Hey guys, i completely f* up the name of the person painting the shield, it is of course Olmo Castrillo, a fantastic painter. Go check out his work: instagram.com/olmo_castrillo_miniatures/
Love your channel ! After my devorce (20yrs relation & mariage) i was struggling and someone told me "Bro, go do something you loved as a kid. Its therapeutic and may help you", so i went back in time and rebooted a hobby i had as a kid. Modeling and painting.. I bought a 3D-printer and just started making things completely ignorant and unknown how much it meant to me... This ultimately pulled me back into the hobby and im lovin it! Feels like refinding parts of myself i lost during growing up.. It sure is true that growing up is the first step of loosing pure imagination and unbound fantasy one had as a kid.. Im realy happy i picked it up and refound a passion i had as a kid.. I havent seen much of your vids yet, just a few but i would like to thank you for giving so much insight on painting miniatures & the technics etc behind it all.. Much appriciated and keep up the good work! Thank you :)
I played 40k in the 90s, just got back into it the last month or so. Don’t even have an army yet, just some guardians, a couple warlocks and a farseer, with more on the way (oldhammer minis ftw)… I could paint decently back in the day. Well enough to win small local competitions as a youth. But times have changed. What I did back then is child’s play compared to the standard now. Which is awesome (if only GW would advance the Eldar mini line as much!), but has me working to catch up. This video… I’ve watched it a dozen times and listened to it as many more. Thanks for this and your other tutorials. I’m already far better than I was back then, and I know I have a ton of room for improvement. Best of all, I see a clear path to get there.
Didn’t think about the highlights in the under folds of clothing, been completely over looking that, awesome I learned something I can immediately use. Thank you!👍👍
👑👑 I'm in the midst of releasing my dream miniature brush as well as some wonderfully sculpted miniature busts. It's something I'm really proud of and been working on for the better part of the last year. Late pledges are up and You can check it out here: www.squidmar.com/latepledge 👑👑
Everytime I have some doubts about how to use the lights to highlight my models I come back to this video. It's hard for newbies to understand how to run away from the "eavy" way to paint Space Marines and this video really helps to shine a light on the subject (pun intended). There are a lot of good painters out there but you are one of those who really contribute to teach. Thank you and you team.
This video is amazing. The lighting for cylinders, cubes, and spheres applies to a lot of art, including miniatures, obviously. This is why I think that artists shouldn't specialize in one or two areas and instead branch out, because by doing that, you learn a lot that applies to all the other mediums that you enjoy doing. Thanks for the amazing video Squidmar, it's helped me a lot!
Wow... just wow. I started painting a little less than a year and a half ago, and your videos have really inspire me a lot. I feel you're making me a way better painter. I don't have a lot of ressources and I never touched a brush or a camera in my life before all this, but the hobby is changing my life in a great way, and you are changing my hobby in an amazing way. So thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I hope I will some day be able to paint like a pro, I already see some amazing results! Keep on the great work, I'll be sure to watch everything to the end!
Oh, you sweet summer child... When I started painting - I sadly stopped a couple of decades ago - the White Dwarf was just coming up and Warhammer wasn't even released... So all this had to be learned by trial and error, by making the miniatures look as good as possible with as little work as possible. Acrylics were a new thing, so I learned this with enamel paints: totally different kind of torture, to be honest! Now I'm contemplating on taking my ancient paint toolbox out and dust off the unpainted miniatures I still have stashed somewhere only because of all these lovely videos around TH-cam. Your's being one of the top ones, for sure!
Same hee, warhammer wasn't a thing when I started, and some of those paint jobs were horrible to behold. No tutorial videos in those days, not for a long time after that. I dusted of my old kit and old models about 2 years ago and I'm just about seasoned enough to put out a few tabletop ready miniatures now. They're not great, but they're not totally embarassing either! I've got a lot of very old metal miniatures, some from D&D, some from warhammer and some from the old fantasy gamebooks like Lone Wolf. I need to paint them up and try to make them look decent!
This was eye opening! I paint as I listen to your videos and I was able to immediately appreciate the shapes on my mini and try some new techniques! I’ll be able to use this on every mini and I’m definitely sharing this with friends! Keep up the awesome work, thanks so much!
I still think like this lol. You have to get into thinking that the model might as well be in a painting scene. With different light sources and effects, that affect the composition.
