#hobbytiptuesday - Agitators!

 Thought I'd share this (again) because it's a practice I still follow, and I think it's been key in maintaining my paints over the years: using agitators in my paint bottles. Every paint bottle I own has an agitator in it, and here's why - over time paints separate, just like any other solid medium in a liquid suspension. The pigment and binder come out of solution from the carrier liquid - with metallics, this is even more pronounced as the aluminum (maybe mica) precipitating to the bottom due to weight.

 Every once in a while, it's a good idea to give your paints and inks a good shaking - not just prior to use. I have a 6mm glass bead in all my paint bottles, and adding this is still a ritual whenever I get a new color, same as "labeling" the bottle with some of the shaken paint afterwards. I've been a few times now to retail craft stores, usually with weekly coupon in hand, to pick up glass bead necklaces for a few dollars.

 Why an agitator, you may ask? Well, because it helps to more thoroughly mix the paint in the bottle, for one, without the need of toothpicks or brush ends or anything else that will take away from your supply of paint while mixing. For another, it acts as a force multiplier - you may be shaking the outside of the bottle and sloshing the paint around inside, which may be good enough; on the inside, you have a weighted object that's churning the paint back together at an even faster rate.

 What to use? Something with some weight to it, something that's inert, a and something that won't catch inside your paint bottle. This is why I use 6mm glass beads- they're small enough to fit down the necks of dropper paint bottles like those by Vallejo and Reaper, they've got some heft, they're made from inert material so as to not react with your paint itself (I've tried metal sprue and zinc-plated BB's and both of those turn ugly after a few years), and even better, you can get them in large numbers for cheap (did I mention craft store coupons for lengths of bead necklace?).

Oh, and a blog post from many years back, which still holds true:
Shaking Violently Being the Next Best Thing to Strangling

Letters From Readers!

  I received emails from two readers recently (I'm pleased people still visit the site, given my lack of time to post anything at all in almost a year - thanks!) - I'm going to address those on the blog as opposed to individual responses back via email, since I think other people might get something out of it, too!

Michel M. writes:

I really like your painting and I was wondering what colours did you use for the night goblin on this page: http://home.wowway.com/~tinweasel/gw_cleaved_gobbo.html
In particular i'm looking for the olive green colour. What brand/colour is it ?

Thanks,
Michel Melis

  Well, as requested, here's a more-or-less accurate summary of the colors and steps I used in painting that Games Workshop Night Goblin's skin tones:

• Basecoat 1:1 GW Catachan Green / GW Camo Green
• Layer on 1:3 Catachan Green / Camo Green with mixture at 1:4 paint/thinner consistency
• Highlight with 1:1 GW Bleached Bone / Camo Green with mixture at 1:4 paint/thinner consistency
• Upper-facing highlights of 3:1 Bleached Bone / Camo Green with mixture at 1:4 paint/thinner consistency
• Add minimal spot highlighting of 1:4 Bleached Bone / thinner 

Michael S. writes:

I just thought you should add a note to your rust tutorial stating that the bleach and vinegar solution from your rust tutorial creates chlorine gas, which is dangerous and possibly even deadly if inhaled. I tried your rust tutorial and I hope it works. I've always wanted real rust.

Sincerely,
Michael Smith

  I'd say that's definitely worth emphasizing - when I made the rust mixture originally, per my posted tutorial, I let the ingredients sit down in the basement by themselves for several days. There was noticeable bubbling, and I left the cap of the dropper bottle in which I mixed the materials open in order to vent. While I don't think it produces a significant amount of gas - only as a by-product in proportion to the amount of ingredients used in the Rust Mixture recipe - combining any chemicals or household materials should always be approached carefully and with every precaution possible!

  As an aside, though, I've still got that bottle of "Rust" in with the rest of my paints and I use it to add color and texture to items I want to look rusty. The original figure in the tutorial, a Privateer Press Cryx Deathripper, is still holding up fine with no degradation of appearance or other ill effects even after several years at this point. In applying the Rust Mixture to a figure, you likely will still want to add a little bit of highlighting and shading to any painted-on rust patches, otherwise it looks a little bit flat, but I essentially use it much like any of my other paints. (Coincidentally enough, I used the rust mixture on the metallic pieces on the base of the Ork Nob above as part of the weathering process - likewise still holding up after several years!)

