sillybrian Posted May 23, 2016 Report Share Posted May 23, 2016 So I am fairly new to painting miniatures, and most of my current ones are some level of experiment. I'm not sure if this is the right forum or if there is another one better for painting advice, but figured I'd try here first. That being said, I wanted to ask for some thoughts on shading and highlighting to get some good depth on some of the really numerous, small, shallow wrinkles in the cloth pants of some of the models. Specifically in this case I'm talking about Bayou Bushwacker #3, from the Mah Tucket box set. If you know the figure, or at least can see the photos I attached... Those pants are very, very small and the wrinkles in the cloth are numerous and very shallow. I've had a difficult time trying to shade and highlight them, and I'm not super happy with the results. For the base color I went with Vallejo Model color Orange Red. I like bright things, and this was a bit of an experiment with this color. I shaded with Citadel Agrax Earthshade. In retrospect, that may have been a mistake... it is pretty dark on that bright orange.. but the other issue is that those creases and wrinkles are so small that even the shade has trouble staying in place, and it ends up spreading and doing more tinting across the area rather than shading in the crevices. My first highlight color was to bring the ridges back to the base Orange Red, and that was accomplished but... it just doesn't look right with such splotchy dark areas. I probably need to re-basecoat and redo everything, but with how small these creases are I don't have too many more mistakes before I start losing detail... So considering that I'm a newbie, anyone have any ideas or advice on how I could have done these pants better? Anybody done these types of numerous, small creases before and know a good trick for it? I'm all ears. Or, eyes technically I guess... anyways thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Poa Posted July 12, 2016 Report Share Posted July 12, 2016 I either highlight them up with thin strokes or do a light drybrush, and then only do the thin line high lighting on the edges of the pants, on knees and such. Depending on the color I'll either do a (shading) wash before or after the drybrushing. It all depends on the miniature though. I haven't painted the Bushwacker, so I can't really tell what I'd do for it, but unless it's a centrepiece type miniature, I would go with the easiest, and do the drybrushing. It can be a bit rough, but that's where the wash helps. And if you do several light drybrushes, going slightly lighter every time one can hardly tell. You posted this a while back, so hopefully you've already figured something out, but I figured I'd add a response anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tmod Posted July 13, 2016 Report Share Posted July 13, 2016 I usually try to use a wash thinned with water/gunk, but paint it along the creases instead of just flooding the area... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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