10 Tips and tricks

Posted in Custom Workstation

I have been asked a few times to make a tutorial. Because of all the lag time between layers and stuff, its going to be a while before I can set up a video camera and really do that well. But here are some tips at least!

1. Use Quality supplies. Good artists can use crappy supplies and make it look good, but they can be a real hurdle to beginners who benefit from not having the supplies as an extra hurdle. Sure, it sucks to spend $40 on a couple of filbert and liner brushes, but its worth it.
2. Use slow-dri or other paint retardant to thin paint and allow it to go on smoother, especially for faces and wide areas.
3. Use off-white instead of white for the eyes.
4. When painting eyes or other really small parts, use the tip of an xacto blade to immediately remove stray lines.
5. Use very thin coats of a quality, matte topcoat from far away, with a minimum of 5 minutes in between coats, to give the figure a flat finish, and to avoid gunky stickiness.
6. Use pastels for shading broader areas instead of a wash that can look like your character got rained on.
7. Use a wash for filling in small details like chainmail.
8. Hold figure up to a mirror when you think you are done and see if you still like it. This will immediately alert your eye to any odd symmetry issues, because its a fresh view for you, who has been staring at it for 4 hours.
9. Tutorials on figure-painting for model kits will pretty much work on action figures and you'll learn tips like drybrushing, which is the opposite of a wash.
10. Use different grades of sand paper. Start with 250, move to 550, and finish off with a scrap of t-shirt, which is essentially like 1500 grit.

Hope this helps!