Why You're Not Improving

hey guys jay here welcome to ian's battle and if there's one thing i love it's showing you guys how to paint stuff but i think it's about time to get back to the basics so let me show you how to take an average paint job and turn it into a masterpiece it's a big step in a new painter's career when they can say that they paint within the lines of a model what this means is that like a coloring book page painting inside those lines is what separates your little nephew's drawings from 24 year old used drawings go on show that little punk who's boss but this is hard to do on a model especially when you're an inexperienced painter it is a constant battle to get paint where you want it the bristles of the brush always seem to have a mind of their own but through trial and lots and lots of error you'll eventually get the hang of it and it's great when you finally have mastered painting within the lines it means that no matter the mini you can paint it boots brown armor red skin brown and maybe a little bit of cheat juice at the end for good measure with this skill under your belt you can put minis on the table that anyone would be proud of but what separates an average paint job from an extraordinary one why do some people's models look different well because they have mastered painting within the lines and so have advanced into putting paint outside the lines a lot of things fall into this category highlighting shading freehanding contrast it's all involved in taking the next step to paradoxically put paint outside the lines again and so it's time to pop up paint for this project i'm going to limit myself to painting only inside the lines simplifying my painting process and hopefully it'll save me some time too here i have this necromunda ganger from house goliath this should do really well painting up the tabletop standard on this model i'm going to paint each part of the mini one solid color and then at the end a wash the first thing i did was i primed the model black black primer is always a safe choice when priming because it's easy to leave those hard to reach areas black they would be in shadow anyway it doesn't look quite right when those areas are bright white the first thing i did was i picked out all of his armor with red paint i did his chest piece the boots wrist armor mohawk and the handle wrap on his little hammer after the red i painted gray with some p3 iron hull grey this is a lovely gray that thins very well and still gives good coverage i painted this on the cloth he's wearing under his arm armor and all over his pants after the pants were sufficiently gray i went back in with red and picked out the red piping on his pants and i almost forgot but i also painted his cod piece or dick shroud red too i'm glad i chose to paint the red after grey it's a lot better to paint the red on the gray then try to keep the gray off of the red next it was time to give him some skin for this i used vallejo beige red from their model color range and holy moly ravioli this took some time the beige red has decent coverage but it still took forever to build it up over black but eventually i got the job done after that it was time for the metal and boy was this a breath of fresh air after the beige i really like game search up lead belcher one coat and done on all the metal areas of the model like his hammer belt armor mohawk spikes and arm pipes and i can't forget about his gun either then last but not least some vallejo chocolate brown on all his straps for his wrist armor and shin armor i also use this for the bandage on his hand i'm sure whatever brown fabric that is it's clean and dry and last test just a drop of games workshop lothar and blue for the plasma gun energy now the model is completely base coated and it's time to add some washes i cannot recommend enough to use army painter washes they are great and very cheap compared to games workshop buying the whole set of army painter washes is the same price as buying four games workshop watches over all the skin i applied some army painter flesh wash army painter wash is a little thinner than games workshop so in some areas you might need a second coat after the flesh i applied some army painter red tone all over the red areas this red is very bright so it takes two coats to really darken these areas up and then finally i applied some army painter dark tone all over the metal parts of the model his weapons tubes shoes and pants with the washes dry the model is done and now that the model is finished it looks good games workshop kits really lend themselves to getting you to this quality of finished model games workshop sculpts their models in such a way that it gives us the optimal chance of success making weapons oversized the details are easier to paint and making things like armor and straps proud they stick out a little further than they should to make it easier for the paint bristles to find them so we have our model painted varnish and ready for tabletop but we can take it further we can push the paint job from fine to fantabulastic but it's going to take some explanation so hold on to your butts i think the easiest way to explain what i'm talking about is on photoshop so here is a space marine painted in the same style of my ganger everything has a color and some basic contrast from the wash paints all the paint is clean and within the lines of the model but to really push our paint job to the max we have to paint outside the lines this is one of the hardest things to wrap your head around you have to put paint where it feels like there shouldn't be paint until this point you can just follow the model or follow the box but from here on out you have to make it up where would the light be falling on the model what part of the model would be in shadow what's a highlight and where should it go well the good news is that you don't have to pull everything out of thin air to help understand what we need to paint we need a reference and just like the model and box art helped us with the basics the photographs of real light hitting the model will help us with the advanced work as you improve and get more reps under your belt you'll start to just intuit these things but early on it's nice to have a reference even when you're really good it's smart to have a reference before you even get a model out of its box it's probably not a bad idea to look at what other people have done with it search up the mini on things like youtube google images pinterest instagram or cool mini or nuts absorb and get inspired so that you can start to formulate a plan but when it comes to reference you use while painting i would suggest a non-mini resource and the best reference is going to be the mini so first i like to photograph the bare model under decent overhead lighting for this i'm using my two painting lamps and i'm throwing a black t-shirt underneath to help absorb the light so that i don't get a lot of bounce light reflecting off my table i'm not really taking a photo of the model but more the light hitting the model perfect no masterpiece of a photo but this will give me some great pointers on where to put my paint i can already see the brightest spots are the tops of his arms his weapons the front of his chest and a nice round spot on his leg these are the spots that should almost be white in my paint job and the shadows are his shins the underside of his chest armor and the bottom of his gun after that i wanted something a bit more extreme so for this photo i turned off my lights and i blasted my mini from above with a flashlight and photographed that as well this is going to give me a really exaggerated lighting condition this will be super helpful as well and the highlights i paint onto the mini will probably be somewhere in between this photo and the last in this photo