6 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started Painting.

this is my first ever miniature a space marine from a box set called warriors the imperium which i got just before my 12th birthday and you can see i've made a few mistakes on the model um i mean the eyes are sort of painted in roughly the right place but the white paint underneath it is put on so thick that you can't really see where those eyelines start and finish um and would you believe that was all applied using a fine detail brush as well now i'm actually really proud of this miniature and i keep it around for one main reason and that reason is it's a constant reminder that there's a lot of things that might seem obvious in miniature painting but if no one tells you what they are you're just not going to know and then you're going to make those mistakes so in this video what we're going to do is look at some of those things six things exactly six things that i wish i knew when i started painting vintages [Music] the first thing that i wish i knew was something that's become a little bit of a meme that follows me around but it is a really important thing to understand and that is to thin your paints now originally no one told me anything about this so instead what i did was just get the paints i wanted and just slap them onto the miniature straight out the pot because why wouldn't i and the result was well my first space marine let's take another look at him you can see just how thick the paint is on this miniature i really gunked it on because well the first color i used on this was skull white which is an old citadel paint because i wanted all the armor to be white and you can see i already had to put it on really thickly to get it to have that solid coverage and the result was well it wasn't diluted at all it went all thick and lumpy and in particular when it comes to the finer detail like on the chest just there you can sort of see where that chest design was supposed to be and his face always poor face look the mouthpiece is completely filled in it's just it's lost all the detail it's just horrible so what i ought to have done was of course thin my paints now the reason why i do this is because straight out the pot the paint is often too thick and it varies quite a lot from paint to paint and manufacturer to manufacturer too and over time you'll kind of get a feel for it as to what you want it's worth noting that some colors tend to be very pigment heavy and these tend to be quite thick ones so reds are a great example and that's what we're going to show you right now got some a fist and red here from citadel and what i'm going to do is just put some onto the palette here straight out the pot you can see it behaves it's quite viscous there as i move it around it doesn't drip very much and when you put it onto the pallet it kind of well if you twist it on like that you can get a real lump of it like that so you can see straight away if you paint that onto the miniature like that that's the kind of result that you're going to get really lumpy quite horrible so what you need to do is thin it down with some water so what i'm going to do is just load the brush with some water and start mixing it in and when you do this the thing to understand is that there's kind of a sweet spot that you need to get experience in in so you understand what to get to every color is slightly different but generally what you're looking for is to get it so it flows off the brush really easily but not so easily that it runs out of control so watch out with the water if you put in quite a lot like this what you'll get is a really really runny version of it and when you start applying this whilst it will go smooth it's also going to go everywhere and you can see it's really translucent as well it's not got good coverage that's too much so instead you want to kind of midpoint between the two so what i'm going to do is just use the palette to create that by mixing the water with the paint that i have there kind of going like that and what i'm looking for is a fairly strong coverage it doesn't have to be perfect but what it needs to do is be flowing smoothly from the brush and as i start painting it out like that you can see it's actually really smooth now that's the kind of thing that i want and you can use the palette here to test it by just painting along and seeing what you get that's much more the kind of thing that you want to see it's so much smoother now all that lumpiness has gone away and it's just flowing very easily from the brush and i've got lots of control over where it goes that's the kind of thing you want to get for so if you get your paint down like that and start applying it to your miniature you'll finally get a much smoother finish to things but you'll also find because that translucency there it will show some of the color beneath through it so it's like the undercoat or something else you painted so far in the miniature this isn't a problem this is where the second meme comes along of two thin coats all you do is apply that first coat let it dry and apply a second coat in the exact same way and this way the detail becomes nice and sharp still but also you get a smooth consistent finish to the color and if you do stuff like that you'll get results much more like this one here which you can see is a space marine in the same kind of color scheme as the original one but the armor is so much smoother everything's much neater it's just much much better the second thing i wish i knew when i started painting was why use a palette now very early on i was told that you need to use a palette but no one explained to me how or why so what i went and did was as advised get hold of a tile and then i take the paint out the pot put it onto the tile then from the tile onto the miniature so to be honest with you i may as well not even bother because i didn't do anything to the paint at all i also just gone straight from the pot but as you seen the previous part the palette is actually incredibly useful because it allows you to check what the paint's going to do it gives you the control over it so it allows you to thin it down with some water and then try painting onto the palette see what it's going to do onto your miniature then allows you to get rid of excess paint off your brush so that you've got that fine control that you'll need when you're painting all those smaller details so incredibly useful and to be honest with you i