EDIT: I've updated the original Rust Mixture tutorial page with a warning as well (and cleaned up the web code a bit, too!)

Hobby Tip - Painting Aged Parchment

Step 1:

 Apply a basecoat of 1 part Vallejo Model Color Russian Uniform (although Games Workshop Catachan Green might do in a pinch) and 3 parts GW Bleached Bone at a 1:1 paint/thinner concentration


Step 2:

 Layer on 1:4 GW Bleached Bone/thinner, leaving the shaded areas and deepest depressions uncovered


Step 3:

 Apply a wash (or two) of GW Devlan Mud over the whole of the area to be painted as parchment, paying extra attention to the depressions and shaded areas


Step 4:

 Layer on a first step of highlighting with 1:4 GW Bleached Bone/thinner, making sure to only brighten up the most raised and/or light-facing areas


Step 5:

 Apply extreme highlights to the edges and most raised areas as finely as possible, paying close attention to sharp edges and corners


Step 6:

 Using a mixture of 1:1 Scorched Brown and Black Ink (or Chaos Black and Badab Black, by preference) thinned down to at least a 1:4 paint/thinner ratio, carefully paint the lines of your letters on the parchment. You might want to practice on some scratch paper beforehand, as it really comes down to getting a feel for the hand movements when putting the brush to figure. It would be a good idea to do the first, last, and middle letters all in the same relative size to get the spacing correct, and then fill in the rest of your lettering as you can subtly adjust the sizing of your letters to accommodate how much room you have left.

 It might sound like an oxymoron, but the thinner you have your paints when doing fine detail like this, the more control you will have.


Step 7 (The All-Important One):

 Inevitably, you may need to go back and touch up things a little. Again, thin your paints by a decent margin so as to be able to get it to flow easily. You want to have as sharp a point on the tip of your brush as possible and be applying little to no pressure, simply letting the brush do all the work and allowing the paint to wick off onto your figure.

 In this case, I wanted to neaten up the letters a little bit, and add a slightly lighter "highlighted" black to the right-most lettering. I increased the size of the image, too, so that you can see it's not all smoke-and-mirrors, but generally a case of "if it looks about right in close detail then it'll look very close to right at regular scale."

Happy painting!

Colors, Pt. II!

Key: GW = Games Workshop/Citadel Colour paint, P3 = Privateer Press P3 paint, VMC = Vallejo Model Color paint, VGC= Vallejo Game Color paint

 In a follow-up of sorts to the first Colors! post a long while back, here's some unique colors I've found that work fairly well for specific effects and painted objects (your own mileage may vary):


Verdigris:

• Wash 1:1 VMC Verdigris/GW Hawk Turquoise at 1:8 paint/thinner consistency
• When dry, wash 1:8 VMC Verdigris/thinner into the deeper light-facing depressions

Dirty, Weathered Verdigris:

• Paint 1:1:1 GW Shadow Grey/GW SCorched Brown/VGC Sepia Ink into the crevices and depressions at a 1:4 paint/thinner consistency
• When dry, carefully brush the same mixture at a 1:8 paint/thinner consistency over everything in several passes except areas that you want to retain brighter highlights - only use a single pass with these parts

Concrete:

• Basecoat GW Dheneb Stone at 1:2 paint/thinner consistency
• Wash/glaze several times with 1:1 GW Scorched Brown/GW CHaos Black at a 1:8 paint/thinner consistency
• Stipple over highlighted areas with 1:4 VMC Deck Tan/thinner
• Edge highlight with 1:1 VMC Deck Tan/GW Skull White at a 1:4 paint/thinner consistency

Browned Metal:

• Basecoat 1:1 GW Tin Bitz/GW Scorched Brown at a 1:1 paint/thinner consistency
• Highlight 1:1 Tin Bitz/GW Chainmail at a 1:4 paint/thinner consistency
• Extreme edge highlight 1:4 Chainmail/thinner

Dark Metal:

