Mixing Paint

Is miniature painting art, or is it just 3D coloring, like the adult coloring books that are so popular these days? I'm not really sure. It's pretty relaxing, so I find it an enjoyable way to spend time, but as an amateur I would say I'm more 3D coloring than "painting". Feel free to disagree. As a beginner I spend a lot of time looking at other people's work, and when I find something I like I try and copy it. This is why I'm pretty sure I just do 3D coloring. 

Occasionally, when I feel ready for a challenge, I forgo all my nice little pots of ridiculously named Games Workshop paints and I get out my box of Liquitex Acrylic Gouache, black, white, red, green, blue, and yellow. The upside is you know what the colors are, but this comes at the apparent cost of reproducibility, in that you can't match a color you already have by opening a pot. As we'll see, it doesn't really matter.  

With my massively oversized palette, and a terrible bottom color (denim) showing through I tried to actually mix paint today.  I figure that it's one of those things; unless you try you're unlikely to get better.

I chose one of my more disturbing Scibor miniatures for this, partly because it spoke to me, but mostly because it didn't really matter what color it ended up being. Seriously, nobody knows what color this is, so it can be whatever I decide. This is the exact opposite of, say, a giraffe, if you paint a giraffe the wrong color, like purple, everyone will probably assume you are either: a) an "artist", b) high, or c) a & b. No, it's actually none of the those answers, they'll just assume you're color blind and that you suck at painting. 

With my palette set up with the primary colors along with black and white, I set out on my journey.

In all I spent the better part of a morning painting this figure, and truth be told things worked out a lot better than I expected.  With lots of room on the palette I was able to mix different colors with ease and I was also able draw them out into series by adding progressive amounts of white, black, or other tones. 

The net result was that there was always lots of colors on the palette, and because the paint is cheaper than GW paints, (which are right up there with printer toner and cocaine), there was lots to work with. The other thing that happened was that the figure acquired a larger depth of tone than it normally would because you have a ALL THE COLOR right in front of your face. So not pots to open, no fiddling around, just painting. It was super pleasant, and I'm looking forward to trying again.

Keep having fun,

HMP