SketchStyle Painting Class With Matt DiPietro

This last weekend I had the privilege of attending a 2 day workshop taught by the very talented Matt DiPietro (of Contrast Miniatures). Matt taught all about his "Sketch Style" painting technique. This was an incredible opportunity and definitely ranks among my favorite painting classes every taken. I haven't included all of the random notes from the class, but I do have this photo dump from the 2 days.

	This was Matt's introduction to types of contrast, out of which he emphasized that value is the most important when it comes to SketchStyle.
	Matt demonstrates priming for Sketching. He starts with quick bursts, waving the can towards the model in the process to do the diffuse lighting. Then picks an angle for directional lighting and does some more focused bursts to add that lighting. This priming step is pretty important. When doing mine, I was worried that I had put too much white on mine, but in the end I found that it was just right.
	Here Matt was talking about Value in color. He started by creating a gradient using P3 Morrow White and P3 Thamar Black. Then he extended that gradient even further using artist-grade Titanium White and at the other end a mix of Thamar Black with Indigo ink. Once he established this gradient, he picked random swatches and showed how each color had a value on that gradient scale. This understanding of Value became a foundational piece of the whole class.
	Here Matt is doing his Sketch, which involves enhancing the black and white aspects of the priming step. There's really much more to it than that though. He starts by using black to deepen the shadows and create separation between elements. It's important to note that the Thamar Black paint is darker than black primer, so this step really helps push shadows deeper. Next he goes back and starts raising the brighter parts of the sketch with P3 Morrow White, and then after that uses Titanium White sparingly to push the value even further. Matt commented that it's the Titanium White that really helps make the Sketch more "durable" for when the coloring step starts.
	These are photos of the model he was working on. His concept was to create a sense of glow from the tablet she's holding, with an additional directional light from behind her to create a contrasted set of lights. At this point he's only added black shadows; all the white is from the priming step.
	This is after he's added white. The effect is very striking.
	This was a second Sketch he did after the first one. What was great about this one is he did it at his normal speed. We timed him and it was just about 17 minutes. Watching him work at full speed was very helpful since it gave a real sense of how he works his way around the model and what he does to keep his pace moving. Matt's secret: Pandora Dubstep station.
	This was my Sketch. The idea here (thanks to Matt's prompting) was to have the coils of the guns be a light source. He also helped me get a better sense of how to handle the cylinder of the gun canister.
	Day 2 began with a LOT of discussion about color. He showed us a bunch of gradients and specifically talked about Saturation. To be honest, although I already knew a fair amount about Saturation and Hue, I found his discussion both very education and somewhat over my head. I know that I'll be mentally unpacking a bunch of what he said over the coming months as I put it into practice.
	These are from an exercise he gave us. He handed us each a bunch of swatches of colors and instructed us to put them in Value order. Then he told us to take out our phones and take a black and white photo to check our results. I clearly failed at mine, but loved the exercise.
	This is an in-progress pair of pictures of Matt's Sketch example. The photos aren't very good, but it illustrates the point. At this point he's using thin glazes to add color over the sketch. It's important to note that the glazes are purposefully thin and the sketch is supposed to show through obviously. Unlike a wash, he's using even coat glazes and getting an entire surface face (black and white).
	This is my finished model. I started with the glow effect of the coils and built that up first. From there I did the red canister which is where I felt like I started to really understand the glazing process better. I actually asked Matt to look at the canister effect just to confirm I hadn't made the glaze too thin or thick and he confirmed it was perfect. From there I moved on to the blue armor, then added the yellow. For the yellow, Matt saw I was going to use an Indian Yellow and suggested I also add a second glaze using his Indian Yellow ink afterwards. This really brought the value of the yellow back up more vividly. After that it was freehand details and touch ups. Total painting time, taking out pauses for questions and other such interruptions was probably 2 hours.
	This was a model that Matt did full speed from start (just primed) to finish (all color). It took him about 45 minutes (about 15 for the sketch, and 30 for the color), which I watched completely from start to finish. This process was amazing and the fur in particular was really fascinating to watch. The fur was a slightly different process where he used essentially several glazes as washes and wet blended them as he applied them over the fur areas. Again, seeing him paint at full speed was impressive and helpful.
	And this is a group shot of all the project pieces from the class.