The thing is, the brain processes many things in conjunction with one another. The amount of your field of view taken up by an object is far from the only thing the brain considers when determining how big something actually is. Shading, relative sizes, parallax, and even high-level concepts like what the object is used for all contribute to the final perception of an object. This why you can have a 100 foot sculpture of a spoon a few hundred feet away that might look like it is right in front of you, or a miniaturized figure of a building within in a whole miniaturized cityscape that encompasses your entire field of view seem like it is hundreds of feet tall. You learn to see in color within a month or two of birth. You learn object permanence in about a year or so. You don’t come with the understanding that a cube oriented differently and at a different distance under different lighting conditions is the exact same cube. You have to experience that cube repeatedly and under different parameters for your brain to associate all the different visual patterns as a single physical object. That’s why baby mobiles are so important. They “distract” babies because their 100 billion neurons are busily looking for jobs to do. Without purpose, neurons die. Boredom is the result of neurons looking for work to do. Just like in human societies, as some neurons take on certain tasks more efficiently than ten neurons handling that task, those other nine neurons need to find a new task to handle. The day you stop learning is the day your neurons start dying. You are your neurons, so that’s when you start dying too.
Me too! But there are important differences between a model an the full size real world. For example the structure doesn‘t go very deep in a model, so the differences in brightness are far less pronounced than in a real size object. I think this is also because the light reflection of surrounding things (like the table) has it much easier to get in into all the folds and dents.
Thanks for covering this, helps a lot of those struggling with why their paintjobs don't "pop". Here's another quick tip I've picked up: Learned while working on OSL techniques that lightsources shed light at roughly the square of distance. Sounds complicated? Think of it this way: Every 1m away from a candle, the light gets 4 times as dim. Depends on the lightsource of course, your feet aren't that much further from the Sun than your head is compared to how far the Earth is from the Sun. This is why most paintings and paintjobs judge the light situation to be overcast/gloomy instead of full sunlight, easier to work with shadows and light when the contrast isn't too drastic.
You sir are a great teacher. Getting back into the hobby after over 10 years and you are making me very excited about the potential of my model painting!
That last detail about the center line in the chest and the folds on cloth just blew my mind. Thanks so much for all your videos! Every time you post I get super motivated to paint and improve.
As a physicist I know tons of bytes of knowledge about light and maths, but I had zero idea about painting 🤣. Thanks for the video! Prety nice. I started looking at your videos one week ago and now I am already a Big fan of your work
Kung är du! Älskar dina videor och har tagit till mig massor på kort tid, även jag har tagit upp den här hobbyn efter 15 års paus, så känner igen mig väldigt mycket i din hobbysituation! Jag tror du tar upp väldigt mycket saker framförallt nya personer till den här hobbyn inte tänker på så mycket, Keep it up!!
Really love this format of videos where you take time to explain stuff that might seem granted to advanced painter but isnt for peoples who just started a while ago with 0 background in this kind of hobby. Very helpful even tho indeed my "brain" seem to try to do it naturaly.
I also use imagining the angle in which is the light hiting the surface. If it is acute angle, it is going to be dark and opposite in the obtuse angle. So if the light hits the cilinder it will be bright in middle because of the 90° angle and it darkens with decreasing angle.
I'm fairly sure I understood all of this already, but it was so nice to hear the way you described it and showed it to us with so many visual aids. Excellent tutorial! Massively helpful, thank you soooo much.
Idea: Paint your armies by light types. Morning or Evening; High Noon; 45 Degrees ... or some such distinctions. Perhaps a video of three different minis painted to show different degrees of sunlight (or moonlight, or lamplight, or firelight.)
Started a new group on your and Scot's advice. We randomise a list of topics and generate a piece of a model to paint in a week. First week is a cloak and we already have 20 members. Low pressure but consistency will hopefully get us all painting more. Also pushing each other to do better. Thank you for the inspiration!
I feel like I'm back in Drawing 101 learning still lives. Great job explaining the basic shapes and how to form the volumes. Reminded me of a professor I had.
I love these kinds of videos, and hope you do more of them! I'd really enjoy seeing you do some analysis on BattleTech minis, since they have SO MANY flat surfaces/cube shapes and are very difficult to do super realistic.
Fantastic video to highlight (😜) some very fundamental concepts that can dramatically shift our skills when we aware of them, understand their impact and how to utilize it with the tool we have, and put them to use! I would love to see a followup video (or videos) really getting into this topic more and more. Thank you!
