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Here is my the first part of my tutorial attempt. I will go trough the paint job step by step first the mini it self a Zanshi hacker fromt the yu Jing faction. I have chosen a white primer since it will give cleaner colours in my opinion and that is more fitting for Infinity. As you can see I have mounted it on an old spice jar to give a better hold on the mini and to avoid accidentally touching the mini during painting.



The colours I will use in this tutorial comes from several different paint ranges I use paint from the Vallejo model colour (VMC), Vallejo game colour (VGC), Privateer press (P3) and Reaper master series paints (RMSP). I use a whet palette for mixing the paints on. For the base coat I used a mix of RMSP Pale Olive and P3 Cryx bane base to obtain a pale grey green mixture.



I applied about 3 thin coats of this mixture on the mini for the base coat.



When the base coat was done I started to apply shades and highlights. I usually paint my minis with zenithal lighting i.e that the light source is directly overhead the mini. I recommend reading this tutorial for a better explanation of light sources http://massivevoodoo.blogspot.se/2010/08/tutorial-zenithal-lightning-work-order.html

To shade I added more P3 Cryx bane base and RMSP Nightshade purple to make a progressively darker colour mixture.



I shaded the mini with thin layers of this paint mixture pushing the paint towards the darkest parts of the mini to obtain a colour transition and using darker paint with each layer. Here is some pictures after I added a few layers of shading.





For highlighting mixed some VMC dark sand and VGC dead white with the base colour mixture.



Just like with the shading I added progressively brighter layers of paint to the mini pulling the paint up towards the brightest parts of the mini. Here are some pictures after I have finished the shading and highlighting of the base coat.





When painting camouflage I shade and highlight each layer completely before moving on to the next. I do this because when using thin paints the shading and highlighting from the previous layer show through so I can use it as a guide for shading and highlighting the next layer.

For the next layer in the camo I used a mix of RSMP muddy olive and VGC Charred brown to obtain a moss green colour.



I applied this colour in large bands on the mini.



I did forget to take pictures of the palette for the final steps but I added some of the RMSP Nightshade purple to the colour and used it to enhance the shadows. The advantage to use the same shading colour on both camo fields is that you tied them together so that they looks unified.




To highlight I used some VGC sun yellow and VMC dark sand yellow.





I hope this tutorial can be of some use, if you are looking for the colour equivalents of the colours I was using from other brands I recommend looking at this colour conversion chart.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Paint_Range_Compatibility_Chart

For the next part I will work on the armour.

Awesome tutorial, really appreciate seeing how you approach your painting - looking forward to the rest!

Brilliant, Ivan! That's really interesting and educational. It was also a nicely laid out, easy to follow tutorial and you write comfortably which made it even more enjoyable to read.

The two things that stood out most to me about your style are the tiny quantity of paint actually applied to the miniature and the drawing of the brush to concentrate pigments where they would naturally be. They are both techniques I've heard before but I think this is the best tutorial I've seen if it. I'm really looking forward to looking out for these things in your future updates.

Sorry taking so long to update the tutorial, have been a bit busy and I moved to a new city so there haven't been much time for painting. I have finished the grey parts of the armour.
@Casey's Law I can recommend this paining dvd Painting miniatures with Jérémie Bonamant Téboul He does a great job explaining the technique and it is much easier to see a video of it than try to explain it in words.

First I painted a base coat of vmc German grey the paint was applied in thin layers to give a good coverage and to sink in to all the crevices.





Then I used some black for shading which and mixed it with the grey to make smoother transitions for the larger areas. A useful thing to remember when shading and highlighting is that the sharper curve of the object you are painting is, the more dramatic the shift between light and dark should be. So for example things like the back plate and shoulder pads has gentler transitions and as you will see later the edges of some of the armour plates has harsher highlights. Since the armour is fairly dark the shading wont stand out so much before the highlights are added.





When I applied the highlight I first mixed some vmc pale blue with German grey to add the first layers of highlight and continued on with adding in some more pale blue and white as I worked towards the brightest parts. Finally I use some pure white to make some bright spots here and there on the mini.





I will work on the green parts of the armour next

Glad you're back, mate! I hope you've been keeping well and are settling in to your new home comfortably.

That was another educational installment! I'm finding this very helpful and I'll be sure to check out that DVD, which appears to be available on YouTube. Thanks for the link!