I'll try to add more notes at a later point in a follow up post, but for now I wanted to get all the pictures up.

"The Color Of" App Launched

For those interested, Kwok Pan Fung has launched his iPhone app version of the color toy/tool from his website. I just downloaded it and it works just like the web version. It's an amusing toy that can bring some inspiration when playing with new color schemes. You can read more about it at The Color Of site. Also note that the app is free for this first day of launch!

From the Desk: Pantone Color Guides Book Review

Book Title: Pantone Guide to Communicating with Color and Color: Messages & Meanings - A PANTONE Color Resource
Author: Leatrice Eiseman

The Pantone guides are sort of an industry standard, particularly for advertising. After reading both of these books I can see why. I originally bought these books because I was looking for a resource that would provide me with more insights into the associations between colors and evoked emotions, and I definitely got that in these books.


What I learned:

These books are the 5th in my series of book reviews. In the course of my readings I've read books aimed at mostly artists. In my past (as an armchair theoretical physicist) I've read plenty of books that dealt with the topic of light and color in that realm as well. However this is the first time I've read a book aimed at marketing and advertising. The fascinating thing is the book treats the topic of color more from the perspective of psychology than anything else. But not in a soft fluffy way. It's a very scientific psychological study of color. They've done thousands of interviews with focus groups. They weave in information from physics, biology and sociology. It really opened my eyes even further to the complex world of color.

The second Pantone guide does an incredible job of breaking down colors and showing related word associations most commonly evoked by each color. This part is invaluable in particular and was exactly what I was hoping for.

And one last interesting fact that I learned: 20% of visual information taken in by the eyes is directed to the pituitary gland. That's pretty fascinating.


What I liked:

It had exactly what I wanted in terms of word/emotion association for a wide selection of colors, as well as general impressions of color families.

The color printing quality is, of course, top notch. I honestly expected nothing less, but after experiencing books with sub-par or even poor color printing I've gotten much more picky about this.

The additional information about the perception of color was a welcome addition. There were plenty of little tidbits of information that I found particularly interesting.

There are loads of sample color swatches using a Dominant, Subordinate, and Accent model. And when I say loads, I really mean loads. Several hundred swatches. And they are all grouped together into themes. The swatches are not only good for finding examples, but from them you can extrapolate your own swatch pretty easily.


What I didn't care for:

In the end, I didn't really need to buy both books. That's probably my only complaint. I could have also done without the basic color wheel theory stuff they threw in, but I completely understand why it's there and since it was limited to just a couple pages I didn't mind.


What I would have liked to have:

The one thing I would have loved is simple condensed chart with small color swatches next to it of all the associations. Obviously that would be a lot of information to condense down though. I might end up making my own at some point if I find myself with a bunch of free time.


Overall though, these are great books and I see myself referring back to them many times in the future.

From the Desk: Creative Color Book Review

Book title: Creative Color
Author: Faber Birren

Yes, I'm already reviewing another book on color theory. My recent flight to Shanghai afforded me many hours of time to read and I literally read this book all in one sitting. This book was a somewhat random pick for me. I was searching around on Amazon looking for a book that had information about the emotions evoked by various colors and somehow came up with this book. Now admittedly, I had expectations of this book that didn't come to fruition, so I have a somewhat biased view of it.


What I learned:

True purple doesn't exist in sunlight! It had never occurred to me, but purple is a fabrication of red and blue, which are at the ends of the color spectrum when sunlight is split by a prism. Once I stopped to think about it I realized it was obvious. It also goes along with why the human eye sees yellows and greens as brighter than other colors, since they are in the middle of the sunlight spectrum.

