A painting rebirth

A couple of old tricks approached in a new way have really changed the painting landscape around here of late.

One was setting myself up with a good wet palette.

I used to use a contraption that required two layers of foam topped with a sheet of cooking paper (or greaseproof, as we call it in NZ).

It was small, slimy, needed to be cleaned out quite often and was a pain to organise. It was much better than no palette at all, but if I hadn't painted for a while it became yet another barrier to actually sitting down and putting brush to figure.

The internal monologue would go something like this: "Hmm, you know, I could just about do a little painting tonight. Ahhh, but  I'd need to rejig that palette before I could begin. Can I be bothered washing it out, cutting the foam sheeting to size and soaking it for the appropriate amount of time?"

And we all know how rhetorical a question that is...

But recently I saw someone somewhere talking about another way to do a wet palette. It needed a shallower tray and instead of fluffing around with foam you used a paper handy towel to hold the water, putting your greaseproof paper onto that. When not using it you put another tray over the top of it (upside down) to keep the moisture in.

I thought about it for a while, then went to the 100yen store and grabbed the required items.

Needless to say, it has been a big success. The paint keeps for days, so the only prep I need to undertake before painting is to remove the top tray. Over time the paint liquifies, so if you do it right you can use older splotches as a wash or mix them with a more recent (and thus thicker) blob to do, say, a cloak, or horses in a slightly different colour.

The second thing has been to use the dip. I tried a dip substitute previously when I was just starting out, but it didn't come out very well so I shelved it. I'd pull it out again for things like pteruges, but more as a wash than anything. Of course, I used Future / Klear, but again as a wash, to bring a paint job together or to provide a protective covering.

And so I laboured for years with spray undercoat, brown wash, block colours, highlight, the odd wash, Future/Klear protective coat, spray varnish.

It works great, but it takes a long time and there are various steps that you end up dreading, and this all contributes to painting fatigue (or laziness, in my case!).

Like everyone I've experimented with various ways to improve and to speed up painting (some of them catalogued in painful detail on this blog!) and met with varying degrees of success.

The trouble for me is limited time, limited motivation, and a large lead mountain.

Anway, I again came across some posts (isn't the internet great?!!) and realised that maybe I should try the dip again, only this time using it more strategically. "Bugger it," I thought; "nothing's getting painted without it, so why not give it a crack?"

A little experimentation showed what I'd been doing wrong when I last used it: a) I'd been too heavy handed, and b) I'd used it on the wrong colours.

It seemed that the tricks were to dip your brush in water before putting it into the mixture itself (and then to come back with a brush or tissue paper to get rid of any pooling on the figure), and to use it on muted colours, coming back with a highlight if needed.

Having painted almost 50 figures a week since these changes were implemented, they have helped me to put a serious dent in the Dark Age leadpile - so much so that I'm probably going to need to buy more to 'fill in a few gaps in the collection'.

So far so good. I guess we'll have to see how long it lasts!

Saxons and the dip: before and after.

This was going to be a quick, somewhat smug, post about how pleased I am with the dip method. I have a bunch of before dip photos (seen below), after which I dipped, highlighted, did the metallics and then sprayed with matt varnish. Sadly, despite doing a test figure that had no ill-effects, the Japanese humidity has ruined me. They are all struck with the dreaded frost!

Anyway, as a lesson for me, here are the befores (gray undercoat, black wash on armour, block painting the rest):

And the afters: dip, antique silver on the armoured bits, matt spray and... frosting!

I'll get up early in the morning before the humidity gets too high and give them another whack with gloss varnish to see if I can fix it thataway. If not, apparently olive oil does the trick. I am not too keen on having figures covered in olive oil though, so let's hope the gloss works!

A dip test

I've been getting a little frustrated with my failure to make much of an indentation in the lead mountain, so I thought I would try something different from my usual painting method to see if I like the results. Yes, the dip.

I have a mass of Essex late Dark Age / early medieval 15mm DBA armies picked up in a 3 for 2 sale some years ago, and they seem like good candidates for a block paint and dip approach. Not to mention that with Dux Bellorum on the shelf it seems criminal not to try to get them tableworthy.

So here we are then. Block paint dullish colours.

Add acrylic stain. Used as-is, and applied with a wet brush.

And voila.

Hmm. Not spectacular, but probably comparable to other more expensive products. With a highlight here and there and a coat of matt varnish these might look OK.