can't really do without one these days now for the palette we often use we just use a tile like i did back in the day this time though what i've done is made sure it's a white one because a white palette means you can clearly see what the colour is going to look like on your miniature so always go for a white one the advantage of a tile though it's really cheap we got this one from a hardware store for next to nothing and it's also ceramic which means it's really easy to clean as well so a really really useful thing to have especially when you're starting out now if you want to go a little bit further there is an alternative kind of palette which is a wet palette and we've got one just here this is one made by the army painter but there's loads of different sorts available from different companies and you can even make one yourself if you wanted to but the big advantage of a wet palette is that it keeps the paint wetter for longer so what you can do is do some painting one evening close it up come back to it the next day and the paint will still be usable it's also really good if you're going to do some more advanced techniques things like blending and glazing is really really good for getting the paint to the correct point that you want for those sort of techniques so if you're serious about your painting you want to get hold of one of these at some point now on the downside it doesn't work very well with washers so you'll want to stick to your tile for using those kind of paints and in addition there's a small chance with metallic paints some of the metal flecks in them can get into the sponge and then contaminate other colors on the palette so it's something worth thinking about it's always a good idea to have both palettes on hand in case you need either of these different sorts of colors these different types of paint you always jump back and forth as you need to which is what i tend to do so they're incredibly useful i definitely recommend you get hold of pallets and as i said i really couldn't do without them these days the next thing i wish i knew when i started out painting was what brush to use because initially i quite naively assumed that the finer the brush you had the better the miniature was going to be overall so what i did was start looking for the very smallest brush i could find which at the time was a citadel fine detail brush and using this brush i promptly set out painting my space marines starting out with the initial one so here he is once again you can see it contributed towards the lumpiness of it because i really started gunking the paint on because it was taking so long i just wanted to get it you know get that color on there and it didn't help at all with that finer detail because all that poor face but it wasn't just this guy i painted with that brush it was him and his whole squad including all the heavy weapons and things and then the characters i even painted a rhino armored personnel carrier with that fine detail brush painting it all white straight over the plastic and if you think he's lumpy you should have seen that tank i wish i still had it to show you but it was awful it looked terrible and the whole experience just wasn't funny either because it took forever to do it what i should have done is started out with a medium-sized brush that would have been much more appropriate to the space marine and the rest of them and then look to expand the collection as i needed to as i encountered different requirements for the different brushes so a large one for that rhino would have been great then a finer one for the finer detail these days i tend to stick around a small little handful of brushes that are great for just about everything and what i tend to use is small to medium sized brushes for most things like layering and highlighting then i've got a slightly larger brush that i use for my initial base coats a larger brush than that for applying large amounts of washes to miniatures and then a small dry brush as well which is great for texture on the models and the bases all that kind of thing now if you get a small selection of brushes you'll find they cover you for most things and then from there you can quite easily add to your collection depending on what you need when you need it for example a really large brush when it comes time to start painting some scenery and dry brushing it to pick out all that texture if you look after these brushes as well they'll last you for a long time and a few key things to know are to not leave them standing especially bristles down because it'll bend the bristles also be sure not to get any paint on the ferrules because that'll start to split the point and also if you want to really look after them get hold of some brush soap as well to really nourish those bristles now eventually the brushes will start to wear out and you'll want to replace them but keep those older ones because they're still useful especially for rough jobs things like putting pva glue on the base of your models when you want to do the texture and you want to stick the sand on there and also for that initial rough base coat that you want to apply to a model they can be really useful for that kind of thing but the important thing to look for is to get that initial handful of brushes which will cover you for most things and then the most important thing out of that is to always pick the right brush for the job another thing i wish i knew when i started out painting is when to be messy and when to be neat because this is something i assumed straight away and it's a mistake i often see people making and it's to think that you must only apply a base coat of a color only onto the areas of the model that you want to be that color and the fact is this isn't true because you can easily need the model as you go along applying further base coats now when you're doing this all you need to do is avoid the areas that you want to retain the initial colors on and not worry about anything else because by the time you get to the final base coat you'll neaten everything up as you go along now to show you what i mean in practice what i've got is a lannister guardsman from a song of ice and fire and what we're going to do is start painting corn red from citadel onto his coat which is the main color for the miniature it's usually a good idea to start out with the main color model like this and so what we need to do is to use the palette just like we saw earlier on to get