I think something to add would be the concept of ambient occlusion and edge highlighting and why they're often seen as the key points before things like directional lighting and volume. Often in miniature painting, especially for a large quantity of similar models (eg. your army), you're attempting to capture the detail of the miniature with as little non-diagetic lighting as possible to accentuate detail and ensure they're as 'blank slate' as possible for whatever setting. For example, adding a warm orange light from a relatively horizontal angle would suggest dusk, but if you paint your miniature that way and place it alongside others with even lighting and it immediately seems out of place. Instead the majority of miniature painting is just about creating contrast within the miniature itself, so edges are highlighted far beyond what they would normally appear to look like, recesses are occluded far more than they would be. Because there's this unspoken visual language in that style, everything can be painting in wildly different schemes and still look like they belong together, whereas more advanced schemes tend to either look overdone or out of place unless they're intentionally removed from the context they're in. Not to say this is a bad video by any means, it's a great explanation of the concepts at play and valuable for people looking to take projects a step further, but I think it ignores some of the reasons why the 'basecoat > shade > highlight' method exists beyond its speed.
I love the explanation of how the light falls on objects and get that. My question is how can you translate this to practical, day to day painting? How can I make this practical for getting all of my models on the table?
This video is the reason why I’m a patron 👍🏻 Don’t know if it will make me any better at painting, but atleast I know more of why it looks like my 3yo paints my minis :)
I would note that if you are attempting army painting to think maybe save this for your character and HQ models - as if you want to get something to play on tabletop this can be a little more time consuming. Plus these will be seen from about three feet away. Love you Emil but I think that this is something that needs to be considered when making something for play versus something for competition. Not saying that this should not be considered at all but for most people this maybe should not be the main driving force for them. Just my thoughts going in.
Have you ever tried photographing your minis before you paint them to show where the light falls? You could use Photoshop to highlight where the highlights fall on the piece.
Man this is great, cuz this also applies to drawings, as WELL as mini painting. Thx man, I probably won't be painting for much more than just so I don't have bare models, but maybe one day I'll have some HD marines
Hi Emil! Not really on topic, but i started painting a few days ago. I have alot of lotr figures from when i was a kid. Will you ever do a video of something from lotr? I have a really hard time finding good material and I think your channel is great!
I really like the way you explain things. Have been watching some of your videos as I'm going to start painting again due to the lockdown in the UK and lots of free time. So here my like, subscribe and my thanks. Hope you are keeping yourself save. Cheers
Does anyone know what the model is at 3:09? I don't own the orruk brutes set but, it doesn't look like any pose or model I've searched for. I've tried looking at both the official site and forgeworld and only found brutes on the official site. It's odd because it looks like the same artist who painted all the other units on the official site.
I just started painting minis, and i love it and want to get into shading, but i have huge truble when it comes to how to find/mix the right colors and stuff do you think you could make a step by step one something like a basic space marine so we could see how you do it?
Thank you for the content, That is amazing to break down miniatures to primary shapes! That is so cool, I think in miniature the zenith highlighting takes care of some of it. The scale we work in definitely depends on the kind of highlighting we do. 100% I think this is great guide line to bump up the quality of miniature painting and can't wait to implement this theory to my miniature painting.
I mean it will be 2 main things Skill level and Time spent golden demons and golden brushs the artists are of insane highskill and alot of those projects are year long protects I personally am happy at my skill level for someone whos only painted for a few years and my time spent varies I very rarely spend more the 2-3 days one hero/monster models and squads of 10 will take me 3-4 days so useually i go 1 ro 2 heros a week or one squad of 10 a week or 2 depends on how much time i have keep painting you will get better, unless you are some genuis getting better can be a bit of a slow grind but you will get there, Don't get upset at better models try to learn from them and see what you can take form them for your own work
This was an amazing video! I would love more on the subject on 'highlights in shadows' and 'shapes in shapes'. It is difficult, but I feel like I am on the verge on understanding it from your explanation. I would love some more examples.
Hey Emil!! First time commenting on one of your videos (I think) but I've watched loads, so thanks for all your content so far!! Your vids are great during the lock down and keep me inspired. I loved the theory in this video and a full theory class series would be amazing!! Keep being awesome
Just described it differently , well painting is whole different idea then painting minatures , they taught us how to make contrast on 2d plane to make it look 3d , but it wasnt two light sources it was all the light in the room , but for painting you are using all that light and for minatures , it is a little easier .