i can see a lot of my highlights even more clearly like this line of white on his knee armor the top of his mohawk and the front of his left boot and the shadows are very dramatic everything that is not lit up is just black and for most minis you could stop right here but this guy has a fancy glowing plasma gun so why not get some reference on that as well for this shot i found a blue led and held it up to the model so that it was sitting right where the gun would be giving off light and once i was happy with it i snapped another photo hmm that's a unique photo but i don't know if i'll be doing osl like this on the model looking closer at the gun it looks like the shape would block most of the light from hitting the body of the figure but i'm glad i know that now before i have put some blue all over the mini this would totally work it was casting a spell or carrying a lantern but the gun just doesn't look like it would throw that kind of light on the model now to finish up on references a xenothel prime would not hurt either a zenfel highlight is a step taken after you prime a very dark color usually black where you spray a very light color usually white from top down to give an effect analogous to light from directly above hitting the model this is a great start but it's not a perfect replacement for photographs because it's paint and not light and it won't give you the same bounce and reflection as real light so it's nice to have the photos too and it's finally time to get back to painting time to rehydrate the palette break out the brushes and paint all over again and this time i'm armed with my painted model my reference and my favorite show to paint do it's time to take this model to the next level i started by adding black paint to my red paint vallejo bloody red i mixed it 50 50 with black and thinned it down and i started applying this mixture to the undersides of the red armor this paint is thin enough that it's not painting lines but more tinting down the colors i went over these spots again and again until i thought they looked noticeably darker then i watered down some black paint and did the same thing to the pants painting the undersides to create the look of shadows i wanted to keep in mind my reference and the spots of light i discovered so i kept this watered-down black out of those areas to brighten up the red paint i went back in with the base color bloody red any areas i didn't add dark is getting some more red i painted this on all the edges of the red armor this is brighter than what's on the model because of the red wash i used but it's still not perfect then i highlighted the pants with some watered-down p3 paints and i made sure that the brightest spot was on his left knee because of what i saw from my reference photos i also picked out his butt cheeks and the folds of his pants now getting back to the red armor it's not light enough but red is kind of a unique color because you can't just add white to it to make it lighter because it becomes pink and my toughest nails ganger doesn't want pink armor so to brighten up the red i'm going to be highlighting with orange so i watered down some orange specifically p3 kador red highlight and applied it sparingly following along with the highest points of light on my reference material i did a lot of edge highlighting and i thinned it down a lot to apply over larger areas like the tops of his arm armor and chest armor on the brightest spots of the red i mixed around 50 50 white paint and orange and just stippled this onto some spots applying it to the tip of the mohawk the tip of the chest armor and basically just the tip of all of the red next was the skin which was pretty straightforward mixed my color vallejo beige red with white 5050 and then watered it down then i began applying it to all the tops of his many muscles according to my reference the brightest spots are his shoulders and his right bicep so i gave those spots the most coats of this color to bring it up to an almost pure white i didn't paint any of this on his underarms because i wanted those areas to stay dark next i broke out some rune fang steel a game's workshop silver color and started to put this on the top areas of the metal i particularly focused on the face and top of the hammer in my photos these areas are almost white i also brushed this on the top of his pistol the blades of his mohawk and all of the tubes and pipes running into his back essentially you want the darkest dark to be black and the brightest bright to be white the difference is going to be what gives the model contrast after that i mixed my roon fang steel with white paint 5050 and applied this to the model as well i used this for the brightest spots of metal next it was time to brighten the brown so i used some vallejo earth and applied it mostly to the straps over his shoulders to brighten them almost to match the brightness of his skin now the model is basically done the only thing left is the plasma now the blue we used before lothrin blue is a light blue so to add more contrast i'm going to darken it with some vallejo magic blue i applied this to the sides of the plasma and i let it fall into the metal body and closest shapes to make it appear glowing i went back in with lothorn blue and cleaned up my lines and then i painted a few passes of very watered down white because cast light is always going to be dimmer than the source this white is going to make the magic blue look more realistic and lastly i looked at the skin and felt that it was all too bright so i applied some army painter soft tone which is a brown wash to the underside of his skin to darken it up i also used this to accentuate some of the muscles in his arms and around his head and just many hours later the model was finished and speaking of finished models the reason we get so much painted is because of our wonderful patrons over on patreon not only do they help us support the channel but they get access to exclusive live streams they see our schedule ahead of time and all the inside jokes they can handle so let's get back to the mini alright now that my mini has done been painted twice it's time to see the results we can put it up against the first pass and see how they compare i'd say the differences are pretty striking the first pass was fine but the second try really gives the mini a lot of interesting things to look at the second try is much more painterly the first model is not very different between the lightest lights and the darkest darks it looks decent on the tabletop but the second mini you can really get your eye in there and see those details it takes a little more time but i think it's definitely worth it it adds a lot of value to the model as your painting quality increases it'll enhance the enjoyment you get out of your models it can really sting to spend 40 on a small model for your army but if you become a good painter it can help a lot this model may be expensive but it's going to take 20 hours to paint and then you'll have a gorgeous model to admire for 20 more hours it's like a summer beach pass every time you visit the beach the price of the summer pass goes down each hour you spend painting is one more hour of entertainment that you got out of that mini so get yourself some reference photos and maybe take another crack at some of your minis i'm sure you can do a better job now well guys i hope you enjoyed the video and i hope i've helped you along in your miniature painting career and as always thanks for watching

Channel: EonsOfBattle

Views: 106,815

Keywords: eonsofbattle, eons, of, battle, warhammer, warhammer 40k, warhammer 4000, 40k, video, game, play, fun, paint, learn, tutorial, diorama, painting, design, base, basing

Id: o3YrS3frjdk

Length: 14min 12sec (852 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 16 2020