the paint ready so first of all some paint on there then a touch of water to thin it down just checking on the pallets make sure it's nice and smooth so a little bit more water i think there we go a bit more paint and then just testing it yeah there we go getting good coverage and it's nice and smooth so this load up and then start applying it to the model now what i mean initially by people being really neat is looking for anything that's going to be another d another color and just avoiding it so the belts around here for example what people do and what i did i'll start applying the color like this going only up to those details like that and avoiding them and working the way around them now you can see doing this is actually quite slow going and when you do whole armies like this it's very very tedious the fact is you don't have to do it because that belt i'm going to be painting it brown later on so it doesn't actually matter you can just paint the whole thing like this just working your way around just making sure that all the bits that you want to be this red color are this red color now this is why it's so important to make sure you thin your paints because as you can see by doing this you are going to be applying a few more coats because there's some red on that belt now and it needs to be painted brown later on so just make sure you thin your paints down so the detail stays nice and sharp so by the time you're finished you keep the sharpness and it's then easy to do the highlights as well so as you can see by doing this it's just much much quicker to paint that coat so remember initially don't worry about being neat you'll find you neaten the miniature up as you add further coats to the model [Music] the next thing i wish i knew is something that i really wish someone to talk to me about and that's not to fear making mistakes because mistakes are going to happen it's just inevitable really no matter how long you've been painting or how experienced you are you are going to make some mistakes and it's worth knowing that no matter how bad it is it can be rectified even colour schemes on miniatures are notorious for having really difficult elements to fix on them such as an imperial fish face marine can easily be fixed when you know how what you've got to watch out for is when the initial mistake is made just to quickly wash away some of the excess paint if you can using a bit of water it doesn't really matter if you can't but this makes it easy to fix up after that all you've got to do is just reestablish the colour scheme and in this case that means going back to some wraith bone first of all to block out the area where the mistake happened and then to re-establish the mid-tone with some uriel yellow and there you go you wouldn't even know the mistake had been made there and because the coats of paint are so thin you can't even see any texture from them either so remember it's going to happen mistakes are going to be made i make them all the time but so long as you know how to react to them it's very easy to fix and in fact it's through these mistakes that you're going to learn and become a better painter the last thing i wish i knew when i was starting out was about undercoating your miniatures because initially nobody actually told me about this and what i did was just paint the paint straight onto the plastic of the miniature the result was it rubbed off and scratched off pretty quickly so my response was just to gunk some more paint on there obscuring even more detail now under coating the model is really important because it is what allows the paint to stick to your miniature so you always need to apply a primer and spray primers are brilliant for this kind of thing these days there's loads of colors available way back then there was only white and black and we've got some examples here we've got three we've got both a white and a black one but also a gray one in the middle and all three are lannister guardsmen for a song of ice and fire and we've painted half of each of them using some corn red because the colour used for the undercoat will actually affect the overall tone of the miniature and you can see that clearly here from a white undercoat what we've got is a corn red that's more bright and punchy so if you're going for a brighter and punchier color scheme this can really emphasize this so if you're going for a bright red for example or yellow a white undercoat is perfect it's also great if you're going to be using a lot of contrast paints because the white really shows through the tint that they give to give a really nice bright finish to things now the complete opposite what we've got is a black undercoat and this is great because it essentially provides instant shading on your miniature if you're starting from a black undercoat you don't have to paint everything because details like little nooks and crannies and things if you leave them black it looks like shadows so if you're looking to paint models quickly then this is a great starting point it's also much more forgiving when it comes to mistakes than the white undercoat is now in the middle we've got grey and this is my personal favorite because it kind of gets the best of both worlds there you can go to very bright colors very quickly but also very dark colors very quickly and get a smooth even finish for both so if you're new to the hobby and you're not sure what kind of color to go for i'd recommend grey because with this you'll find you can paint just about anything so there you are the six things i wish i knew when i started painting but if you are struggling with your painting and getting frustrated with it then don't worry odds are it's going to be something amongst these six subjects that's causing the trouble just like i did with me so just be sure to review what you're doing think about it and keep practicing because you will get the hang of it anyway we really hope you enjoyed this video and found it interesting and we'll see you all again very soon you

Channel: Duncan Rhodes Painting Academy

Views: 794,749

Keywords: Duncan Rhodes, Duncan Rhodes Painting Academy, Miniature Painting, Wargaming, Painting Warhammer, Learn to paint miniatures, 6 things, two thin coats, miniature painting for beginners

Id: ufP8ka3KGno

Length: 14min 4sec (844 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 28 2020

Reddit Comments

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Duncan "Two Thin Coats" Rhodes