"Psychological study has shown that the average person will readily distinguish about nine steps from black to white." If I use myself as an average person, this isn't true. But check for yourself using the below chart of 16 steps.

x00

x11

x22

x33

x44

x55

x66

x77

x88

x99

xAA

xBB

xCC

xDD

xEE

xFF

There's definitely a couple that blend in, so it's interesting to note. For me the first 2 appear identical, but the rest are easy to identify. Perhaps their study was influenced by having borders between the different steps, which I learned from Interaction of Color will definitely influence the experienced value. In any case, another interesting point made is that a mid-tone grey is usually picked out at a ratio of roughly 3:1 black to white. Again, I didn't find this to be personally true. Example:

x000000 x000000 x000000

x888888 x888888 x888888

xFFFFFF xFFFFFF xFFFFFF

Perhaps they are speaking specifically when using paint.


What I liked:

There's a really good section about a painting technique of the Old Masters called Chiaroscuro. The relevant part to paint mixing is that when shading or lightening a color, add a little bit of the color (hue) in to keep the ratio strong. For example, when creating a darker shade of pink, add both black and a little bit of red. This will keep the ratio of red to white/black more consistent and keep the color vibrant and strong. I found this to be of huge help just to know. It was sort of a 'eureka!' moment for me because it gave me a solid explanation why shading colors with things like P3 Coal Black or Umbral Umber helps keep the color more vibrant and interesting.

A few key wording definitions were actually quite helpful to walk away with:

• Lustrous - Reflects light (example: metal)
• Iridescent - Diffracts light, splitting the spectrum like a prism (example: mother of pearl)
• Luminous - Gives off light (example: the sun)

What I didn't care for:

The color printing quality of this book was, in my opinion, poor. Many places there are color plates that are meant to illustrate differences of colors and I found them to not actually have color differences between some swatches. It was frustrating to say the least.

The author talks a lot about the "non-objective" style of art, which personally I found to be a huge turn off. Particularly in the realm of miniature painting, non-objective art is a rather useless pursuit since miniature painting is, but it's very medium, about painting an object to look like that object.


What I would have liked to have:

I would have really liked more color plates (and of course of better quality). Perhaps I was spoiled by Interaction of Color but the more I train my eyes, the more sensitive I am to poor printing quality of colors.
As a final note, there wasn't really anything about emotions evoked by colors in this book. Perhaps that biases my view of it as a whole (along with the other great books I have read recently), but I have to say that other than the couple of key takeaways, I didn't really get a whole lot from this book.

From the Desk: My P3 Color Wheel Prototype

Building my own color wheel has turned out to be more challenging than I expected. When I started out doing this, I merely grabbed the Quiller example and started trying to match P3 paints. This worked out fine for the most part, but left a specific hole that I just couldn't quite get a match for one slot (showen to the right here). That missing color is a red-orange color. Beyond that, the color matches are relatively close. Some of them like Cygnus Yellow, Cygnar Blue Highlight, and Khador Red Highlight are pretty much dead on matches. Others, like Arcane Blue, are not quite as close. And still others, like Exile Blue, are not really close enough. Still though, it made for a rough guide to start with. However this exercise got me thinking: Can I actually make one color by matching its two adjacent colors? Enter the color testing!

At this point I started doing a bunch of mixing of paint to see how things worked out. Now honestly I didn't know for sure how well it would work, although I suspected it would be relatively close. What was surprising to me was just how many of them matched quite well. These studies also went a long way towards finding appropriate matching colors for the wheel by mixing two colors and working from there. To some degree I was quite pleased with how accurate my guesses were. One area that was difficult to work through were the oranges. In the P3 line there are multiple orange and yellow shades, and they have quite a bit of variance to them.

Now at this point I need to make a confession: Although I know the names of most of the P3 paints, I don't really use the names to refer to them mentally. I store all my paint pots/droppers horizontally with the tops facing outward. On the tops I paint a swatch of the contained color and this is how I find the paint I need. This means that I don't remember my "formulas" for certain models because I don't necessarily remember which paints by name, but rather I have to reconstruct by colors used. On the plus side, I reference and pick colors by, well, their color. This has definitely helped my so called visual color IQ.

