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"Where death awaits you, with nasty, big, pointy teeth!"

First of all, as a rule, I don't mix colours

Seriously, I know that soulds glib but unless you make a large batch and put it into an empty bottle or paint pot you will never achieve the same results twice and touchups become a bitch.

So, taking a few tips from an accomplished painter from Regina I have assembled a large collection of paints with several hues of each colour.
This would be nigh impossible with Hobby Paints like GW, I-Kore or Vallejo but is easily facilitated from Ceramcoat, Americana and FolkArt paints found in your local Craft's Canada or Michaels craft stores.
If you do use the stuff from craft stores get a bottle of Distilled water and top up each bottle as these paints tend to be a bit thicker than the ones found in hobby stores but, other than that, are practically identical but much, much cheaper (avg. $1.50 per 2 oz. bottle vs. 4.00 per 3/4 oz. pot of GW paint) so it is economical to have 4 or five hues of a single colour.

Now, as rules are meant to be broken I must say that I will sometimes mix paints if I know I am going to finish a certain project in one sitting. Here is my suggestions:
Reds- If you want to make reds a different hue than don't use white as it pinks the colour up. Use Yellow or Orange.
Black- To change hue you can try and use a dark grey or dark blue depending on the effect you want. Of course when you add grey to black it becomes black. Adding blue gives a much more "realistic" look to the shading.
Brown- Easiest colour to lighten and darken IMO. Adding light grey gives a more realisitic look to it.

Please Note: When adding either Black or white a little goes a long way. Typically you want to add these colours very slowly to another colour but especially black. Like Bukrai it takes over very quickly .

Hope that helps. If you have any more questions either post them here or PM me.

Seeya,

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Chris Van Tighem
"Ever Stalwart"

HAHA!!! We must have posted almost simultaneously

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Chris Van Tighem
"Ever Stalwart"

My minis have gotten nice reviews , so I'll take a crack at it...



For the most part, I don't. I have about 50-60 different jars/bottles/tins of paint, and I tend to use them.

If I want a different colour, I tend to get it by applying a "wash" (slopping ink or paint that has been thinned with water over the area), or "drybrushing" (putting paint on a brush, wiping most of it off on my painting board, and then brushing over that part of the mini so that only a little bit of paint scrapes off the brush onto the figure).

Washes tend to flow to the crevises of a figure, so they accentuate the shadows. Generally, I use darker paint than I used as the base coat to make the shadows more obvious.

Drybrushing wipes off on the high part of the mini or edges, so it's used for highlighting where the sun would hit or glint--edges of swords, tops of helmets, or even the middle parts of clothing.

However, sometimes I do have to mix up a new paint color for some reason....



I use toothpicks, transferring the drops of paint to a mini-palette of a flipped-over slotta-base (using it as a small bowl--they have to be useful for *something*). To get a sufficient amount, I usually have to do several big drops of each paint--I use a different toothpick for each colour in case I decide I need more.



If I need to measure, it's by drops. I generally have a third toothpick to mix, so I can get a good idea of how the colors are turning out. When I get close to what I want, I add smaller drops of paint in the mix.

If it starts drying out, add thinner (I use water as I mostly use acrylic paints--though horses get oils so you can see the patterns of hair!)



Some people do their mixing in little jars, but I find this uses up a lot more paint than I'm willing to use. If I think I'm going to need it again, I leave a little color sample on a piece of basswood that I keep next to my table. It does take some experience to learn how much wet paint and dry paint differ in color.

It won't all happen at once--I've been painting for over 20 years, and I still have some of my early figures with Testors enamels around to remind me of exactly how bad I was to start!

Good luck!

Whoops! And I'm a distant third!



Wargames Foundry has made sets of paints with a base colour, highlight, and shadow for each set. They're too expensive for poor little me, but if you have *lots* of money....

I use GW as well. I didn't know they had mixing pots. I'll need to have a look at that.
What I mostly have trouble with is skin... Doesn't everyone...
But if I can pre-mix a whole batch of different skin shades, that would be most handy.

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"Where death awaits you, with nasty, big, pointy teeth!"

Here's what was suggested to me for skin. I use Ceramcoat Medium Flesh but the same could be done with GW paints. This will ensure you have more flesh than you know what to do with it but if you go in with a partner you might save some cash.

You will need 3 pots of flesh paint and two pots of white.
Put one pot of flesh away. That is for your basecoat.
Pour half of the white in a container and add 1/2 of the second pot of flesh to the remainder if white. Add the white poured out of the first pot of white to the flesh. Now you have two pots of 50/50
Pour 3/4 of the second pot if white in the container you used for the last transfer and add 3/4 of the last pot of flesh to the pot of white. Add the poured out white to the remaining flesh in the third pot of flesh. Now you have one 25% and one 75% pot of flesh.

So, you now have four shades of flesh. Full Tint, 75% Tint, 50% Tint and 25% Tint. If you go in with a buddy than that will save you one pot of paint since you can each take one of the 50% pots.

If you do it this way then what you don't need to waste time and paint trying to find the right tint.

Also, I use a rusty red wash on all my flesh. It gives it a realistic look. Close your fingers together and hold them up to a light source. The colour between your fingers isn't black or brown (we hope ) but more of a reddy colour. Dilute some rusty red colour with lots of distilled water (10:1 ratio at least) and have this in a pot of paint as well. You definately will use it quite often for flesh washes.

My 2d.

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Chris Van Tighem
"Ever Stalwart"

This thread should be made Sticky, IMO. Lots of good info here. :scatter:

-Mark

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Putting the "Ho" in Hodiri since 1998.
The Forge: Western Martial Arts

For those interested, other than the question of this post, Dr.Foust's Painting Clinic is is wonderful!

http://www.paintingclinic.com

Take a look at his Golden Toadstool awards...