How do you actually paint shadows and highlights the way you describe? I understand the ideas you have presented in this video but unsure how to apply them to my miniatures without it looking blocky and hard transitions from one paint to the next. Can you recommend a video walkthrough?
This can actaully get pretty hard epecailly if you are impatient like me and to get it to stop looking blocky you need to learn to Glaze, which some people will tell you is easy it took me a long to understand Minimaniac has some good videos for that stuff which helped me learn ^^
I would love to see a full paint through a model going through these sorts of steps. You'd be a good Bob Ross for minis!
I second this vote!!!! :)
Let's give this piece of armor a friend, right here...
I love Squidmar but Goobertown Hobbies has the Bob Ross of minis on lockdown...Just listen to that voice!
Please do this I am so lost this made zero sense
@@dillonbuescher1147 lol Brents voice is Bob Ross like 👍🏻
Hey guys, i completely f* up the name of the person painting the shield, it is of course Olmo Castrillo, a fantastic painter. Go check out his work:
instagram.com/olmo_castrillo_miniatures/
Love your channel !
After my devorce (20yrs relation & mariage) i was struggling and someone told me "Bro, go do something you loved as a kid. Its therapeutic and may help you", so i went back in time and rebooted a hobby i had as a kid. Modeling and painting..
I bought a 3D-printer and just started making things completely ignorant and unknown how much it meant to me... This ultimately pulled me back into the hobby and im lovin it! Feels like refinding parts of myself i lost during growing up.. It sure is true that growing up is the first step of loosing pure imagination and unbound fantasy one had as a kid.. Im realy happy i picked it up and refound a passion i had as a kid..
I havent seen much of your vids yet, just a few but i would like to thank you for giving so much insight on painting miniatures & the technics etc behind it all.. Much appriciated and keep up the good work! Thank you :)
I played 40k in the 90s, just got back into it the last month or so. Don’t even have an army yet, just some guardians, a couple warlocks and a farseer, with more on the way (oldhammer minis ftw)…
I could paint decently back in the day. Well enough to win small local competitions as a youth. But times have changed. What I did back then is child’s play compared to the standard now. Which is awesome (if only GW would advance the Eldar mini line as much!), but has me working to catch up.
This video… I’ve watched it a dozen times and listened to it as many more. Thanks for this and your other tutorials. I’m already far better than I was back then, and I know I have a ton of room for improvement. Best of all, I see a clear path to get there.
Eldar could very well be getting a bunch of new stuff in the next few months!
Didn’t think about the highlights in the under folds of clothing, been completely over looking that, awesome I learned something I can immediately use. Thank you!👍👍
This was really mindblowing to me :D
Well darn! There goes my "base coat followed by a wash" technique! Thanks for explaining how to emulate realistic lighting!
👑👑 I'm in the midst of releasing my dream miniature brush as well as some wonderfully sculpted miniature busts. It's something I'm really proud of and been working on for the better part of the last year. Late pledges are up and You can check it out here: www.squidmar.com/latepledge 👑👑
Everytime I have some doubts about how to use the lights to highlight my models I come back to this video. It's hard for newbies to understand how to run away from the "eavy" way to paint Space Marines and this video really helps to shine a light on the subject (pun intended). There are a lot of good painters out there but you are one of those who really contribute to teach. Thank you and you team.
This video is amazing. The lighting for cylinders, cubes, and spheres applies to a lot of art, including miniatures, obviously. This is why I think that artists shouldn't specialize in one or two areas and instead branch out, because by doing that, you learn a lot that applies to all the other mediums that you enjoy doing. Thanks for the amazing video Squidmar, it's helped me a lot!
A class on blending would be nice too! It would go hand in hand with this one!
Literally just finished airbrush glazing a basecoat on a set of Terminators and was wondering why they felt so "flat". Thanks for this! :D
Watching this video I'm starting to appreciate the experience I gained back when I was drawing.
Wow... just wow. I started painting a little less than a year and a half ago, and your videos have really inspire me a lot. I feel you're making me a way better painter. I don't have a lot of ressources and I never touched a brush or a camera in my life before all this, but the hobby is changing my life in a great way, and you are changing my hobby in an amazing way. So thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I hope I will some day be able to paint like a pro, I already see some amazing results! Keep on the great work, I'll be sure to watch everything to the end!
