Imperfections

[Dr Death]

Does anyone know a way to create imperfections on a model, particularly the skin and clothing areas, all those little blood splatters and dirt which help break up a solid area of colour. I\'ve tried multiple ink washes using their ability to get some quite nice \"tide marks\" going but they either hang around the recesses or look like the persons had their face carved into a dartboard.

Im a bit apprehensive about drybrushing an area, because A) the scrubbing motion might damage the paintjob B) it wont find its way into the recesses enough and C) i dont think it\'ll be quite subtle enough.

An idea i did have was using weathering powders but they\'re usually used with metals and usually on larger areas than cloth and flesh so again it probably will look a little over-cooked.

Much thanks for any suggestions or experiences.

Dr Death

 

[MClimbin]

Check out the Vallejo products Smoke and Yellow glaze. The Smoke is a brownish glaze that works really well to make something look dirty. Be sure to add water and move it around while it is drying, or you will get uneven edges (as you were saying with the tidal marks). The yellow is nice to make white look aged, or for just another aspect of dirtyness if used with Smoke.

The important thing is to water them down and apply in layers (more layers where you want it darker) so you get a transition.

I\'ve heard of a technique for blood spatters: dip an old toothbrush in some red paint and run your finger along the bristles, so that they splash blood on the mini. Here, the key is to not overload the brush with red, and/or splatter the blood once to get most of it off, then the second (or maybe third) time, splatter on the mini.
Haven\'t tried it myself yet.

Smoke rocks, though, you should check it out.

 

[Einion]

Try a few different methods for yourself, see how they work for you and how you think they look when you\'re done. Minis are small enough that we can experiment with a couple of things in a relatively short timeframe and nothing beats hands-on experience.

I would generally advise you to do this with thinned paint only, you just need to get the basic colour and add minute touches of other things to vary it somewhat, then build the effect with random brushwork. You can start with a stippling motion using a relatively large brush but for the best effect you\'ll have to do at least some of it with the tip of a smaller brush, deciding on exactly what you want and where it should go.

Einion

 

[Ogrebane]

Sounds like a good topic for a tutorial. Some of you Wonder painters should give it a thought. I wanted to do something similar with my ogres but have no idea how to do it without making it look like the ogre has two tone trousers. Anyone that can help will be much appreciated

 

[tagron]

Take some matt varnish, i use vallejo, and put a couple drops down, then mix a very dark brownish red color, i put in a bit of dark blue also just to give it the look of congealed blood/mud/mystery-stain. And then mix that color in with the varnish, and then water it down a bit so that its a very thin paint, yet not a wash or glaze. Depening on the amount of varnish and water you use you will get varying levels of opacity, but this will atleast eleminate \"high tide marks\". I genoraly stipple this mixture on to give it a random effect, and only do it in patches. Try some other colors using the same mix and layer, its pretty fun and the results look pro.

 

[Trevor]

There is a problem, \"realistic\" often looks wrong on minis. I haven\'t really worked out why, but it does.

Dirt on clothes is easy, as suggested use watered down paint and washes. Something I think looks good is mud on the bottom of cloaks etc. To do this use thinned down dark brown paint, then layer or blend it up to lighter brown on the raised areas looks good. (someone here did a great example on arackham mini, might have been Chrispy, wait a few secs and Finn or one of the other Freaks will have a link... )

Skin is one of those things that looks wrong generally, unless its an \"evil\" mini. For example trying to do a birthmark or something on a human is gonna probably just look silly, but on an undead you can do different coloured patches of skin and it looks \"right\", does that make sense?

I really don\'t think dirt on skin is gonna work, hehe now thats a challenge...

 

[Ritual]

On skin you can do thin cuts with the trompe l\'oeul method. That is, paint a thin dark line (in a dark red colour in this case) and then paint a thin light line just underneath (in this case a light skin colour) to create a slight 3D illusion. You can also make a line of blood trickling down from the cut. Look at, for instance, Poupee Canope\'s queen Virae to see what I mean

 

[Einion]

Originally posted by Trevor
There is a problem, \"realistic\" often looks wrong on minis. I haven\'t really worked out why, but it does.

I think it\'s largely a scale problem, plus one of subtlety. Painted effects of dirt work better at larger scales because it\'s closer to real size (why it can look so great on garage kits) but because we generally have to exaggerate the effects of light, and in mini painting colour often, at small sizes it\'s very hard to integrate the two desires successfully - clean, neat and clearly visible with grubby, obscuring dirt.

Even at a larger scale than most minis with a true dirty appearance it very often looks like the painter is trying to hide something! I\'ve discussed this at shows a couple of times and one thing I thought that would help is to make sure some elements of the model are painted cleanly so it\'s clear to the viewer that you can paint properly but even this won\'t work in some (most?) cases.

Originally posted by Ritual
On skin you can do thin cuts with the trompe l\'oeul method.

Ya, this is the basic way of painting scratches/dents/wood grain/raised areas. I\'ve used it a bit to supplement sculpted imperfections and in smaller scales it works brilliantly.

Einion