• Basecoat 1:1 GW Boltgun Metal/thinner (or best yet, use P3 Pig Iron slightly thinned)
• Wash with 1:1 GW Chaos Black/GW Scorched Brown at a 1:8 paint/thinner consistency
• Extreme edge highlight 1:4GW Mithril Silver/thinner

Blue Glow:

• Basecoat 1:1 P3 Arcane Blue/thinner
• Wash with 1:12 GW Regal Blue/thinner brushed toward depressions and shade areas
• Highlight 1:4 Arcane Blue/thinner
• Highlight 1:1 Arcane Blue/GW Space Wolf Grey at a 1:4 paint/thinner consistency
• Blend up to pure 1:4 Space Wolf Grey/thinner
• Highlight 1:1 Space Wolf Grey/GW Skull White
• Blend up to 1:4 Space Wolf Grey/Skull White at a 1:4 paint/thinner consistency
• Extreme edge highlight 1:4 Skull White/thinner, making sure any large areas transition from a white inner glow to darker blue at the edges

Green Glow:

• Over a pure white undercoat, basecoat 1:4 P3 Necrotite Green/thinner
• Wash with 1:8 GW Dark Angels Green/thinner brushed toward depressions and shade areas
• Highlight 1:1 Necrotite Green/GW Scorpion Green at a 1:4 paint/thinner consistency
• Highlight 1:4 Scorpion Green/thinner
• Highlight 1:1 Scorpion Green/VGC Livery Green at a 1:4 paint/thinner consistency
• Highlight 1:4 Livery Green/thinner
• Blend up to 1:4 Livery Green/GW Skull White at a 1:4 paint/thinner consistency
• Extreme edge highlight 1:4 Skull White/thinner, making sure any large areas transition from a white inner glow to darker green at the edges

 This is a selection of some of the color progression recipes I've used on some of my figures. If anyone has a good color recipe that they wouldn't mind passing along and having posted for posterity, by all means leave a comment on the blog or send me an email!

Infinity Speculo Killer WIP

Work continues on doom_of_the_people's Commission Giveaway Contest figure, albeit with another commission I'm prepping in fits and starts in the background and a few other things going on (we adopted a puppy last week, for instance, to "replace" the one that died of parvovirus a few months ago - I never realized how much adjustment it takes bringing a new animal into the house!)

At his request, I've done a fair amount of weathering and sun-bleaching effects on an "autumn"-style color scheme. The underlying armor panels are brownish-yellow and orange-yellow, alternating in parts, and the whole figure has been lightly airbrushed with an off-white - I'm still getting the hang of it, but it's a fun thing to play with. It was a lot paler until tonight, when I had the inspiration to add some additional cool coloration that ought to tie the warmer (if muted) browns and autumn colors in with the soon-to-be-glowing monofilament weapon and a few other (surprise!) Object Source Lighting effects. I used an initial glaze of GW Shadow Grey brushed towards the crevices across the figure, followed by a Shadow Grey/VGC Sepia Ink mixture to delineate the panel lines and such a bit more - I'm aiming for a look of grime deep-set in the crevices of the armor, or possibly dust mixed with oil.

Anyhow, here's the figure as of this evening:

I've already started with basecoating the Secret Weapon Miniatures base on which she stands, which ideally will end up looking like broken concrete - I plan for the pipe to be oozing something vile (with continued approval, of course).

Hobby Tip - I Remembered How To Paint Highlighting

 Like the title says, I literally had to think about it because I'd forgotten, and suddenly remembered the method I used to use to paint highlights. By way of explanation, I've only gotten back to painting again after about a year off, which started shortly before the birth of our son in 2/2009. I've painted a few miniatures in the past few months, but when doing touch-ups on the Plaguebearer I've posted pictures of recently, I ran into a problem - all my highlights (especially edge highlights) turned out looking a little "off." I'd forgotten what technique I used exactly to highlight and get nice, neat lines and couldn't for the life of me get any of them to come out looking the way I wanted them to.

