raised edges are most highlighted, because that's the way our brain thinks that light would naturally hit an object.

So, following that logic, in the broadest generalization, it's often easier to start with the darkest paint in the deepest areas, working up to lighter paint in broader areas, and then finishing with the lightest highlights on the raised edges. When you do the GW recommended method "base + wash + layer + highlight", that's essentially what you're doing.