Miniature Figure Painting Techniques and

Concepts

PAINTING DISCUSSION WITH GREG DIFRANCO

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 Introduction
• The key Concepts that will be discussed today are
– Mixing the base, shadow and highlight colors
• Color Value (light and dark, aka shading)
• Importance of middle tones
– Color Mixing and intensity
• Harmony (bright vs muted colors)
• Warm vs cool colors
– Properties of manufactured colors
• Oils vs acrylics vs enamels
– Lighting source and effect (aka where to paint highlights and shadows)
• Halo and Stop Sign concepts
• Directional Light for Flats (Advanced Session)
– Impact painting

2
 Introduction
• The key Techniques that will be discussed today
are
– Control the Casting
– Obtaining Paint Flow
– Paint Brush use and care
– How and why to modify manufacturers paint colors
– Blending (acrylic techniques and oil techniques)
– Edging and outlining
– Edging- Hard and Soft Edges
– Trompe L'Oeil (aka painting detail that isn’t there )
– Metallics
– Faux Metallics (mainly for flats)
– Painting difficult colors such as red, black and white
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 Introduction
• The objects that will be discussed today are
– Eyes
– Faces
– Hair
– Large Clothing Areas
– Folds
– Details such as buttons, medals, lace etc
– Stripes, Chevrons,
– Belts and buckles
– Leather items
– Metallics
– Lace

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 Color Value
• Color Value is the lightness or darkness of a
color, aka highlighting and shading
– when you mix highlights and shadows you are
creating color value!!
• Try preparing a gray scale chart
• match your color mix to the chart
– Middle Tones are very important
• Avoid the tendency to over use highlights and
shadows
– When you select a tube or bottled color
understand what value it is! 5
 Color Value
• Paint a grey scale

Match color values

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 Basic Color Harmony
• Color Harmony describes the concept of modifying paint
colors to work together on a figure and fit within a
consistent light environment, ex. Sunny or hazy days
• Basic Rules
– Consider how many bright or vibrant colors you are using
– Decide whether your scheme is warm or cool
– Mute other colors with browns or greys
• Exercise
– Pick out the 2 bright colors you will be using on your figure
– Experiment by muting a bright green

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 Color Harmony
• Chroma (color brilliance)
– oils tend to be very chromatic
• need to be greyed or neutralized
• Understand the chroma of the paint bottle you select
– And modify as necessary

• Vallejo/Citadel etc can also be chromatic

• Enamels are sometimes too grey and need
some brilliance added back
– oils colors for shadows helps reduce grey look
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 Color Harmony

• Complimentary Colors (the color wheel)

– greying colors
– Muted Colors
• by mixing opposites
• can use browns

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 Napoleonic Uniform

Local colors

Add

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 Advanced Color Harmony
• Local color vs modified color
• Using cool and warm colors for impact
• Muting colors
• Consistent color harmony on each item of your figure

• local color - The true color of an object or a surface as

seen in typical daylight, rather than its color as seen
through atmosphere or interpreted by the taste or
imagination of the artist. Thus the characteristic local color
of a lemon is yellow.

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 Warm and Cool Colors

• Warm Colors
– Tend towards yellows and reds, grass green
• Sunny days, desert scenes, etc
• Cool Colors
– Tend towards blues, violets, burnt umber
– Late afternoon, winter scenes, etc
• Provides a consistent color key to use
throughtout the figure and groundwork

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 Halo Effect
• The light source
– From Above (the “Halo” effect)
• light from above and all around figure
• keep most of figure in mid tones
• do not just highlight outer surfaces, FROM ABOVE
– be consistent where you place your values!!!
• Determine whether the object or item is facing directly into the
light source – perpendicular to it – or turning away from it.
• Then keep ALL values in each area consistent within each
value area

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 Halo Effect- Light Direction
A belt

Halo light (Rounds) Side light (Flats)

Reflected light
/color

Shadow edge
Bright highlights above

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 Form and Middle tones
– Paint major areas of mid tone, highlights and
shadows first
• think of simple forms, e.g.. Cylinders, cones, etc.
• use grey scale to determine where values go on
figure
– Then add details
• values of details must fit within the light scheme,
including folds, etc.

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 Form and Middle tones
• Example of major areas to paint first

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 Light and Shadow Concepts
• Hard and Soft Edges
– the turning edge (soft edges)
• feathering, soft transition to shadows
– large areas, large folds,
• hard edges, sharp lines, sharp highlights
– belts, seam edges, flaps, lips
– more like drawing, no feathering of paint

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 Directional Light (Advanced)
• The light source is not using the Halo
• Instead, the light source is coming from one
side (like a sunny day environment)
• puts one side of figure in shadow
• common on flats
• Difficult to pull off with round figures
• Shadows should have reflected color but be on the
grayer side

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Metallics

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 Non metal painted Metallics
• Use a slightly greyish yellow for base color
– such as yellow ochre with a touch of raw umber
• Use colorful greys for white metals
– such as burnt umbers, yellow ochres, some blues
• Keep all values on the dark side
– Add a focused and bright HOT SPOT
– Add reflected color (tends towards warm colors)
– Upper surfaces tend towards blue (reflect the sky)

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 Non metal painted Metallics
• Paint in reflected lights where you would normally
paint dark shadow
– orange is nice for yellow metals
• low luster gloss applied
• finish with glossy bright white hot spot
– gloss enamel is good
– keep hot spot very small, or sharp

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 Focused Light and Creating Impact (Advanced
Session)

– Using a wide range of values you can create

impact by focusing strong highlights in key
areas
– Must be used sparingly
– The majority of the figure is keyed to the darker
side
– Trompe L'Oeil (Advanced Session)

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 Trompe L'Oeil
(Advanced Session)

– Refers to creating forms with paint

– Examples, painting lace or chevrons without
any sculpted relief.
– Key is a defined and sharp highlight and
detailed outlining

– Exercise – paint chevrons on an arm

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