Painting Techniques: By Kenneth Taba, Revised April 2000
Shading and HighlightingThere are only 2 techniques of shading and highlighting that I use, Drybrushing and Washes. That’s it, everything else is just multiple applications of those 2 techniques.
Of course when I say multiple applications, I’m talking anywhere from 5 to 20 repeated uses of washes and 1 to 5 repeated uses of drybrushing.
Occasionally I will use watered down inks as a wash to enrich/deepen the overall colors, this is "usually/not always" done as a last step and normally only applied to certain parts of the detail that I am shading.
Note:
The paint used to highlight should be a lighter shade of the base color or an off shade of the base color, example: If your base color is green, the color for your highlight wash should be a "lighter shade of green" or a "light yellowish green".
The paint used to shade should be a darker shade of the base color or an off shade of the base color, example: If your base color is green, the color for your shade should be a "darker green" or a "darker bluish green".
The more you repeat using these steps to shade and highlight a specific detail, the smoother your shading and highlighting will look,
The color you choose for you base coat can have a profound effect/importance upon the finished paint job/shading.
The color you use as your Base Coat should usually be a mid-tone (general color) that you want to paint on for that detail. Example; if you want to paint a light blue cloak your base coat would be a light blue and you would shade with a darker blue and highlight with an even lighter blue/bluish white.
Occasionally you will want to use a color that doesn’t cover very well (Reds and Yellows are translucent). In this case you would want to under coat with white and base coat with a bright Red or Yellow and only shade down, since using Reds or Yellows to highlight is difficult. The translucent qualities of these colors means that, if you try to use them to highlight over a darker color, you won’t be able to get your highlights very light. They will be rather dark. (Of course there is nothing wrong with this as long as that is the effect you want)
You can get some wonderful shading effects if your base coat is a different color from the color you want the detail to be painted.
Example, painting a white cloak:
This can be applied to any colors, the most obvious example is the issue of primering the miniature black or white, if primed black the paint job is usually darker and if primed white, the paint job is usually brighter.
Paint consistency on brush:
Note:
Drybrushing produces a grainy surface texture, which is visible. It is also messy due to the method of application. (Note: see Combination Drybrushing and Washes)
Because of this, I identify any detail that I plan on using the Drybrush technique on and those are the parts that I will paint first. Because you would end up drybrushing paint onto other detail, which you don’t want to do if you’ve already painted the surrounding detail.
1) Dip the tip of your brush in the paint, (do not use a good brush, use a worn out brush or one made for drybrushing).
2) Nearly all of the paint should be removed from the brush by wiping/brushing it off onto a napkin or something similar. Alternately you could dilute your paint prior to wiping/brushing it off on the napkin, this will give a smoother effect but is very hard to control without getting streaks because there is more fluid paint held within the center of the brush, this comes out when you drybrush, so you would need to be careful and also "press/squeeze" out any excess paint prior to drybrushing the detail
Application:
1) Brush off almost all of the paint on a napkin so that the brush is practically dry of any paint. (newspaper, card board etc. this is just something to remove most of the paint from the brush).
2) Using quick, light strokes of your brush in a back and forth motion, brush the raised areas of the detail you want to drybrush. The more paint you removed from your brush, the more gradual and smooth your drybrushing will be. If you left a lot of paint on your brush, you’ll end up with paint caked on your detail, it will also be very grainy at best and at worst, you’ll end up with streaks.
Except for a few types of detail. I use this method for most of my shading and highlighting. This is also the most frustrating technique to master because it requires a lot of patience.
Paint consistency:
A wash is simply Acrylic paint/Ink that’s been diluted with water. A wash should range from the consistency/transparency of "really dirty water" to something like skim milk. The consistency that you make the wash is dependent upon what you are doing with it. If you are going to use many re-applications of the wash, then you would want a really thin wash, and the thinner the wash, the more gradual and smooth your shading and highlighting will be.
The amount of wash that you want on your brush for doing this is very little. It should not be dripping off your brush. You should only be able to tell that your brush is wet so that when you apply the wash to the painting surface, it only goes where you put it. You don’t want it to pool on the surface.
Below is an illustration of the basic idea of multiple layers of washes to build up the highlights or shading. Please note that you could start with the smallest coat and each successive coat covers more area or you could do it the other way around, covering the broadest area and covering less with each successive coat.
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The method I actually use is based upon the above illustration/sample, but I also inter-space a full layer of wash every-so-often to even out the layers. It looks like this:
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Note:
Red and Yellow paints don’t cover very well to begin with so when shading and highlighting these I suggest base coating with white, painting either with your red or yellow then shading down using another darker color such as:
1) For reds I undercoat with white, base coat with red, then I use purple paint/inks or blue for the wash to shade.
