Getting it done... or not

Yesterday I didn't get as much done as I had hoped. This is not unusual. It happens almost every day.

I always feel that my goals for the day are reasonable, but I continually fail to meet them. Don't know if I set unrealistic goals, get distracted too much, or am just slow. 

Most likely it's a combination of all three, but I think it's primarily distraction and slowness.

I know speed comes with practice, just like every other kind of improvement. But I've been painting for years. Of course, I have learned that there are other painters, like me, who have been painting for years and are still quite slow. 

I think what I need is more deliberate, focused practice. I need to take some minis and just paint them as fast as I can without being too worried about precision, especially in the early stages.

And that takes us right back to making a mess and fixing it later.      

Fixing it

 Had a little trouble with the War Mammoth because the paint was chipping off while I handled it. 

It's one of the issues with large minis where you can't put it on a holder. Not really much can be done to avoid it sometimes. Especially on a Reaper Bones mini which can't be primed.

But I finished painting it. Ended up having to do a gloss coat over it to stop the chipping after touching it up. Now I just have to hope the matte coat will kill all the gloss. Shiny fur just looks wrong. 

The gloss coat also has a tendency to feel a little tacky. No one wants a sticky miniature. If the matte coat doesn't fix it, I'll have to repaint the whole thing.

Here's hoping...

Lesson Learned

 So, I think I've finally tackled my OSL (Object Source Lighting) problem I was having on my Devil May Cry models.

Turns out I was overdoing it. I was painting the lighting effect onto what would be a deep black surface. And I kept pushing it really bright. 

And it looked not so great. Because it was wrong. A super-black surface wouldn't reflect like that. I repainted the base with dark colors and it looks much better.

I still have much to learn about materials and reflections, but this is an important step for me, I think.

The Hard Parts

 For those who don't know, I stream on Twitch. Yesterday I was streaming a Devil May Cry board game project. The miniature I'm currently working on for that has a fire effect on the base, so it needs lighting effects.

I'm not good at lighting effects. I'm alright with basic highlighting and shading as if a neutral light is being cast onto the model. But once color is introduced, I'm just not sure how to achieve the effect.

I have four miniatures like this to do. I know it will be good practice, but right now I'm just a little in over my head trying to think of how to tackle it.

"Make a mess then fix it" is advice I often hear with miniature painting, or art in general. It's what I'm doing. I know that sometimes getting started, looking at the blank page, or canvass... or that next stage of painting, can be the hardest part.

Just getting something on there gets your brain working on the problem. It helps. We may not know what the right path is, but once we start, we can tell if we're on the wrong one and change course.

Decision

I ended up completely assembling the 13-part War Mammoth. I was starting to rub off paint by handling it while I fitted some of the pieces together over and over checking to make sure everything was painted that needed to be.

I ended up discovering quite a few places that needed paint even though, when unassembled, they looked like they would be hidden. Lots of touching up will be needed.

The downside is that now things will be harder to reach. More care and precision will be needed to get into some areas. And some places will be impossible to reach without getting paint onto other areas. Which means more touching up.

So, it's all together now. Some things will be easier, some harder. There isn't always an ideal choice.  

Errors

 So, I was painting a miniature yesterday, a War Mammoth, and realized I had painted something the wrong material. I had it painted as metal, and it turned out that it should have been leather.

This happens quite a bit in miniature painting but doesn't often get discussed. Trying to figure out what's what on a sculpt done by a stranger can be hard. Especially once you factor in mold-lines and the imperfect duplication that occurs with cheaper materials and processes.  

Cheaper miniatures often have soft features which can distort our perception of what they are supposed to be. It can be quite frustrating when you paint something and halfway through realize you need to completely repaint an entire section.

But the good news is you can repaint it. That's the beauty of miniature painting. You can always fix it. And I did.