Oh, you sweet summer child... When I started painting - I sadly stopped a couple of decades ago - the White Dwarf was just coming up and Warhammer wasn't even released... So all this had to be learned by trial and error, by making the miniatures look as good as possible with as little work as possible. Acrylics were a new thing, so I learned this with enamel paints: totally different kind of torture, to be honest!
Now I'm contemplating on taking my ancient paint toolbox out and dust off the unpainted miniatures I still have stashed somewhere only because of all these lovely videos around TH-cam. Your's being one of the top ones, for sure!
Same hee, warhammer wasn't a thing when I started, and some of those paint jobs were horrible to behold. No tutorial videos in those days, not for a long time after that. I dusted of my old kit and old models about 2 years ago and I'm just about seasoned enough to put out a few tabletop ready miniatures now. They're not great, but they're not totally embarassing either! I've got a lot of very old metal miniatures, some from D&D, some from warhammer and some from the old fantasy gamebooks like Lone Wolf. I need to paint them up and try to make them look decent!
Yes. This is what we all want. All the time.
This was eye opening! I paint as I listen to your videos and I was able to immediately appreciate the shapes on my mini and try some new techniques! I’ll be able to use this on every mini and I’m definitely sharing this with friends! Keep up the awesome work, thanks so much!
When I was younger I always thought it was a 3d shape anyways, so it should produce its own shadows and you wouldn't need to add any...
I still think like this lol. You have to get into thinking that the model might as well be in a painting scene. With different light sources and effects, that affect the composition.
It does it's just not as pronounced, and this way looks cooler so it's what people are looking for now
The thing is, the brain processes many things in conjunction with one another. The amount of your field of view taken up by an object is far from the only thing the brain considers when determining how big something actually is. Shading, relative sizes, parallax, and even high-level concepts like what the object is used for all contribute to the final perception of an object.
This why you can have a 100 foot sculpture of a spoon a few hundred feet away that might look like it is right in front of you, or a miniaturized figure of a building within in a whole miniaturized cityscape that encompasses your entire field of view seem like it is hundreds of feet tall.
You learn to see in color within a month or two of birth. You learn object permanence in about a year or so. You don’t come with the understanding that a cube oriented differently and at a different distance under different lighting conditions is the exact same cube. You have to experience that cube repeatedly and under different parameters for your brain to associate all the different visual patterns as a single physical object.
That’s why baby mobiles are so important. They “distract” babies because their 100 billion neurons are busily looking for jobs to do. Without purpose, neurons die. Boredom is the result of neurons looking for work to do. Just like in human societies, as some neurons take on certain tasks more efficiently than ten neurons handling that task, those other nine neurons need to find a new task to handle.
The day you stop learning is the day your neurons start dying. You are your neurons, so that’s when you start dying too.
Me too! But there are important differences between a model an the full size real world. For example the structure doesn‘t go very deep in a model, so the differences in brightness are far less pronounced than in a real size object. I think this is also because the light reflection of surrounding things (like the table) has it much easier to get in into all the folds and dents.
Thanks for covering this, helps a lot of those struggling with why their paintjobs don't "pop". Here's another quick tip I've picked up:
Learned while working on OSL techniques that lightsources shed light at roughly the square of distance. Sounds complicated? Think of it this way: Every 1m away from a candle, the light gets 4 times as dim. Depends on the lightsource of course, your feet aren't that much further from the Sun than your head is compared to how far the Earth is from the Sun. This is why most paintings and paintjobs judge the light situation to be overcast/gloomy instead of full sunlight, easier to work with shadows and light when the contrast isn't too drastic.
You sir are a great teacher. Getting back into the hobby after over 10 years and you are making me very excited about the potential of my model painting!
Honestly the most important video for developing my painting I’ve ever watched. I come back to it once a year at least
That last detail about the center line in the chest and the folds on cloth just blew my mind. Thanks so much for all your videos! Every time you post I get super motivated to paint and improve.
early gang. "Working from home" actually means "working through dark imperium"
That is exactly what I have been doing! How did you know?
As a physicist I know tons of bytes of knowledge about light and maths, but I had zero idea about painting 🤣.
Thanks for the video! Prety nice. I started looking at your videos one week ago and now I am already a Big fan of your work
I'd love a few more of these videos! Just going into detail for one simple factor of painting. Like a Masterclass series?