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"Where death awaits you, with nasty, big, pointy teeth!"

Um, we are still talking about paints here, right...?


Too easy, I know, but I couldn't resist.

Done and done.

Gothmog

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Ok, let me get this straight. These guys come in, trash the place, slap Agrik & Larani around, and the most intelligible thing they said was "Zog!"?

There are two main ways to paint skin. the first is the drybrusing method. The second is inking.

Inking is a lot quicker and those who have mastered the art get really fine results. Basically the base skin colour (often a light colour) is painted onto the minni and then once dry an ink is applied. The ink fills into the deeper recesses of the minni. Often I find the inks still to strong in colour and tend to water the ink down. Once applied I am told the best result is achieved by using a cloth to wipe off the excess.

The second method is dry brushing. When painting skin tones I use the darkest skin colour I have first. This is an African colour and is a deep dark brown. Once this is dry. I open the next paint I want to apply. and aplly it to the brush where upon I brush of most on paper and then lightly use the brush to more or less apply a light dusting. With dry brusheing the dusted layers of paint are only applied to the raised protions of the minni.

Right now I'm trying a new way for me...

I've used black primer. Then paint just the central area of the face and then will dry-brush to do highlights.
The deep areas are already dark and shadowed.

This is the first try of this. I'll let you know how it goes.

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"Where death awaits you, with nasty, big, pointy teeth!"

I know this thread is about pinting mini's, I used to do figurines; however, I am having a hard time finding mini's that fit in well with the Harn theme. Most of what I found that is close is Norman, Saxon, or Viking minis by "Battle Honors". Do any of you have some other suggestions for minis that fall into the 1100-1300 time period and have more than just armored fighter types?

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Roy Denton - the title says Baron, but Queen for a year. (Cheselyne I)

"Nathamh na hoibre an t-eolas"
(Knowledge comes through practice)

Let's try this...

Go to thread:
http://www.harnforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=2682

There are lots of suggestions there.

Personaly, I just bought some from The Foundry. Very good selection of Harn(ish) minis.

The sets I bought were: Assorted Normans and Armed Pesants!

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"Where death awaits you, with nasty, big, pointy teeth!"

It worked!

Never linked to an other post before.

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"Where death awaits you, with nasty, big, pointy teeth!"

I'd like to second the suggestion for the Foundry Paint System. I used GW paints for years, and recently shifted to Foundry (minis and paints). I'd say their organization of colours has vastly improved my painting. They are, admittedly, quite expensive (particularly if you need to ship them overseas).

On a side note, I plan to make the hadj to Nottingham next week and check out the shop in person. The hell is that I won't be able to buy anything, but it should be fun looking around anyhow.

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Well-being I won and wisdom too.
I grew, and joyed in my growth:
From a word to a word I was led to a word,
From a deed to another deed.

Looking at this line I think they might just be the perfect Harn based Mini's i have ever seen.

https://www.thunderboltmountain.com/

The elves are really good and not too ridiculous but the new humans are what appeal to me. Not the old Arthurain ones. I have some of them and they are more like 20 mm than 25mm as it says on the web page. I am talking about the new mid-14th century guys that they will be putting out soon.

Interesting stuff.

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Chris Van Tighem
"Ever Stalwart"

Tom Meier is going to produce a series of Goblins soon, he posted this on another board -

The goblins will be basically ape-like (though with broad shoulders on the larger ones) with large (not silly but large in a natural way) round heads which have structural features in common with the elves but in a grotesque fashion. They will come in four basic sizes. Small (wolf riders) 40-50 kilos, medium (archers, slingers, crew for machines) 60-80 kilos, large (standard line gobs) 90-120 kilos, and jumbo (bodyguards, champions et.) 120-150 kilos. To give some idea of how big this is the elves would be about 70 kilos on this scale, men about 80-90. I’ve done a medium archer and a large bog-standard line goblin so far, though the
large goblin is half again as heavy as one of the elves because of his posture he is only as tall as their chins.
Their equipment will be a motley collection of modified plundered stuff and rough, shoddy goblin manufacture. The line troops will all have large, generally round shields.

I've just ordered the Elves and I'm waiting for full line of the King Arthur figures to become available in the UK - I normally prefer the smaller and (in my opinion) more realistically proportioned figures common to older miniatures and modern plastic figure sets.

These they are. I would say that if you aren't interested in a lot of detail but more than you find with 15mm than these are perfect. For me it is more an issue of conformity. Most of my miniatures are 25-30 mm scale and so I will continue going that direction. As it is, it looks like the elves, new humans and new goblins will all be 25-30mm scale instead of the old style that he has done before.

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Chris Van Tighem
"Ever Stalwart"

If anyone is interested, the new Wizards of the coast prepainted miniatures has a good mini foe a priest of Morgath. It is found in the Archfiends set and is the common called "Cultist of the Dragon" he doesn't have the mask, but would be easy to acquire on ebay. Here's a link to the pictures:

http://wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mg/20040203a

Some friends of mine are using these for their D&D game, and I've had a closer look at them.

While I personally prefer historical minis for Harn, some of the WotC plastic minis look OK, and, as Loremaster said, are easy to get, whether at your local gaming store or on eBay.

The paintjob is nothing to write home about (but could be painted over, of course). E.g., the eyes are just painted black, without actual eyeballs or pupils. That said, at a typical viewing distance of, say, one or two feet, the minis look effective.

The sculpting quality is not too bad, and, being plastic, minor conversions should be easy.