Warren Dew's figure painting page
The currently most popular method of painting fantasy figures involves
undercoating them with black, then painting the high surfaces in color.
The more recessed areas remain black, giving the impression of shadows
and highlighting detail even when the figure is picked up for viewing
with the light behind the viewer and no real shadows visible.
I don't really care for that style. To me, the shadowed areas are too
dark, giving the figures a grimy appearance.
I prefer painting each area of the figure the color it should actually
be, and allowing the lighting to produce shadows naturally. The downside
to this method, besides the fact that it's more difficult, is that when
the figure is picked up for viewing, the lack of shadows and contrast
will make the details less visible. The advantage is that when the
figures are set up on the table, the shadows will look more natural, and
the characters won't look grimy unless I purposely painted them that
way. Since my figures are almost always on the table when in use, this
is a big win as far as I'm concerned.
Here are a close ups of a few of my figures, photographed while on a
table, to illustrate what I mean.
These figures are one of the Games Workshop Lord of the Rings "dwarf
king" figures, and a dwarf figure from, I believe, Reaper Miniatures.
Notice how there is plenty of detail visible in the beards, even though
the paint is all the same color, and even though I didn't manage to focus
the picture perfectly. Also, notice how the dwarf king figure's scale
mail has natural shadows, with highlights visible only on the lower rows
of scales where they aren't shaded by the beard. That's what I'm talking
about when I talk about the shadows being more natural with this style of
painting.
By the way, I really like the Lord of the Rings line of figures. Unlike
most figures available these days, they have realistic proportions - in
this case, realistic for dwarves - in terms of both the body and the
weapons. The Reaper figure, in contrast, has hands that are a bit too
large, even for a dwarf, and a weapon that's big enough to be a two
handed axe. The relative ease of painting the whites and irises of the
eyes in the oversize head don't really make up completely for the
imperfect proportions.
The Lord of the Rings line also has lots of nice detail, which while it
makes painting a bit more of a pain, makes the figure nicer once done.
The only real downside to this line is that they are not true 25mm
figures, as they are scaled to 30mm humans; the Lord of the Rings dwarf
here is about 23mm from the top of the base to the top of the head, which
is nearly as tall as a human should be. That bit of scale inflation is
common to most of the figure lines being produced these days.
Here are three female dwarves from my campaign - Sapphire, Mara, and
Crystal. You'll notice they all use the same figure - again, I believe,
a Reaper figure - which just shows how limited the selection of female
dwarf figures is. The chain mail is in better focus here, so you can see
how the natural shadows really pick out the texture of the chain mail
well, without any artificial help from paint.
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