Micro scale painting tips?

The Serene Badger

The Serene Badger

Vassal
I just bought Uther here to be a champion/hero for a unit of miners. In lots of pics I've seen what looked to be a book or something on his back. Turns out it's a lantern. Utterly tiny details. I'm almost certainly going to make life easy for myself and paint it unlit. But even so.

Do I pluck a single hair from my daughter's head to use as a brush and hold my breath whilst painting under a microscope? :lol:

Fortunately it's quite a long way down the (extensive) painting list, so I have time to get better!
 

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I would paint the lantern gold/brass, then throw a brown oil wash on it, removing it from the higher parts with the reductive technique. The capillary flow qualities of the oils will paint the thing for you on their own :) An enamel wash would do the same.
 
ugh.. even with very fine brushes, I have problems ¬_¬ I've been doing a bunch of books, including a couple which are open cause I'm an idiot.

sometimes, slightly wetter paint (not too wet) on the tip of a fine brush so they flow well can help do small details. Other times just dry brush the surface details.

Though Leadies wash cheat is probably more what I would end up doing on that lantern ^_^
 
KingOfTheLeadPile said:
I would paint the lantern gold/brass, then throw a brown oil wash on it, removing it from the higher parts with the reductive technique. The capillary flow qualities of the oils will paint the thing for you on their own :) An enamel wash would do the same.
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I shall definitely try this. I'm starting to build up more washes, though don't have any oils yesterday. I've mostly been using thinned contrast/speed paints so far
 
I see you've been using them but contrast paints should also work for this. You just need to dab it in the recesses and let the paint flow. I was helping my son paint his nids and they were a revelation! But I would probably paint it unlit too as it'll look odd if you don't then do OSL on the rest of the figure which just continues to crank up the difficulty
 
Mostyn said:
I see you've been using them but contrast paints should also work for this. You just need to dab it in the recesses and let the paint flow. I was helping my son paint his nids and they were a revelation! But I would probably paint it unlit too as it'll look odd if you don't then do OSL on the rest of the figure which just continues to crank up the difficulty
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I'm slowly figuring out most of the acronyms. I know OSL is some kind of cast light effect, but I don't know what the letters stand for?
 
Object Source Lighting. So light cast from the object onto the miniature. Can look very nice, as you said I doubt that lantern would be lit anyway. I'm sure there are some stonking example on the forum somewhere, until someone points them out you can make do with a an attempt I made from the lantern on my zombies!
 
Thanks, and those zombies look great! I'm going to be trying a bit of OSL from the firebox on my gyrocopter. Which may be my Golden Gobbo entry if it's done in time. I've been trying things like wet blending too. Mostly it's all going ok. Nearly done first base coat (redid the wooden bits as wasn't happy). If I don't get it done in time I've got an alternative. I've also got two more gyrocopters to do. And have definitely learned not to stick the damn rotor on before painting the next one!
 
Yeah, sorry. Object Source Lighting as said above. The hard thing with OSL (or at least the thing i struggle with) is that it only really works if you paint the rest of the miniature darker than normal. Otherwise you're lighting an already well-illuminated figure. So it can be awesome on display pieces or chatacter models but unless your doing a whole unit display doesn't tend to work en masse.
 
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