Tutorial
How to
paint the Darkelf Rider of Freebooter Miniatures
by Holger Schmidt
Part 2
Painting the rider
I started the actual painting of the miniature with the rider. I usually start with all the deeper lying parts of the miniature working my way to the outer surfaces. Usually this means painting the skin first followed by the inner clothes (e.g. shirt, throuser etc.), the outer clothes (cloak, jacket, boots) and finishing it with the hair, the smaller details and all handheld stuff. Not everytime this way is the best to paint a miniature so don't follow it strictly. Now before I started with the actual painting beginning with the skin I painted all deeper recesses black. I blackened all areas which are not really visible and difficult to reach with a brush. While some miniature painters consider this a sacrilege I think it has two major advantages. The surfaces I paint black are very hard to see so they are in the background of the miniature. I think it is not necessary to paint those parts, I rather concentrate on all the visible parts of a miniature and save my time for that work. The black background also adds depth to the miniature which looks much more dynamic and three dimensional!
The recesses were blackened:
With
one or two exceptions I painted the rider this way: the surfaces were primed
with a dark version of the color of my choice, after that I used more and
more lighter tones of the color to work out the shadows and lights. I used
thinned down acryl colors (artists colors of Daler-Rowney and Rembrandt) mixed
with water. Because the colors are thinned they are not covering the surface,
this way you can archive very fluid transition between the different color
tones. Paint the tone only once over the surface and let it dry. After that
you can paint it a second or third time until the part of your choice will
reach the color tone you want it to have. I also paint the different tones
by starting with the brush at the darker shade and move it towards the lighter
part of the surface. This is another way to make sure the transition between
the different tones will become fluid.
The first surface I painted was the skin as mentioned before, in this case
only the face. I decided to paint it grey (consisting only of white and black)
and give it a glaze of purple. I used a blue purple thinned with a lot of
water. I do not use any form of inks or washes prepared by some hobby companies.
Painting
the skin in six steps starting with the darkest tone working up to the lightest:
The eyeballs came next for which I never use a pure white but add to it a tiny bit of yellow to make it look natural. Next come the pupils as well as the eyelashes which are important to seperate the eyes from the rest of the face and make them clearly visible for each viewer. I used black for the eyes of the darkelf. To add life to the face and the eyes I also paint a white reflection point on the pupils. If you take a look at the step by step pictures of the face you will see that those little points make a great difference.
Painting the eyes: a white reflection adds life to the face (second picture):
To paint the hair I used black and dark grey. I paintd strong contrasting highlights (very light grey) for light reflections:
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8 - Part 9 - Part 10 - Part 11