In any case, my P3 color wheel is still a work in progress. I'm working on a new one more based on the Munsell system, and am trying to incorporate some additional information into it. Why go through all this effort rather than actually just making more progress on my model backlog? It all goes back to my desire to have a better sense of color theory really. It's not specifically about having a "P3" color wheel, but just being able to build a color wheel from model paints. So far the small amount of time invested has definitely been worth while.

From the Desk: Interaction of Color Book Review

Book title: Interaction of Color
Author: Josef Albers

Written almost 50 years ago, this book really caught me off-guard. It is written with a very practical mindset of experimentation and observation. Unlike other color theory books I've read, this book's studies utilize color paper to create plates for study purposes, rather than allow for the blending of two colors via mixable pigments. The result is a number of very scientific-like observations about the perception of color, and more specifically, the interaction of multiple colors when placed next to each other in various ways and combinations.


What I learned:

The perception of color is unique to each person, and there is no way to actually know how another person perceives color. Albers puts this forward early on in what seems like a statement to undermine the rest of the book, but he's very right. Color blindness is a perfect example of how we know that some people definitely do not perceive color in the same way.

The perception of one color is influenced by colors that are surrounding it. The amount and type of influence obviously depends on the colors. Some examples of this are after-image effects, hue shifts, value shifts, and vibrating boundaries. This is particularly valuable in painting miniatures, especially when thinking about what colors are bordering each other. One such summation of this is the Bezold Effect.

In addition to looking at colors as warm or cool (traditionally yellow-orange-red vs blue), it was also mentioned schools of thoughts that look at scales of light/dark (blue-violet vs yellow-orange), and wet/dry (green vs violet-red-orange). It had never really occurred to me to think of all these comparisons, but having it pointed out makes it obvious. I suspect I'll be incorporating this into my upcoming P3 color wheel project.

Honestly, I learned a lot more from this book. I've added a whole extra section to this review at the bottom with a bunch of other highlights of those items.


What I liked:

Color plates - These were awesome. Printed with great color accuracy, these color plates did an incredible job of demonstrating the various color interactions described by Albers. Some of them were so vivid in their demonstrations that it was hard not to stare at them for several minutes.

Short but sweet - The book is concise and to the point. About half of the book was the actual text content and the other half was color plates with annotations. I didn't skip a single word of this book, and that's really saying something because most "educational" books end up with some amount of content that I lightly skim read because there's too much repetition or over-explanation.


What I didn't care for:

Two books put together - Having the color plates in the second half of the book was a little disjointed. I ended up with two bookmarks as I worked my way through the whole thing. Not necessarily a huge issue and I get why it was done, but still a little frustrating.

A little too concise - I could have actually stood to have this work be a bit longer. Some items in it barely get a one line treatment and then he moves on. There's sort of an assumption of plenty of prior art training I think. Both a plus and a minus on this one.


What I would have liked to have:

More color plates! Even though there were a number of (obviously) carefully chosen plates, I could have used even more examples. Certainly I can make some of my own, but having more would have been great.

Beyond that, the book really felt complete. Probably because it was the output of the classes that Albers taught. And with that, I'll leave you with a quote I found incredibly appropriate both from and for this book:

... good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.


Glossary of a bunch of other stuff I learned:

• Scotopic vs Photopic vision - Scotopic is "low light" vision which is predominantly from the rods of the eye. Those are more sensitive to the blue-green range of wavelengths, which is why things appear more blue at night. Photopic is at the higher light, supported more by cones in the eye, and obviously more sensitive to red-yellow ranges of light.
• The Weber-Fechner Law - Perception of an arithmetic progression of color darkness depends on a geometric physical progression of the application of that color. That is to say, to have a range of colors look like they are equal darkness steps apart requires a geometrically increasing application of paint (1, 2, 4, 8, 16 layers of paint to create a progression of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).
• The Munsell Color Tree - A 3 dimensional charting of colors. The first color system that broke down color qualities into hue, value, and chroma. Ironically, the color wheel I purchased not too long ago us a representation of the Munsell system.
• Ostwald Color System - Similar to Munsell system, but organizes by dominant wavelength, purity, and luminance.
• Faber Birren Color System - I'm still not entirely clear on this one since it was mentioned in half a sentence, but I've already ordered a book.