 I realized what the problem was in a sudden flash of insight - I was applying to much pressure and needed to slacken up a bit. Trying my "newly remember" old method, I was back to painting highlights properly on that figure and the commission I'm also working on simultaneously. (Not exactly like riding a bike, but more like getting back into an old "groove.") I figgered since it had "come back to me" pretty clearly as to how I should be approaching highlighting, and in a way that I can (relatively) easily explain in words, and I've taken a picture of my painting in the past to explain a related concept, I figgered that I'd dig up my old tutorial picture and write something up for the site. Enjoy!

 The problem I realized I was having was that I was applying too much pressure on the brush. Ideally what you want to have is thinned paint - something along the lines of a 1:3 or 1:4 paint-to-thinner ratio, or to throw the phrase out that everybody seems fond of, about the consistency of "skim milk." The reason for this is that you want your brush doing most of the work - it's a tool like any other, and if you're working harder than your artist's tool, then you're doing something wrong. The biggest thing to painting highlights (other than thinned paint) is the amount of pressure you apply on your brush. What you ideally want to do is practice applying as little pressure as possible - if you can, try applying so little pressure that barely even the tip of the brush would touch. Do this without paint if you like to get the feel for it, but practice just barely skimming the surface of something with a feather touch and nothing but the very tip of your brush. Got that down after endless repetition? Good! (Realistically speaking, a skilled painter has had lots of practice doing light brush strokes and with a lot of not-so-good painted miniatures back in the past as trial and error - if you're lucky, you can skip all the bad parts and cut straight to painting good highlights!)

 Now to apply some paint - dip the brush into your thinned paint no more than halfway. Any more than that and you risk getting thinned paint up into the metal ferrule holding your brush hairs in place (and we all know that's a good way to ruin a perfectly good brush). If you're comfortable with this paint consistency and you're painting on a broad area, that's fine, but it's generally a good idea just to lay the brush point flat on a paper towel (or give it a quick swipe along a fingernail, by preference) just to wick some of the excess liquid away - what you're doing is loading up with diffused color due to the added thinner and then taking some of the excess liquid off - you're still going to have the same diffusion of color but just not as runny. Now with as light a touch as you can, draw the brush back towards you slowly - it's the slowness here that matters, by the way. The longer you keep the very point of the brush in contact, the more of your color will unload onto the figure, and by keeping a bare minimum of contact you're letting the brush and the thinned paint do the work. Applying pressure won't do anything to help lay down a highlight, all that will do is make it thicker by bringing more of the brush hairs in contact with your painting surface by force.

Here's the final light purple highlight on a broad span of purple, drawn up towards the top of the shoulder pad:

 If you've done it right and let minimal pressure on the brush do all the work, you should ideally end up with a nice, narrow line. Straightness comes with practice, as does the ability to know how "far away" to hold the brush so that you're not pressing on the surface of the figure at all, but simply letting the bristles touch it with their built-in "springiness." If you approach highlights obliquely - that is, head-on - you're going to end up with fine lines. If you approach them with a slight twist to your brush, so that instead of drawing the very tip along you're drawing more of the side of the tip slightly sideways back toward you, you're going to end up with a slightly more diffuse highlight. I prefer the latter, but it's all a matter of style.


 If you've got highlights down, how's about something a little more tricky? Sharp edge highlights? Sure! Essentially, what you want to be doing now with the same consistency paint and the same wicking off of excess moisture, is drawing the side of the brush along a hard edge instead of using more of the tip. If a picture's worth a thousand words, this might help:

 Using thinned paint, drag the side of the brush along the sharp edge of the surface you want to have a crisp narrow highlight at roughly a 45° angle. Rather than the bristles of the tip splaying and making a fuzzy highlight, the side of the brush which doesn't splay (well, at least not so that it affects the highlight overly much) is what you want to be making all the contact. Between the thinned concentration of your color and the positioning of your brush, with a couple careful passes you'll end up with a nice, crisp edge highlight. Same technique as regular highlights and with the same light touch, it's just applied to the hard edges of things rather than straight and with the (side of) the tip.

 Any more questions? Feel free to ask! Now that I've remembered how to highlight again, I'll do my best to answer. This actually helped someone? I'd love to hear that, too!

Hobby Tip - Painting Blood

Painting blood and blood effects on a figure is one of those things that I've seen asked about on a lot of different painting forums. While I don't profess myself to be an expert in it, I've had reasonable success in getting the "blood" look across on a couple of figures now (and they've gone over well, so I must be doing something right) - I figgered I would share my technique as it's fairly simple.

