The trouble
My goal is to show you how you can make your miniature painting better, more fun, with less start-up time, for greater visual impact, and that will give you ideas for future projects, with one simple trick: Use fewer paints.
The problem you may have come across is this: You are painting your happy little orc. But then you realize you have ran out of ‘Fungal Infection Green’ and now cannot highlight your orc’s skin! ‘Fungal Infection Green’ is one of five essential green paints you use for your orc warriors’ skin, and cannot function without it.
What if I were to tell you that you do, in fact, have the ingredients necessary to make ‘Fungal Infection Green’ right there on your hobby desk? If you have a reasonably vivid green paint, and a white paint, and possibly a couple of other colors there at hand, we can make ‘Fungal Infection Green’ for you.
How many greens do you really need to paint green?
One.
Color mixing can seem scary, I know. Especially if you mix with paints that have a lot of white, black or both pre-mixed in, resulting in greyish mud, and not what you thought you might get. And especially if you have sift through, like, 120 bottles to figure out what to throw into the pan. But if you stick with it for a little while, you will get the hang of it. Have courage!
The limited palette
So what are you suggesting, then, mister?I suggest, that you start mixing your own colors from a handful of “primary” colors and another handful of your comfort colors. “Primary” is in quotes because it is, in my estimation, not a very helpful designation in making color choices. Plus, any one paint cannot serve as a perfect example of “red” there will always be a bargain made when choosing paints for you palette. A matter I will return to in another post.
The phrase ‘limited palette’ can be understood in many different ways. In my opinion it’s best summarized as taking only the colors that you actually need and nothing else. It’s not a limitless palette. In practice it usually means between, say, six to twelve colors, somewhat evenly from around the color wheel.
I suggest you grab your favorite white, blue, red, yellow and greens paints. Then add to that selection your comfort colors, the browns and greys that you cannot live without. You want to paint the space marine in purple and have a bottle that you really like? Grab that too. Do you like to use black? Go for it. What you will end up with is in the ball-park of 8 to 12 paints. Maybe more, maybe less, don’t stress it too much.
Why do you do this?!The ‘why’ question, the most important one! I can only speak for myself, but my reason is to free my brain power to focus on more important matters than finding the correct pot of paint, shaking it ’till my should shatters again and then figuring out a spot for it on my wet palette. I do it to pour more focus onto the miniature at hand and to simplify color mixing. “Is this color bright enough? Is too blue, or not blue enough?” for example become quite simple questions. And if it is not bright and blue enough, the fix is right there.
Here’s Mark Carder to explain it in his terms. Mr. Carder is a successful portrait painter. His domain of expertise is not in painting space marines, but his knowledge of limited palettes and color mixing certainly carry over to our world as is.
The mixing
Now the rubber hits the road. My usual starting point is describing the color. What you will find is that some times that description alone is enough to get me at least close to what I wanted. A greyish green? It’s a green with a little grey in it, or alternatively it’s complementary color.
Did you watch Mark’s video? Did you find it useful? Here’s some more!
YouTube is just filled with art tutorials, such as Mark’s here. Make use of them and you will find nuggets of gold.
A couple of last things to say
I think that painting is a fantastic hobby. It’s mindful. It takes focus. Both things that are in high demand these days and we are training those qualities as we paint. Then there’s this limited palette stuff. That, I think, makes you a better painter. It makes you look at color differently than you may have previously. The two blue cars next to each other aren’t the same blue, but different. You notice how many greens there are, et cetera. Your surroundings – nature – starts to look different. It makes you are more skilled observer.
And that observation skill is what makes you an artist.
I hope you enjoyed this post. I hope to bring you more even if you didn’t! If you have any comments please send them my way, either down below, on Discord at ‘jonicon’, or email to info@ascetic.fi
Thanks for reading. Bye.