From the Desk: Color Resources

Two quick resources around color theory for those looking to experiment more...

Color Schemer App - I picked up this app for my iPhone and have found it to be pretty useful. One of the things I really like is snapping a picture of some random thing and then using the app to pick out particular colors. It's a good exercise actually to find something with rich color to it (a rusted pole, a bush, a pair of old jeans) and try to guess what the hues present are. Then use something like this app to snap a picture and analyze the actual colors. Building color IQ is something I have really felt a benefit from.

Speaking of color IQ, here's a color test that is pretty interesting. It takes a little time, but it gives a good sense for one's sensitivity to color variations. Definitely worth the 10 or so minutes.

And how about you? Got any interesting online color resources out there? Post a comment! I'm going to create a sidebar section on this blog to catalog color resources that I come across and I'd love your input!

From the Desk: Color Choices Book Review

Book title: Color Choices
Author:Stephen Quiller

This book came recommended to me by another painter, and I have to say it was definitely worth the read. The intended audience of this book however is not really that close to the miniature painting hobby domain. Now before I continue with this review, I should make clear that I am not very educated on art history and will freely use terms that I may not fully understand. With that disclaimer in mind, I'm aiming to give a review of this (quite good) book from a miniature painter's perspective.


What I learned:

This book is jam packed with information about color, color schemes, and approaches to choosing a palette of colors for a subject. Perhaps the first big lesson was that there are other color wheels out there besides the classic one. The "Quiller Color Wheel" (laid out by Stephen Quiller obviously) has a slightly different arrangement of colors. Without getting into too many details about it, one of the things I found fascinating was the arrangement of colors such that if yellow is at 12:00 on the wheel, a grey scale bar can be put beside the wheel going from white at the top (aligned horizontally with yellow) to black (aligned with purple) and represent the relative brightness of the colors in horizontal alignment with the grey scale.

This book really gave me a stronger eye for the hue of a color. More on that later, but a preview is that I had 2 color wheels on my desk. I had never noticed it before, but the hue of the colors on each of them varied a bit. I have since retired the color wheel that I consider to be less accurate. This "gift" so to speak, from this book, is probably the most valuable lesson I learned.

It also goes over in detail the traditional color schemes: monochromatic, complementary, harmonious, split complimentary, and triadic. Although I knew about all of these before, Quiller goes over them in a bit more detail and talks about strategies in employing them. I found this additional perspective to be fairly interesting.


What I liked:

First, this book gave me motivation to use my own paints (P3 mainly) to experiment with putting together my own reference color wheel. The color value chart on the side of the color wheel is another part I really liked. I'll be doing more posts on that later.

Second, this book got me to experiment more with color. I've got a few swatches of color mixing that I used to get a better handle on how colors mix together.

Third, Quiller does a good job of reinforcing the need to feel one's way through the project. He's a big proponent of connecting with his subject and channeling that feeling of connection to make the production really come alive. I found it to be a good balance between discipline and freedom that he portrays. Subtle and unclear perhaps, but I appreciated it nonetheless.


What I didn't care for:

Straight up, this book is geared towards "2D" artists, and many of the examples are primarily done in an impressionist style with watercolors. This makes it a much more challenging exercise to translate it into miniature painting. The impressionist part is probably less challenge. Watercolors on the other hand behave very differently from acrylics.

Second, the color printing quality was somewhat lacking. Different color wheels presented in the book in different places have different hues. Now whether this was intentional or not I have no idea, but as a student to the book, it was frustrating to say the least.


What I would have liked to have:

Honestly I think this was a good book. It required a bit of heavy mental lifting on my part to really absorb it, but this book inspired me to experiment with my own paints in a way that no other book or class or piece of advice has ever done before. If anything I would have just preferred to have a stronger feeling that the color printing quality was consistent throughout the book.