Mind blowing Emil on how you approached something quite "scientific" and explained it perfectly explained. Great video. Thanks.
This is one of the best videos I've ever seen...absolutely interesting. I learned so much, thank you Emil!
Kung är du! Älskar dina videor och har tagit till mig massor på kort tid, även jag har tagit upp den här hobbyn efter 15 års paus, så känner igen mig väldigt mycket i din hobbysituation! Jag tror du tar upp väldigt mycket saker framförallt nya personer till den här hobbyn inte tänker på så mycket, Keep it up!!
Really love this format of videos where you take time to explain stuff that might seem granted to advanced painter but isnt for peoples who just started a while ago with 0 background in this kind of hobby. Very helpful even tho indeed my "brain" seem to try to do it naturaly.
3 years later and this is still the most important video you've ever released ^_^
After watching this video and getting a wet pallet my miniatures look like another person with skill painted them! Great video and fantastic advice!
I also use imagining the angle in which is the light hiting the surface. If it is acute angle, it is going to be dark and opposite in the obtuse angle. So if the light hits the cilinder it will be bright in middle because of the 90° angle and it darkens with decreasing angle.
U just changed my life at 4 am thank you squid mar!
JUST how I tech this stuff to others as well. Tubes, spheres etc. GREAT way to explain it! *hälsningar från en 45årig konstnörd!*
I'm fairly sure I understood all of this already, but it was so nice to hear the way you described it and showed it to us with so many visual aids.
Excellent tutorial!
Massively helpful, thank you soooo much.
Idea: Paint your armies by light types. Morning or Evening; High Noon; 45 Degrees ... or some such distinctions. Perhaps a video of three different minis painted to show different degrees of sunlight (or moonlight, or lamplight, or firelight.)
That's a really cool idea!
Excellent explanation! Especially that recesses can be in direct light!
WoW, this video is awesome. You open my mind now I really understand how I have to think when I piant my miniatures. Thank you very much.
Started a new group on your and Scot's advice. We randomise a list of topics and generate a piece of a model to paint in a week. First week is a cloak and we already have 20 members.
Low pressure but consistency will hopefully get us all painting more. Also pushing each other to do better.
Thank you for the inspiration!
Highlighting as I am watching this. I am finding myself shifting the highlights to go along with what your saying. Thank you.
I’m going to watch this again when I’ve recovered from working nights. It will sink in better
In the grim darkness of the future, there is only nightshift...
sir you just opened my eyes to a whole new level
thank you kindly
I feel like I'm back in Drawing 101 learning still lives. Great job explaining the basic shapes and how to form the volumes. Reminded me of a professor I had.
I love these kinds of videos, and hope you do more of them! I'd really enjoy seeing you do some analysis on BattleTech minis, since they have SO MANY flat surfaces/cube shapes and are very difficult to do super realistic.
This video is one of the Best vids out There on painting :) thanks for it.
Dude, I'm learning so much from your videos. My dreadnought is gonna look a lot better now thanks to you
Wow, yes it was heavy and hard, but i think with a bit of patience and practice, we can all master it! Thanks Emil!! 😁👏🏼👏🏼
Best explanation of painting minis I've ever seen. Keep up the videos / tutorials.
Ok this was way more interesting than I expected honestly.
Fantastic video to highlight (😜) some very fundamental concepts that can dramatically shift our skills when we aware of them, understand their impact and how to utilize it with the tool we have, and put them to use! I would love to see a followup video (or videos) really getting into this topic more and more. Thank you!
Thank you, I learned to look at miniatures in a different light.
This video helped me understand shadow and highlight better, even though I don't do miniature painting
Det här var hur nyttigt som helst! Mycket informativ och bra. Hoppas att du lägger upp en video om ljussättning för NMM också. 😀
This video is what made me subscribe! Great explanation, good example and interesting theory. Good job! Keep it up!
I think something to add would be the concept of ambient occlusion and edge highlighting and why they're often seen as the key points before things like directional lighting and volume.
