Diesel DM

I am new to painting miniatures of any kind.  I just started painting my first WARMACHINE models: a Cygnar Battlebox.  Years and years ago I did paint the occasional model car, mainly muscle cars from the 60’s and early 70’s, especially Mustangs.  But in painting those I painted each part a single color, no blending or shading. WARMACHINE models can be painted in the same way, choose a color for each section, apply and you’re done.  You can search the “What I Modeled/Painted Today” post on the Privateer Press (PP) forums to see excellent examples of this.  It’s a good way to paint a large army quickly and have them all match one another.  It’s also good if you’re more interested in the playing than the painting.

If you want more dynamic models, ones that really catch people’s eye, then you’re going to want to take the next step and do some shading and some highlighting.  For some model parts you will be able to get away with a base coat, a dark wash and some dry brushing.  This works very well on metals and heavily texture areas.  I used it to great effect on my Ironclad’s metal sections, which will be another post.  But once I came to Stryker’s cape, a quick wash and dry brush were not going to get the job done.

I painted his cape three times, each time getting closer to what I wanted, but the first two times showed a couple very important mistakes. The mistakes are easy to make, but hard to overcome.  Honestly the thought of repainting the same area a second (and even third!) time made me feel like I had failed at something.  So in distress over my failure, I posted a picture of my first attempt to the PP forums.  Instead of ridicule and humiliation, I was given praise. Praise?  After I screwed up the paint job?  Perhaps I had not failed, but was merely learning, and plenty of folks over the next couple days offered tips and suggestions.  Here is a photo of my first attempt:

My biggest question in posting was essentially “Why doesn’t this look right?”  So on the bright side, I had a really even base coat down. You can tell it’s even and a nice thin coat because you can see the texture of the cloth still and the details of the white pouch are not lost.  Were the paint too thick these details would be gone and most likely we’d have series of brush strokes instead.  On the down side there are two issues here:  First the highlights are patchy or spotty even.  You can see pooling and lines of where paint had settled, especially along the bottom of the cap and toward the left side.  The second issue is that there is almost no contrast.  Sure with flash photography and the macro settings turned on it looks like there is some contrast there, but from arm’s length it’s a pretty plain-looking section of cloth.

So, instead of calling it a failure, let’s take it as a lesson learned and move forward.  Both of these issues have the same root cause in my case: I wanted smooth blending between color changes.  But again, unless you intend to photograph your entire army with macro photography, you’ll be viewing them from at least an arm’s length away while on the battlefield.  From that distance the human eye will gladly interpolate a blended line from two adjacent colors.  If you have the time and skill to blend (either through wet blending or two brush blending or other techniques that I only know the names of), then you should certainly proceed.  For those of us just starting out, that just isn’t necessary.

Let’s start by solving the patchiness problem:  let’s use thicker paint.  With paints too thin you will end up with what you see above.  The paint will accumulate toward the edges and crevices, just like when applying a wash.  If you’re using the P3 paints like me, one brush of water to three or four of paint will be perfect.  It varies by color, some are thicker than others, so judge accordingly.  Thicker paint will, to a degree, solve some of the contrast issue as well.  My basecoat was composed of Trollblood Highlight.  Now to keep the colors working together I probably should have mixed something like Morrow White into the Trollblood highlight and used that.  Instead I made an additional mistake here.  I decided that the original color was too grey and drab.  So I mixed in some ‘Jack Bone for my highlights.  Below was my second attempt at Stryker’s cape.

All right, on a positive note I definitely have contrast now!  But on the down side I’ve added two new problems: first my colors don’t match.  My highlights are clearly a different hue than my basecoat, giving a striped effect instead of shadows and highlights.  Shadows and highlights should not change the hue, only the shade (lightness and brightness).  Another problem here was very poor brush control.  Notice the lack of sharp lines and edges.  The highlight’s edges have jagged protrusion, something that would be very unlikely on flowing cloth like this.  I was less satisfied with this attempt than my original and was getting rather disheartened by this point.  I was making backward progression, my goal was getting farther away and I was inexplicably getting worse at painting, despite my good intentions.  However, this attempt wasn’t all bad.  There were lessons to be learned here as well.  First off I had found a much better color for this cape.  The drab grey/brown from Trollblood Highlight was not working for me.  In this attempt I discovered ‘Jack Bone, which had a warmer more regal white that felt cleaner and looked great.  Also, I had managed to do contrast.

My third attempt started off by re-basecoating with ‘Jack Bone.  Again keeping it even and thin.  Then I selected Menoth White Highlight as my highlight color, mixing it in with my ‘Jack Bone base.  I laid this highlight layer down paying particular attention to my brush control.  Smooth flowing edges, no jagged jumps and skips. I then used some straight Menoth White Highlight to catch the brightest highlights of the cape.  My third and final attempt is shown below:

Taking what I learned from my multiple cape attempts, I have also painted the edging in this photo.  Starting with Cygnar Blue Base and highlighting with Cygnar Blue Highlight and blending a little Morrow White in for the highest highlights.  So from my three attempts on the cape I learned enough to paint the edging in a single try.  And from arm’s length the cape looks amazing, and on the battlefield?  Judge for yourself:

Photo by Michael Fey (@MrRooni)

I offer many thanks to the great community at the PP forums, particularly in my post referenced above.