From the Desk: Random Post #556

More random desk updates! Here's a photo of McBain. He's mostly done except for some touch ups. I also got highly motivated to create a proper base for him (pictured below). For some reason this model turned into one of those projects that I just really felt like going the extra mile on. I'm sort of tempted to take a bunch of time and take him to the next level and use him as an entry for the KublaCon painting competition. Once I get him on a base, I might just do that. We'll see how it goes though.

This is the base I'm putting together for him. It'll eventually be sort of a little reinforced wall piece that he can stand on. Nothing particularly amazing, but enough extra oomph to be deserving of a man with a mustache and cigar.

Other random notes:

Meg Maples did a short write up about color theory on the PP insider recently. I love how color theory is becoming a much more common discussion in the painting community. It used to be more reserved for the serious paint-for-painting-sake folks, but now it's getting more attention.

Also, Ghoul posted on PP forums more about paint toxicity. There's good stuff in that post worth reading if you're still wondering more about the topic.

And I'm done for the night! Time to get a little more work done on this base and then get some sleep.

From the Desk: Color and Light Book Review

Book title: Color and Light
Author: James Gurney

James Gurney (creator of Dinotopia) writes what is arguably one of the best books on color theory. No really, if you don't believe me, check out the reviews and ratings on Amazon! Honestly I really enjoyed this book. It's strikes a great balance between explanation and example. It covers a huge range of topics. And best of all, it's very accessible to non-classically trained painters such as myself (I have a whole 4 college art classes under my belt). As I sit here with the book on my desk while writing this brief review, I'm struck by the fact that there are over a dozen post-its sticking out from pages that I marked for reference. Definitely worth the investment to add to my meager library of art books.


What I learned:
The green problem - Common in nature, but can end up dominating a scene, so some artists have banished it from the palette. I'd never thought about it because miniatures don't tend to have this problem, but paintings of forests can cause havoc for an artist due to the amount of green. Nature's "green" is deceptive in the number of other tonal shades in it.

Proper definitions - It was nice to learn proper definitions for the 3 key qualities of a color. Specifically (and here's my paraphrased versions):

• Hue - The "color"
• Value - Measure of brightness on a B/W scale. Also called luminance.
• Chroma - Perceived strength of a color, as relative from neutrality. Sometimes called saturation. Think of the difference between Khador Red Highlight and Skorne Red as an example of reduced chroma.

Gamut Mapping - Another useful tool for selecting a specific palette of colors to work with. Create a triangle and only work within that triangle. Good for limiting the brightness of a palette and keeping harmony. "Pre-mixing" a palette for a miniature painter would be just picking out the paints and staying with just those. I'm definitely going to give this a try I think.


What I liked:
It's a very well organized book. Everything is accessible to the untrained provided they have at least worked with color a bit. The reference photos and paintings are very well chosen. And best of all, it covers probably 90% of what I had questions about.


What I didn't care for:
This book has a fair amount of focus on the traditional canvas painter. No doubt there's plenty of useful stuff for the miniature painter in here as well, and obviously miniature (or any "3D" painting) is not nearly as common. However much of the content about how light "works" is in relation to rendering in 2D which is not so helpful. Honestly this is a pretty small gripe against the book all things considered.


What I would have liked to have:
Some more discussion about texture would have been very helpful. There's a little, but obviously an exhaustive dive into rendering texture to a painting would be a pretty huge task.


And that's that! Hopefully you've found this review somewhat helpful. There's plenty of other reviews out there for this book, but I tried to bring more of a miniatures painter's view to it.

Gun Mage Captain Adept(s)

These Gun Mage Captain Adepts have been in my backlog for quote some time now and finally bubbled up. There were a number of causes for the delay, not the least of which was a missing hand for one of them. To be honest though, I got them as a part of my Ashlynn theme force which I haven't really been jazzed to play much lately. This does however get me one more step closer to having that list up to a playable level.

These models are actually pretty pleasant to paint. I opted for a pretty simple scheme, and went with a more muted tone overall. For speed painting (probably a total of 4 hours max for both together) I'm quite pleased with the results. I used a number of washes for the leathers which helped them to really pop. For the coats I opted for 2BB as the method to shade. Mixing up these techniques really works for me these days.