These are the three colors I use:

They each represent different stages in the application of blood on my figures, and each one is rather unique appearance-wise:

• First off, we have Tamiya Color Gloss Clear Red Acrylic - this stuff is great for representing fresh blood. It's thinned with something akin to rubbing alcohol and has a much thicker consistency than most acrylics, almost like pancake syrup. You ideally want to save this for after you've sealed your figure, as it tends to dry (well, settle) more slowly than regular acrylic paints (I'm thinking it's because the Tamiya Color range is primarily geared towards being thinned for use in airbrushing and smooth finishes on R/C vehicles and the like. It also gets angry when you mix it with other additives, like dry time extender, so the application is simple: slather it on, spatter it on, spread it around in puddles - try to keep it to a minimum because when overdone, blood effects tend to look a bit "over the top." I feel that once the first application is set, you can always go back and add more if need be, but Tamiya Color is such a pain to remove (because like the old GW Inks, it stains) that it's best to build it up as you go along.
• Secondly, we have a 1:1 mixture of GW Red Gore and GW Scorched Brown - this particular color is perfect for painting blood on a figure where you want it to look like it's starting to dry but not yet "old, crusty blood." It has that particular shade that's very reminiscent of real partially-dried blood, and whenever I have to open the bottle and add to the mixture, my wife (the nurse) always has to do a double-take.
• Last, we have a 1:1 mixture of Red Gore and GW Chaos Black - a perfect color for painting older dried blood. Essentially, this would be the color that you thin down and apply directly to crevices or wounds, spattered on walls, caked on weapons - all the fun stuff that makes blood effects worthwhile!

As you may have rightly guessed, using these three colors in sequence from "oldest" to "freshest" gives the best finished effect when painting a mixture of old and new. Even with "fresh blood," I find it is good to go and establish blocked out main areas where I will want the eventual brighter blood to sit - I thin down the Red Gore/Scorched Brown mixture, generally to a 1:1 paint/thinner consistency but that depends, and paint it where I want to have the fresher stuff as the underlying darker layer gives the clear Tamiya red added depth. After sealing the figure and all weathering and everything else is done, that's when I'd ideally apply the Tamiya Clear Red for fresh blood. One nice thing about it and it's thicker consistency is that when applied over deeper reds (giving it depth), the thickness of the Tamiya paint itself gives the blood "body." It's also able to be applied in multiple layers and maintain that "body," so you can get blood drips and other nifty effects with sufficient drying time in between applications.

Some examples? Sure!

Blame the camera, as in real life it's much more glossy, but here's an example where I used all three colors to get across a history of repeated applications of Choppa blade into (through?) past human victims. Red/Brown thinned to block out the whole area (and "spattered" in a few places at 1:4 paint/thinner consistency), Red/Black thinned down and washed into crevices and other areas where old blood would remain caked, and Tamiya Red painted over both for the fresh stuff (also complete with a few "spatters.")

Primarily applied to the face, but also around the base of the neck and just above the ritual scarring where I felt it would pool from beneath his "gas mask," I decided since his "face" is essentially non-existent and simply patchy areas of raw flesh remaining over the bone of his skull, I'd have dried blood caked in the areas where his flesh meets his bone: for example, the figure's left cheek, the jawbone beneath, and around the remains of his mouth where his "respirator" is fused into what's left of his face. I had partially-dried blood around his augmetic eyes and in "trails" down his face from the corners of his eye sockets and under the remains of his nose on the figure's fleshy right side of his face.

Fairly self-explanatory, I think, but this has a combination of all three steps. The mental imagery I had was of this Genestealer Patriarch striding across the remains of a shell casing-strewn and blood-spattered battlefield and briefly pausing in his hunt for prey to taste some of the "leftovers" from a nearby puddle - whether that's the look I achieved or not is debatable, but such is life (or art).

Hobby Tip - Shaking Violently Being the Next Best Thing to Strangling

 Anyone who's ever painted (miniatures or otherwise) has probably experienced the frustration of trying to mix a color that has separated. Certain paints are especially famous for this (yes, GW Foundation paints and P3 metallics, I'm looking squarely at you), but every color has a tendency to settle over time.