2) For yellows I undercoat with white, base coat with yellow, then I use something in the beige/brown tones to shade..
3) All the other colors are opaque enough to be used to highlight or shade using the wash technique.
Once again the thinner you make your wash, the more layers of the wash you will have to apply, but the benefit of this is a really smooth and gradual shading/highlight.
Ink consistency:
For most applications, you will need to water down your inks a bit, thought for certain effects/steps you may want to use full strength inks.
Application:
Inks can be used full strength or diluted as a Wash (see Washes – application)
Weapon Blades: (see Weapon Blades that are adjoining)
1) Under coat the detail with black paint
2) Base coat with silver, gunmetal or steel color paint
3) Black Ink wash (see Washes – application)
Note: For unusual metal colors like metallic Blue, Green or Red, I use colored inks over a solid, even base coat of silver and very gradually build up the shading using very dilute inks. Leaving silver as the highlights. You have to be very careful of your application of the inks, wipe off most of the ink from the brush onto a paper towel or something before painting onto the silver. It is very easy to over ink the detail in one step and if this happens you will end up with splotches of darker color in areas.
Gold Jewelry/detail:
1) Under coat the detail with black paint (if your gold paint doesn’t cover well, you might want to try undercoating with white and over that paint with yellow)
2) Base coat with Gold
3) Ink wash using Chestnut Brown ink (a reddish brown ink) over all the gold detail (see Washes – application)
4) Highlight with Gold (see Washes – application)
5) Ink wash using Yellow ink
6) Optional or as desired, you could then highlight again with a silver wash (see Washes – application)
Characteristics:
Most inks will stain acrylic paint
Problems with Inks:
Ink pigmentation grind is so fine that if you just "mop" (over saturate) the detail so that it pools in the recesses, it will dry from the edges first, leaving the deepest recesses clean and ink free, sort of like "ring-around-the-tub". You really don’t want to see this, just like you don’t want to see a ring-around-your-tub.
Benefits of using Inks:
Inks can brighten Yellows and Reds or deepen other colors, giving all of them a lot of depth or warmth.
Using Inks – Consistency:
Inks are watery to begin with, still for most applications, you will need to dilute it before using.
General use:
I recommend using inks as a last step in painting detail. The reason is that inks are water soluble even when dried and painting over inks will dissolve/reactivate the ink, which will mix with what you’re painting over it and change the color your painting. Having said that, inks are highly useful for adding depth to the final paint job overall or if only applied to recesses or on the highlights of the detail.
Combination Drybrushing & Washes
When I use Combinations and Why
Practically the only time I use Drybrushing is for detail that is really, really fine or complicated such as Hair, Fur, Feathers and also for Metallic Silver Weapons such as Weapon blades and Weapon barrels or Armor like Steel Chain Mail or Steel Plate Armor.
When I do use Drybrushing, I never use it alone as a technique (not for my best efforts anyway-i.e. competitions) I always combine it with the Washing technique. The reason for this is that the Washing technique will soften and even out the roughness of Drybrushing, and will also help to smooth out the shading and highlighting that I am trying to accomplish.
Steps used to apply the combination method for:
Hair, Fur & Feathers:
1) Paint the base coat color
2) Drybrush a lighter color over the base coat
3) Wash the detail all over with a wash of the base coat color
4) Wash the recessed parts of the detail with a darker wash
5) Drybrush the detail with a lighter color
6) Wash the detail all over with a wash of the base coat color
7) As needed/desired, ink wash all over the detail and/or specific areas of the detail to make the colors richer/deeper (I don’t mean darker)
Weapon Blades, Weapon Barrels & Steel Plate Armor:
1) Undercoat the detail with black paint
2) Drybrush with silver paint
3) Wash recesses/shadowed areas (places on the detail that are supposed to be darker) with a watered down black ink wash (see Washing-application)
4) Wash highlight portions of the detail with a wash of silver paint. i.e. sword edges, highlights for weapon barrels & Steel plate Armor (see Washing-application)
Steel Chain Mail – method #1:
1) Undercoat the detail with black paint
2) Drybrush with silver paint
3) Ink wash all over the detail using black ink
4) Drybrush with silver paint
Steel Chain Mail – method #2:
1) Undercoat the detail with black paint
2) Base coat with silver paint
3) Ink wash all over the detail using black ink
4) Drybrush with silver paint
Continue on to next section "Special Considerations"
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