Now let's talk color theory for a minute... This pair represented an interesting experiment. Most of the models are painted in a similar scheme, with the coats and heads being the differentiating features. I didn't specifically paint one before the other either, as I swapped them back and for order-wise. The net result is subtle, but fascinating. The crimson one really jumps out as being energetic, whereas the grey one seems to be more reserved. This has to do with where the highest color value focus is. For the grey one, the highest color values are the face and pants, which are more central. For the crimson one, the overall color value is shifted so that much more of the model has a higher color value. The other big difference is the grey (with a touch of green in it) provides a much more neutral feel whereas the crimson shade provides a much more dynamic feel.

Quite honestly I could go on much more about color theory as a result of painting these two models side by side, but I've got a big pile of gators to paint!

Painting Purgatory: Picking on my own models

Time to continue with the color theory analysis of my old models. Rather than doing the complete breakdown analysis on all of these, I'm just going to give the lesson learned from each one. Again, not critiquing painting techniques, just color choices.

-

Right out of the gate I've got a total eyesore. This model is an example of something where I picked out random colors because they looked nice individually. It was very early in my painting, and might be among the first 10 models I painted. Lesson learned: Don't pick colors individually, but pick out the colors and set them together on my desk together, and stare at them for a couple days before making a final decision.

This is a sample from a whole army of marines I painted in an "Angry Hornet" theme. Now honestly, the scheme is so dead simple it's hard to go wrong. It's predominantly a monochromatic scheme, with just a little bit of other color thrown in. All things considered I can't slam these too much, however... Lesson learned: Black should never be straight black, but rather have some hue to it. Straight black generally doesn't exist in the real world. Here's a group shot of several of these guys. I painted quite a few, and a variety of space marines as well. In a big group, they look pretty striking. Although more colorful, this Terminator is still pretty good. The same problem with the black exists with the white. Lesson learned: Just like black, keep pure while usage very minimal.

So again, a monochromatic scheme that works ok. Here's the interesting expansion though: The hair (purple) makes a color bridge between the blade/mask (blue) and the armor (red). Now it's not a perfect bridge, but it does somewhat work. Lesson learned: Color "bridges" can help tie a model's scheme together, but the bridging color needs to be a careful choice. This Jain Zar model on the otherhand was an interesting example of how I started doing some edge highlighting. The color problem of course is that pink isn't a good highlight color for red usually. There are other problems given the spattering of random colors, but I think that should be obvious by now.

This model represents the first significant attempt I made at freehand work. Needless to say, I didn't do much more of this for a very long time. Honestly, this model is just a complete train wreck of color. Now normally a Harlequin is a pretty colorful character, which can make them tricky to paint. One trick I heard was to set up a triadic color palette (3 colors fairly equidistant on the color wheel) and use that as the core of the color scheme, with variations on that theme as needed. Honestly though, I find Harlequins to be an enormous challenge. Lesson Learned: Schemes with a lot of different colors are really hard to pull off. Sticking with fewer colors is easier to plan.

This Imperial Assassin is a good example of when I started trying to do more of the GW-style highlighting, with bright highlights on all the edges. One thing that worked well here actually was using yellow to lighten and highlight the green armor rather than adding white. It provides a warmer feel to contrast the cooler green tone. Lesson Learned: Don't use white to lighten a color for highlighting, since it usually makes the color look chalky.

Ok, it's 9pm and I'm running out of steam on this post, so let's speed things up. Pink, purple and black was a good core set of colors. They work well together. However the grey highlights for the black armor was the first mistake. The green gun was a second (although lesser) mistake. Grey highlights tend to dull down and distract the eyes from the otherwise harmonious scheme. Using a purple or even blue highlight for the black armor plates would have created a much better look overall. And the green gun? Well, never opt to paint metal items with non-metal colors just to be cute. Color conveys a lot about what type of material is present (as discussed previously). Lesson Learned: Highlighting and shading of black can bring in even more color to a scheme and help tie the overall look together.

