I've been watching a fair number of painting videos recently.
Some of them I think "well that's impressive", but on more than a few I think ... "well that looks awful." Now this is after the video maker has trimmed and scraped, primed, base coated, added three coats of varnish and been very careful about using the right shade of pig snot green on their KV2.
My daughter is a musician. We discuss guitars. Is a £200 guitar twice as good as a £100 guitar? If so, is a £400 guitar twice as good as a £200 one? This means your Les Paul's need to be considerably better than a Stagg.
So if you spend 4 hours on your KV2, is it twice as good as if you spent 2 hours? Will spending 8 hours make it twice as good as a 4 hour job?
Part of it is style. A few videos I've watched produce results that I would never emulate. What "looks" right to you may look a right bu**er to someone else.
"Art is never finished, only abandoned" - da Vinci.
And Aart is sadly missed!
Well, from experience and taking the wargaming line.
I once saw a mate win a GW 40K gaming competition using nothing but cardboard shapes to act as bases, with the supposed figures names written in pen atop the crappy bits of card.
He beat many a finely painted army, and won the competition.
The GW staff running the whole show frowned on him not having purchased any of their toys, in fact on him having not a single figure in sight in any of his games, and stripped him of the prize the winner should have won - which was a free 40K army of his choice (He would have asked for the toys that he was meant to be using in the first place!).
I think that is one way to answer your question.
Bigger isn't always better. Expensive doesn't always guarantee qualtity. Spending feck all won't win you anything, especially not in a GW competition ;D
I shall come back to this topic. ;)
Just as a start, though, I'd say that in a painter's very early days, if he/she was to spend twice as much time......Yes.......You'd get as twice as good a result. (Though that's very, very subjective, of course.)
BUT....as the skills improve, you'd have to spend longer and longer to 'double' the impact......Doubling up, time wise, doesn't make it look twice as good....It's a definite sliding scale...which, to my mind gets worser & worser. (sic) ;D ;D ;D
Like I say.......I'll be back.
Cheers - Phil
Sort of an inverse square rule.
Prehapes a Techno Scale could be developed where a T1 is twice a T0, a T2 four times, and so on.
T3 consistently win the annual painting competitions - although most of us are T0's with about 30% T1's and a smattering of T2's and 3's.
If I don't take pictures of my guys and post them they are really quite acceptable with colour blocks and a black or brown wash :)
I don't know, I generally get bored long before I can spend many hours painting a figure. Thats why I like painting 10mm, I can paint a unit in a few hours. Whereas in 28mm I never get much stuff finished as I loose interest.
But its definitely a case of needing to spend lots more time to gain small improvements in appearance. There is a base amount of time that needs to be spent to get paint of the right colour on all the right bits. Then after this shading and detailing takes time for smaller degrees of return.
It depends what you are painting for, good looking units on the table, or small groups to look good when photographed. Both might take the same time, but the former gives you far more troops in that time.
Once you get to a certain level you need to spend something like an extra 100% for an extra 25% improvement. It all depends what you want to achieve. I'll spend many hours on a competition entry and even then still find bits that can be improved.
An average 10mm model will take about an hour which people may think why? I think why not? If I had to get 2 armies painted for to recreate Hastings next month I may think different, but I haven t so I don't :)
Quote from: d_Guy on 05 October 2016, 06:47:35 PM
If I don't take pictures of my guys and post them they are really quite acceptable with colour blocks and a black or brown wash :)
That's all I do. Maybe a little highlight occasionally
I think a lot depends upon the distance you view the figure. On a wargames table, lots of intricate painting and detailing simply disappear; hold it close up and it's another matter. As an example a friend sold 1/48th scale Sherman tanks as kits and they were wonderfully detailed etc. One of the top AFV painters painted one for an article in a magazine. The results were stunning when viewed in said magazine. The chap then kindly sent the finished model to my friend to keep and to be honest, it looked a fairly normal paint job when viewed a foot or so away. You could only appreciate the effort put in via photographs, not by the naked eye.
Each to his own. If you want to spend a massive amount of time painting and have no time left for other aspects of the hobby then that's fine. If you want to spend as little time as you can painting and they look fine to you then that's okay as well. Some painters use 3 layers of shading on 10mm, others don't use any it's all a matter of personal choice. What works fine for one might not work for another. It's your hobby so do whatever you want to whatever standard you want and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
By the way, I work to the 2 foot observation rule.
MickS
All good points, team.
Cheers - Phil
I've no idea how much is too much but long experience has finally taught me that enough is when you have models you are content to put on a wargames table.
It's nice to have people say nice things about your figures but better still to have people say nice things about you as an opponent.
Well said, that man =D>
Interesting stuff.
There's a sort of chart that can be drawn plotting gaming vs modelling. I think I'm fairly high on the gaming side, and mid on the modelling side. I like to get my stuff painted and can't be fashed with three coats of varnish and scenic basing of more than some static grass.
I also have the two foot rule, but my eyesight is awful!
Older eyes have allowed me to be a little cavalier about painting standards - increasingly everything looks good :)
One of our problems here is that modern tech encourages sharp pictures and these can be zoomed into, so 6mm and 10mm can be studied on our screens at a ridiculous level that is seldom kind - their true strength is in general painting that is then presented en-masse.