Wow dude.. At first it seems as if you've just neatly coloured in the models, and that the lighting of the set is good.
but now I've seen your tut on the lighting, and read the linked one too, I notice now how you've put on such subtle shadows/highlights manually and it's crazy how realistic it is :3

Thanks for the kind words, I have finished the the the green parts of the armour, boots, pouches, and gun. I used P3 thornwood green as base colour. As usual i applies several thin coats this is a colour that doesn't cover very well so a few extra coats and some patience is required.




For shading I used the same RMSP night shade purple that was used for shading the clothes, mixing it with the thornwood green and using a progressively darker mixture to shade the green. I really like how the purple works with the thornwood green to make some really interesting shadows.





For highlights I first added some vmc dark yellow to thornwood green and for the final highlights I added some vmc ivory I tried to make the gun a bit shinier with the highlights in an effort to to make it look more interesting since it is a bit plain. That does it for part 3, as usual questions and comments are welcome.

Frakkin heck! That's astoundingly beautiful man. Your colour theory is so interesting. I'm going to have to read more about that.

I hope you are entering the Painting Challenge! It'd be criminal not use your talents competitively!

Ivan, don't listen to Casey! With all that smooth blending of tiny little details your talents would be totally wasted on a mere painting competition!

Haha! You just don't want any more competition!

Wow awesome infinity stuff, I really love your paint scheme and basing. Just all around nice stuff, good to see people doing infinity to such a high standard.

Thanks for the comments, unfortunately I don't have the free time to dedicate to getting a mini ready for the painting contest right now. Hopefully I will have a bit of time to work on the tutorial this weekend.

Absolutely stunning work on the camo! It's hard to believe this miniature is 28mm..

 Pacific wrote:
Absolutely stunning work on the camo! It's hard to believe this miniature is 28mm..

Right?! I can't blend like that at double the scale!

Shame you aren't entering the challenge Ivan but I'm glad you are keeping the tutorial going, I'm sure loads of the entrants will be reading up and trying to execute your style so you'll be entering by proxy anyway!

So much respect, man. I'll just go cry about my awful painting skills.

Thanks for the comments. When it comes to work on small details I can't recommend enough that you mount your mini on something so that you can hold comfortably in your hand, you can see how I did it in part 1. The get my hands extra steady I rest them against the table edge I prefer to have a fairly high table so that I can sit straight up and don't have bend forwards.

Since it is our national day here in Sweden I got the day of and I celebrated it in our traditional way i.e not at all and got some painting done. Finished the antenna and the little bag at the front in the same colour as the armour I was originally going to paint the in a different colour but the mini started to look a bit schizophrenic so I used the armour colour. I painted the rest of the gun, pistol and some of the technical parts with a base coat of P3 ironhull grey. The grips and stock of the weapons were painted with vmc hull red.





For shading I mixed in some vmc dark sea blue to the grey for the first layers of shading and for the final darker shadow I added some RMSP night shade purple. I actually used the same colours for shading the hull red parts besides helping the colours to look unified it also helps to hide some of the oversteps I made into the other part of the weapon .





The hull red was highlighted first with some a mix of hull red and vgc pale flesh and for the final highlights some vmc ivory. Since I had some ivory on the palette I used it with the iron hull grey to highlight the gun and the other grey parts this gave a warmer highlight an helped to differentiate these parts from the armour which was highlighted with pale blue which is a cold colour. finally I added some white for the brightest parts. This does it for part 4 with a bit of luck I can finish the rest of the mini this weekend.

It doesn't look like you prime your minis, is that just the camera angle, or is that on purpose?

Hi I primed it white but the coat was a bit to thin so the metal is shining trough the primer a bit

Oh, that's why. I'm considering switching to white primer from black, but what are the benefits? I noticed that you do a lot of highlighting and blending, is it easier with a light primer?

I recently switched to white primer and it's made everything easier. There are a few cases where I'd still use black but white just takes colour so much better in my opinion. There are lots of good technical reasons to do it too but others can exaplain that better than I.

Ivan, this is more great stuff! I love how much depth you've given the piece at this stage. The reds are so warm that they give the miniature a wonderful grounding. Do you make a conscious descision to use the colours you do or is it a natural process for you where you just know what will work?

P.S. Thanks for posting on my blog. I'll post a reply as soon as I have a nice update to add.

Thanks for the comments

@killykavekommando There are a few advantages from using white primer you don't need as many layers of paint to get a good coverage which is nice when you are painting whit thin layers of paint, this means that it becomes a bit easier to make transitions of the colours from shadow to highlight.