 Without boring anyone to tears, hopefully, I'm going to explain a bit about why it happens and then offer a few suggestions on how to, if not prevent paint separation outright, then at least make mixing a little bit easier. Paint, for simplification's sake, is generally made up of three different elements: binder, carrier and pigment. The carrier is the primary liquid in most acrylic paints, and is responsible for the overall "flow" of your paint when wet - with most acrylics, the carrier is deionized water, whereas with solvent-based acrylics (such as Tamiya Acrylics) it's a general-purpose thinner (a variation of rubbing alcohol, perhaps) that serves essentially the same purpose. The remaining elements are the "solids" of the paint that are in suspension in the carrier; pigment being the coloration, and the binder being what "fixes" the pigment in place once dry and after the carrier and whatever other liquid elements in the paint have evaporated away. As you might guess, the pigment and binders are usually heavier than the carrier medium and over time tend to separate out, if only due to gravity and particle size. Another partial reason for "settling" might be due to evaporation of the carrier in paint pots that don't seal appropriately - that is, without enough carrier liquid to keep the other ingredients "afloat" in suspension, all the more solid elements of the paint will start to clump together and sink as separated-out "sediment."

 With all that out of the way, here's a few ideas as to how to limit the amount of settling in your paints:

•  Keep your pots stored upside down. Not only does this make the colors themselves more visible in the rack with just about every bottle design I've seen so far, but it causes the paint itself inside the jar to act as a "barrier" of sorts to limit the amount of air able to pass into the paint pot. Less air equals less evaporation of the carrier liquid inside the pot, and thus "thinner" (and easier to mix) paint. Any separation of paint elements will have the pigments and binders settling towards the lid of the pot, as well, which generally makes for easier re-mixing if you shake all your paints periodically to maintain "freshness."
•  After every use (or thereabouts) add a little bit of liquid back into your paint pot - in most acrylic paints, this would be deionized water. For the sake of limiting impurities in your paints, you want to use water as physically pure as possible, especially if you live/paint in an area where there is hard water. Deionized would have the fewest impurities but be the most expensive, then on to distilled water, then purified water, and finally to tap water. The reason for adding in liquid? To replace whatever amount of carrier has evaporated or been otherwise lost, which, while not technically remixing your paint for you, essentially allows it to maintain a closer-to-new proportion of carrier (or a close enough substitute) in relation to the other paint elements and thereby making the paint less thick overall and easier to reconstitute.
•  Last and maybe best, use an agitator of some sort inside your paint pot. Ideally you want something evenly shaped and small enough to move around freely inside the pot when shaken, made of an inert material so as to not chemically interact with the paint in any way, but still heavy enough to actually shift settled contents and stir things together again without having to break a wrist with the effort. I've seen mention on several forums of folks using various things as in-pot agitators, primarily leftover trimmed-down sprue but also items such as white metal clippings, BB's, or even stainless steel ball bearings. Personally, I've tried most of these and found them less than satisfying: the sprue wasn't heavy enough, the white metal awkwardly shaped and reacting (slightly) with the contents of the pot, BB's outright rusting from the core once their inert nickel plating wore down enough, and ball bearings being expensive unless bought in bulk - also a little hard to find. My solution? A trip to the local arts and crafts chain store (Michael's, in my case) to buy glass beads - I've found 6mm to be a good and fairly inexpensive size. If you go this route, I'd suggest that instead of buying loose glass beads from the beading/jewelery-making section where they are a little pricey for the amount you get, I simply bought a few on-sale faux pearl glass bead necklaces - twice the amount for about half the cost. (Thus far I've had the luck on several trips to pick up mine on sale - 65-count necklaces of 6mm round and durable glass beads for $1.50 US!) They're even reusable once you use up all the paint in a pot, responding just as well to paint stripping as your average white metal figure. I use glass beads as agitators for paints from Games Workshop (both the newer short style pot as well as the old canister-type), Vallejo, P3, and Tamiya, and also to keep my several baby food jars of different self-mixed thinners from thickening up.