Detailing

Hello customizers, I apologize for the lateness of the column this month,
I've been taking a photoshop class which combined with work leaves me
little time to paint much less write. This month I'm going to touch on a
couple painting techniques that are very important yet get little credit:
Shading and Highlighting which is really ONE technique because you don't
often do one without the other. Because it is done after you apply the
basic coats of paint I call them DETAILING.

Detailing figures is a lot like coloring in comics (I mean professional
colorists not kids coloring books). It is very important in the final look
of a figure but it is rarely remarked upon separately. A good colorist on a
comic makes the art look better just as a bad one makes it worse. It is
uncommon for people to comment on the colorist; usually the penciller (who
most people refer to as "the artist" even though the inker, colorist,
letterer and printer make the finished product) gets the credit. I just
started doing coloring work and it made me realize how important it is and
how little I used to notice it.

A figure that has a lot of detailing will have a better paint job and thus
will look better. Try to keep the complete presentation of your figure in
mind when working on it. The sculpting and painting or the obvious but a
good base makes it even more impressive (bases will be next columns topic).
It is the little stuff that can make your figure stand out.

If you look at my Nightwing figure you can see that parts of
his uniform stand out from others. With most of his uniform being black
if I didn't do any highlighting it would look like a big black spot, you
wouldn't be able to discern any of the muscles or other details in the
sculpting. Look at his hair, if it was plain black you couldn't see the
part in the hair or any of the carved lines. The whole idea of detailing a
figure is to make parts of it stand out.

You have to decide where your light source should come from, unless you are
working on a diorama it will be from above. I have heard people use the
excuse that "they use natural light instead of shading the figure", well to
be blunt it doesn't work, I could spend a lot of space telling you why
(scale, refection et. Al.) Just take my word on it.

Detailing as I said involves shading and highlighting, look at the coloring
on a comic to get an idea of what I mean, they are an excellent source for
reference. Lets picture a face, the forehead and cheekbones (unless it has
sunken cheeks) should be highlighted, the eye sockets, under the nose and
lips, directly under the hairline-all that should be shaded. On a muscular
chest the shading will be in the recesses: under the pecks, the solar-plex
around the "six-pack", the highlights will be on the pecs themselves, on
the six-back muscles (the shading was AROUND them), the collar bone etc.
You really have to look at each figure and decide what needs to be shaded
and what needs to be highlighted. Anatomy books are an excellent reference,
color is best but even black and white ones will show you the shading and
you can figure out the rest.

Before I begin the "how to" portion I'd like to make a few comments about
mixing different types of paint. You should use whatever type of paint you
are comfortable with (enamel, acrylic, oil, etc.) but keep in mind that
while you can mix pretty much all types some of them mix a lot better than
others and for the most part you won't have much like in cross mixing. That
is to say it is counter-productive to mix enamel paints with water-based,
and you can't mix oils with anything but other oils.

In my experience enamel paints are the worst to use for mixing up new
colors or shades. You can do it but because they dry so quickly you have to
keep mixing a new batch over and over again, each time you will have to get
the EXACT same blend or it will show.

Water-based paints are very easy to mix whether you use a testors acrylic
or tubes of cartoon colors (used to paint cells, they are great for
painting action figures as the colors are generally very bright. The
downside is that they are becoming more difficult to find, I have to mail
order them now.)

Of the modelers that I know none of them but myself use oils on models and
figures. Admittedly they are hard to use for beginners but the payoff is
incredible. The colors when they dry are more brilliant than any other type
of paint I have seen and they mix very easily. They do take an
extraordinary amount of time to dry though; some of you might want to give
them a try.

HOW TOO: Keep Reading >>>>>>>>

DETAILING