The colour also tend to look a bit more crisp and clean which is good if you are aiming for a brighter colour scheme. A definitive disadvantage is that you need to paint every little bit of the miniature especially the often hard to reach deep recesses of the mini because it would look strange to have white paint show trough in areas where there should be shadows when using black undercoat you can cheat a little bit and leave these areas black.

@Casey's Law It depends a bit on what I'm painting but I try to plan a bit on how I want the overall feel of the faction to be. For Yu Jing it was easier since I'm painting these for a friend he had some ideas on how they would look he wanted them to look dark and sinister with a military feel to them a bit like b movie bad guys or enemies in a computer game.

So I used dark grey on the armour I choose dark grey so that I could add some shadows to the armour and make the different sections of the armour stand out. To add to the darker look I used some Cryx bane base since it is a colder green that tends to lean a bit to the blue and mixed it with some pale olive this gave me a colder grey green. I didn't have a good plan for how I wanted the gun and equipment to look so I chose to use thornwood green since I like that colour and I had used it on the Hac Tao this helped to tie them together. I did need some contrast colours to make the mini stand out a bit and red is always a good contrast colour to green so I used it for the grips on the weapons and some Orange details the give it that computer bad guy look.

When I tried to create a colour scheme for PanO I had some trouble to come up with something I liked until I decided that since Yu Jing and PanO is mortal enemies I should paint them as the direct opposite to Yu Jing so I went for a lighter colour scheme with blue accents. It also gave me an opportunity to take a break from painting so much green and use some colours that I don't use to often. So I try to make a plan on the general feel and look on the mini and work from there it is always tricky for me to get the colour scheme right I the first attempt but I think it is important to not be afraid to go back and change parts of the mini you don't like.

Whoa, thank you for going into so much detail! All of this information is so useful.

When I have a little more time I'm going to paint something using this as a reference to really help me get to grips with the techniques.

I have finished the last details on the Zanshi Hacker. First I worked on the orange parts and used a base of GW vermin brown and vgc hot orange and applied it to the visor, hacking device and two bands around the arms.





For shading I first added some vmc hull red to the base colour and for the deeper shadows some RMSP night shade purple.





For highlights I started with vgc sun yellow and followed it up with vmc ivory on the visor I went fairly bright with the highlights to give impression of a glare and added two diagonal stripes to further this impression although they aren't to noticeable as I would have liked them.





Some of the last parts I worked on was the face and hair. I wanted a pinkish hair colour but not a neon pink colour so I used a base mixture of vgc dwarf flesh and vgc warlord purple. The base colour for the skin was P3 rucksack tan.





For both face and hair I used my always dependable hull red and night shade purple. I find that shading hair can be tricky since it is such texture area so you have to not only shade between the strands of hair but also how the light falls on the general shape of the hair, so I try to imagine how it would look if the hair was a solid mass and apply shadow to give the shape of the hair first and then shade between the strands of hair.

A few notes on shading the face when painting a female face try not to overdo the shadows better to have subtle shadow this give the face a softer and more feminine impression if you overdo it will start to look more masculine. I also painted the lips at this stage using a mixture of hull red and night shade purple and added some bright spots with ivory.





Finally I highlighted the skin with ivory and the hair with pale flesh and ivory. I painted some unit symbols on the shoulders although they didn't come out to well and lastly cleaned up the base. I hope this tutorial can be of some use, remember this is only one way to paint there are many different techniques to achieve the same effect I recommend that you try many different techniques and use the ones you like.

Nice! I really like the black and green colour scheme with the orange accents.

It's been a very interesting painting tutorial, really like the camo'. I'm very impressed with your painting. Good job.

*applause*

Love it mate, if I can achieve this level one day I'll be more than happy! The notes on shading hair was really enlightening, I would never have even thought of that. Thank you very much for taking the time to do this tutorial, it'll be a constant reference point for me and for others I'm sure.

The pink hair is really nice and subtle but do you have any tips on painting a really vibrant, almost neon, hot pink?

And what's next on your to do list?

Thanks for the comments sorry to be so late in my reply.

@Casey's Law not sure as I have not tried to paint neon pink hair but i would try to start with a really strong pink colour and for shading I would try to experiment a bit to see what colour would work best purple, dark blue or dark red perhaps? you need a colour that helps the pink to look clean and not muddled for highlighting I would go for straight white.

Thanks Ivan, I'll do some tests and see what sticks

Started working on a Wu Ming here is early wip pictures currently working on the armour I will add some camouflage to it in the same way as I painted on the Hac Tao.

Nice start, mate. I bet there are quite a few DPC entrants relieved that they didn't have to go up against you.