Again with the green? And now I threw in brown too?!?! Ok, this one is even quicker. Lesson Learned: I made some very questionable choices in college. Must have been all the drinking that affected my decision making.

And here I close out the post with something really special. Again, a total train wreck of color. Primary colors all around. It's a mess. But, there's a reason I included this one. This was the first model that I used a drybrushing technique on. I was at my LGS and someone demonstrated it for me. That day I learned the value of painting with others. Practice takes you some of the way, but learning techniques firsthand from other people can really make a huge difference. Lesson Learned: Always try to paint with other people!

Well, that rounds out a thoroughly long and boring post. Thanks to anyone who actually stuck it out this long. I promise to only do one more of these posts at most. I should note that although I'm still going to be doing more Painting Purgatory posts, I have actually been able to put brush to model in the last week and am making some progress. However my house situation is still pretty confined so I'm not likely to get anything based on finished for a couple more weeks. So there's more color theory, desk action, and purgatory to come.

Painting Purgatory: a Flashback and a Resource

Right about now you're probably looking at this photo and wondering what's going on. Although clearly no match for my current painting skills, this model was indeed painted by me. It's from about 18 years ago when I was in college (yes, I've been painting that long). However, I'm not posting it as a part of a nostalgic flashback. Instead, I'm going to drag out a bunch of my old models for review as a part of an exercise on color theory. I should note that my intent in these reviews is mainly for color use and not for painting techniques or skills, although I will probably add a little historical commentary just for fun. So let's get started with this Greater Daemon of Slaanesh!

Focus: Whenever I look at a model with a critical first eye, I tend to be super conscious about where my eyes go. In the case of this daemon, they are immediately drawn to the boots. Why? They are really bright. The horns somewhat pull the eyes back up, but it's still not enough to balance things out. I also notice that it takes a long time before my eyes even pick out the face of the model, despite its size.

Story: Next, after noticing where my eyes go, I pay attention to the general tone and emotion of the model. In this case, it seems dark and quiet. Why? Well, for one thing, it's really dark blue. Not just that, but there isn't enough variation in color to draw out the dramatic elements of the model. Color choices can play such a critical role in helping "tell the story" of the figure. Nothing about my color choices here really help tell a story. The darkness of the skin causes his face and outstretched hand to become indistinct, and that's really where the story of this model starts.

Readability: Now, I look at the color choices to see if they make sense for the material they are representing and whether they help my eyes to pick out the details. For this daemon, I'm 0 for 3. Dark blue skin, although amusing and potentially appropriate for a "chaos daemon", doesn't make a lot of sense. The brown for the boots on the other hand does work, since most leather is some shade of brown. But then there's all those green bits. Are they leather? Armor? Who knows! The green color choice makes it not only harder for the eye to pick out, but harder for the brain to "read" what it is. The dark blue skin, dark green and dark aqua claw all just seems to blend together. This makes the readability quite poor.

Harmony: Lastly I look at the overall harmony of colors. Now sometimes i'll want clashing colors on purpose, but that's an outlying case. Normally I want colors that all play well together. It helps all of the above things I've talked about. In this case my report card arrives with an F. Blue skin and yellow-brown boots? Ouch! And what's with that pinkish-purple badge on his chest? Must be first price in the ugly contest. Ok, all kidding aside, if you break out all these colors and toss them on a color wheel, the whole thing looks pretty chaotic. Don't be fooled either! Dark colors help obscure a conflicting palette, but it's still there.

So that's a general overview of how I approach color for my painting now. I'm no expert though, as even my recent painting shows. But these 4 aspects form the building blocks of my color theory now. I'm going to post more of my older models, but I'll skip this level of analysis. I started with this model not just for its age, but for it's complete failure in all 4 areas.

One last thing before I sign off for the night. I was reading various forums and came across this really great 4-part series on photographing miniatures. I've posted on this before, but for those of you looking for more good examples of setting up a way to photograph your work, this article has lots of good information and uses pretty minimal materials to accomplish it (other than the camera).