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Hey folks,
I have gone through several variation in my lighting setup and now I think I have a pretty good one. I have two cheap ikea desk lamps with bright daylight LED bulbs on right and he left and I have one dedicated artist's LED swing arm bank center. This setup definitely gets me enough light but sometimes having the bright light so close to my upright painting position that it seems to create two problems:

1.) The intensity of the light can sometimes play up the subtle color differences too much and what looks pleasing in contrast at the bright desk will look not contrasting or bright enough on the gaming table. I think I can get around this by just upping my contrast and training myself to paint highlights for the table.

2.) The more concerning issue is when I am painting metallic highlights or step highlights using dark colors. The sheen of wet spots or even the satin surface of dry paint on the miniature is making it really hard to judge metalic highlights or dark highlights. The "hot spots" on the mini make areas hard to discern. I was highlighting black with a very thin dark grey last night and I had a hard time judging what was going on. The wet paint and sheen of the hotspots blue out any sense of the dark grey on the surface. When I turned my lights to bounce off the ceiling for less glare, it became too dim to see the darks proper.

I am thinking of building cardboard softbox filters for the two arm desk lamps. Am I crazy? How do you get it bright enough to see without sheen or hotspots?