Half a pint of the vile stuff! Oh, sorry, wrong thread. :-[
Painting is a skill and as all the skills you could improve working on it. There is also part of natural innate talent.
But once you take the few basic techniques, in my opinion, is Patience and Time, slowly strokes, paint layer after layer, patiente, more patiente.... another layer... have a tea... another layer, slow strokes.
I do not have time and I want huuuuge armies to be painted as quick as possible.... so for me 10mm in my rush quick paint sytle works.
Ooh, the way you expressed that has made come over all funny.
Quote from: Leman on 06 October 2016, 08:32:02 PM
Ooh, the way you expressed that has made come over all funny.
Uh-Wot!? :o
Read it in a Fenella Fielding voice. Oh hang on, you're an American so you've probably never heard of her. Anyone out there point to an American with a Fenella Fielding type voice?
:-\
I reckon she was almost a 'one-off'.
"Do you mind if I smoke ?"
Cheers - Phil
Spend half the time on the figures and twice the time on the board, the ensemble effect will be more than gratifying.
Well that's just made my afternoon. ;D ;D ;D
A hottie in her prime! I thought you meant to type "comb-over" (which was puzzling) but, no, you meant "come over". Not aware of an American equivalent - Jim Backus maybe.
I think I paint to a reasonable standard. (I get occasional positive comments.) BUT I paint to get them looking good on the table as I am foremost a gamer
10mm
Figures get block painting and a wash. very occasionally a highlight
Vehicles get a block paint, wash and two highlights
15mm
Figures get more careful block painting and a wash. and a highlight
Vehicles get a block paint, wash and two highlights
20mm
Figures get careful block painting and a wash. and a highlight
Vehicles get a block paint, wash and two highlights plus weathering
28mm
Figures get Careful block painting, basic shading and highlighting plus a wash
Faces in all scales get a wash of the appropriate colour to show the shape of eyes etc
I only paint eyes on big monsters
The main thing to remember is a a good base hides a multitude of sins.
I know this as I have some Orcs that are the same models as most of my army but painted by a really, really good painter. With multiple levels of shading and highlighting and super detailing I have based them the same as the rest of my orcs and Sunjesters. at 2 feet you cannot tell whose are whose.
For me to much is when I get bored and don't finish units or it becomes a chore. Being new to the hobby this year I've noticed not only better results, as I become more experienced but it happens in half the time (mostly).
To much or not to much, that is the question. It's starting to get too much for me. FK, help!
Spend some quality time away from your computer.
I think it's possible to go overboard. I have a friend who treats every model in his army like its a Golden Demon entry. Consequently he's been working on the same army for years and might get it done this year.
I put a high level of effort into my figs but I use every cheat and fast technique I can find. For example I tried doing a NMM thing for my dark elder jet bikes. I spent way to long layering up from dark gray to white. It looks good (but not amazing). I then saw that some guy recommended that you paint your blade with leadbelcher, wash in nuln oil and then dry brush silver for the NMM look. It took much, much less time and frankly it looks better.
I say cheat where you can, a fully painted army will always be more impressive then one really nicely painted fig.
Hi all,
Sorry I have not been on much, lots of travel abroad these past months. I have my Malburians and should get a chance to paint away. As I have mentioned when I first joined. I am more a painter than a gamer, so for me it's all about the painting. If you remember I'd done almost 300 28mm Napoleonics in a month, which includes, 3 levels of highlighting, washes, etc etc. So here you 5c worth.
1. Simple techniques, find and try simple techniques, simple because it will be quick and easy and a technique which will be easy to remember and duplicate.
2. The factory process. Do a unit at a twine, no matter the number, 12, 24, 30 or 100. Ok maybe not 100 unless it's 6mm😛.
3. Keep track of your paint compilations, eg for red I always use the same set of 3, so I am not wasting time selecting or remembering and it helps with the technique keeping it simple.
4. Lastly and probably most importantly, be neat. Stay within the detail. A simple paint job without highlight, shade if it is clean, crisp neat work, looks better than a highlighted shaded figure that is done going outside the detail.
Anyway just some thoughts.
Cheers
These simple rules men's I can put out a 30 figure 10 mm unit in one night, 28mm in a week. Without neglecting my family, the dog or the lawn mowing.
I often end up with 70-100 at a time, especially FPW!
Well said Obsidian =D>
It's like anything - the law of diminishing returns. The better you get, the less improvement you get for 'x' hours. It's like Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the tortoise- always getting closer, but always a bit left to do.
somewhere in the dim and distant past (possibly in the Battle magazine) I read an article about painting 25mm figures (that's all we had back then) in which the author said you shouldn't spend more than 1 minute per colour pass per figure. That is if you have 10 figures you should be able to do all the brown, blue, red bits on all the figures in 10 minutes per colour.
It struck me as a good idea and although it's difficult to equate to 10mm figures I'm currently painting some Pendraken 10mm arabs in 40 man units and recon anything more than 30 minutes for a complete pass of a colour is taking too long. The 40 units are taking about 4 hours each on average which I'm happy with. However the basing is taking longer than it should,
Gawd! Mine take days! Then there is the basing...
Basing is taking longer than it should? How long is a piece of string. If at the end of basing it looks the way you want it to then that's how long it should have taken. I've seen the way some folk do quick basing and it looks appalling - basing didn't take long enough, at least to satisfy my eye.
I am a member of the short string school :)
'Frayed knot!