Wednesday, April 10, 2013

The Pen is Mightier..

Helpful Hints:
I thought I'd start putting some things up that may help people starting to paint or taking the next step into painting. So here's the first one, not in importance just the first one I thought would be some what helpful.

Keep a Painting Record:
This is a list of all the things you painted not the models, well I guess it actually is sort of.. but how to paint the things you have done. This will come in very handy if you are trying to figure out a color scheme for a model, squad and army. You'll need to remember the colors you used and technique you used to paint them. Say you paint up three different looks, you may forget what colors you used on the second color test, don't forget. Write it down. Or has it been a few months since you've worked on a certain project and for the life of you can't remember what colors you used for what? Pop open your notes and you are good. This happens to be a lot since I hop around painting stuff.

I just keep a small Notebook handy where I will write my whole process down if it's something I plan to replicate. The idea for the post came to me yesterday as I was looking at my paint schemes and thought maybe I should put them on the puter as well. Then thought, hmmm I'll make a post about it as well.

I use a format something like this:

Name of the project
Color I use
Brand (GW, VGC, etc..)
Mix (2w to 1p...) * w= Water p= Paint
Use (Base, Dark Blend, Mid Blend, Highlight, etc..)

So it's like
Color                     Brand                       Mix                         Use
Mech Red              GW                          2w to 1p                  Base
Blood Red             GW                           2w to 1p                  Edge Blend
so forth in steps.

If it's a very detailed paint job I'll add more of a description below the products used. Like Base blend with the airbrush, only spray highlights from top left or a reminder to do something before I do something else. The steps one takes can be as important as the materials used.

It's pretty simple and a lot of painters keep records. If you aren't I suggest starting, it could save you a lot of work down the road trying to figure out what was what from a year before. 8)

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