by knightkrawler » August 20th, 2016, 2:14 am
The blue on Skulmar specifically had me ask...
The consistency of thinned paint should be roughly like milk.
If you search youtube for "thinning paint" or "how to thin paint" and watch a few from various miniature painters (AG Productions' is the best, but watch a few more like Corvus Miniatures') you'll get a pretty good idea.
You don't need anything but water, don't get convinced otherwise until your level is so far up that miniscule differences will be worth it. If you have thinner mediums, then fine, but don't go and buy any unless you live in very peculiar climate.
Here's the most important thing about painting with thinned paint:
Loading the brush is a technique of its own. Basically, you need a fine tip and long bristles (Winsor & Newton #1; no other brush is needed for most fine painting techniques; there are some alternatives for that brush, but everyone should invest in this on brush).
After thinning the paint, load your brush, but only up to two thirds of the bristle length. Don't let the paint reach the ferrule!
Now you have to unload the brush. Counterintuitive? Yes. But it has to be done.
Either touch the side of the brush against the edge of a paper towel, or get rid off excess moisture on your non-painting thumb.
The rest of the paint and water in your brush will have the perfect mix of pigment and fluidity.
If you don't unload your brush, you'll flood the mini with moisture and lose all control of the paint.
Thinned paint shouldn't be too thin, and yet in the perfect consistency, for a basecoat without splotchiness or cloudiness you're gonna need to paint several coats.
It's also a good idea to learn what color you can use to put a "basecoat under the basecoat" for certain colors that don't cover well at all.
For example, when you have primed a mini black and want its shirt to be yellow in the end, you need to have patience by first laying down a dark brown coat, then a medium brown coat, then a dark yellow, then your base yellow, and so on.
These many layers are precisely the reason why you need to thin your paint. Because else you'll clog details with thick paint and many layers.
You also shouldn't thin your paint too much. Whole milk for you Americans is roughly right, I hear time and time again, but it really depends on your style and the paint.
Most of all, it depends on your technique. The less you use true blending, the more layers you need, the thinner the coats must be.
As a beginner, you should probably keep this whole milk consistency as a guideline for layering. 1:1 might be too thin for a basecoat, especially when you don't use basecoat paints like Citadel Base or Vallejo Game Color Extraopaque.
It's a thing of practice and patience, really.
Youtube videos also tend to insinuate the thinner the better, which is utter bullshit for a beginner, so don't be seduced.
I suggest you take a flat piece of plastic to practice on. Just use different colors and different consistencies to see how they work with each other, how many layers of paint you need to cover opaquely, which pigments cover how well (there's a huge honking difference between yellow and blue, for example), and so on. And then layer your highlights on top of these areas to see how small of a step you need to use and how many steps to achieve a nice blend.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Having said all that, I go around several layers and thinning down my paint much in basecoating
by using a flat brush or Filbert brush (size 4 or 6 or 8, depending on the size of the area)
and mostly unthinned paint, which means I just dip the brush into water, touch a paper towel to suck most of it off, then go into the paint,
and then stuff the area with that paint, pushing and poking it around (hence the brush type: it gets me everywhere) until it covers everything but doesn't clog any details.
That's how I roughly lay out my color scheme, similar to what James Wappel does with his shaded basecoat technique (thank god for that guy! Watch some of his videos, too).
Of yourse, when highlighting and shading, I thin my paint as the next person does.
Last edited by
knightkrawler on August 20th, 2016, 3:59 am, edited 2 times in total.
Thanks for the picture!
) Would a simple "1 drop of water to 1 drop of paint" be advised?
I'll try to resize it before posting from now on!