Often in miniature painting, especially for a large quantity of similar models (eg. your army), you're attempting to capture the detail of the miniature with as little non-diagetic lighting as possible to accentuate detail and ensure they're as 'blank slate' as possible for whatever setting. For example, adding a warm orange light from a relatively horizontal angle would suggest dusk, but if you paint your miniature that way and place it alongside others with even lighting and it immediately seems out of place. Instead the majority of miniature painting is just about creating contrast within the miniature itself, so edges are highlighted far beyond what they would normally appear to look like, recesses are occluded far more than they would be. Because there's this unspoken visual language in that style, everything can be painting in wildly different schemes and still look like they belong together, whereas more advanced schemes tend to either look overdone or out of place unless they're intentionally removed from the context they're in.
Not to say this is a bad video by any means, it's a great explanation of the concepts at play and valuable for people looking to take projects a step further, but I think it ignores some of the reasons why the 'basecoat > shade > highlight' method exists beyond its speed.
This is your best video for me, thank you.
How are you sooo gooooood?
Btw lets go Duncan!
I love the explanation of how the light falls on objects and get that. My question is how can you translate this to practical, day to day painting? How can I make this practical for getting all of my models on the table?
Superb explanation of light physics in painting. Hats off to you Emil. Good explanation with good examples of how it applies to miniatures. 👏
It's always good to consider new advanced techniques whether you intend to use or not. Great Vid!
From the thumbnail, I can tell you immediately that the right one looks better because it's a primaris :)
Thank you Mr. Squidmar Sir. Very helpful 👍🏽
This is honestly great, you explained it in a style that really helped me understand it. Moreso than tutorials that feel more Friendly.
This video is the reason why I’m a patron 👍🏻 Don’t know if it will make me any better at painting, but atleast I know more of why it looks like my 3yo paints my minis :)
Great video. Well thought out, explained clearly things I never thought of in painting. Well done Squidmar.
Amazing video you are a great communicator and teacher thank you !!
Great video. Thank you for teaching me....
I would note that if you are attempting army painting to think maybe save this for your character and HQ models - as if you want to get something to play on tabletop this can be a little more time consuming. Plus these will be seen from about three feet away. Love you Emil but I think that this is something that needs to be considered when making something for play versus something for competition. Not saying that this should not be considered at all but for most people this maybe should not be the main driving force for them. Just my thoughts going in.
3:49 Your Squidmar brushes! Are they ready, yet? When are they going to be available for us peons to purchase?
Nevermind, I saw your reply to D Guen below.
Great video. One to refer to again and again 👍
Have you ever tried photographing your minis before you paint them to show where the light falls? You could use Photoshop to highlight where the highlights fall on the piece.
Man this is great, cuz this also applies to drawings, as WELL as mini painting.
Thx man, I probably won't be painting for much more than just so I don't have bare models, but maybe one day I'll have some HD marines
Dude, your videos are legit. Make more of them. I DEMAND IT!.. Who am I? I am Om' Zerok The Sinister!
Excellent video, looking forward for the next part !
That was super cool and informative, thank you !!
Hi Emil! Not really on topic, but i started painting a few days ago. I have alot of lotr figures from when i was a kid. Will you ever do a video of something from lotr? I have a really hard time finding good material and I think your channel is great!
I really like the way you explain things. Have been watching some of your videos as I'm going to start painting again due to the lockdown in the UK and lots of free time. So here my like, subscribe and my thanks. Hope you are keeping yourself save.
Cheers
Awesome mate, thanks for the kind words! Hope you're safe!
Incredible video!! Thank you for helping get me in the right mindset. Do you have a playlist to learn all these techniques?
Interesting subject, will definitely try to focus on this next time I paint. And those brushes looks pretty...
As long as you like your own Minis everything is good 😁
love to hear more like this, really think this is a good place to start learning!
Does anyone know what the model is at 3:09? I don't own the orruk brutes set but, it doesn't look like any pose or model I've searched for. I've tried looking at both the official site and forgeworld and only found brutes on the official site. It's odd because it looks like the same artist who painted all the other units on the official site.
They are new, coming to warhammer underworld
@@SquidmarMiniatures Thank you, awesome video btw that part was just driving me nuts
WOW, this was excellent.
I just started painting minis, and i love it and want to get into shading, but i have huge truble when it comes to how to find/mix the right colors and stuff do you think you could make a step by step one something like a basic space marine so we could see how you do it?
Thank you for the content, That is amazing to break down miniatures to primary shapes! That is so cool, I think in miniature the zenith highlighting takes care of some of it. The scale we work in definitely depends on the kind of highlighting we do. 100% I think this is great guide line to bump up the quality of miniature painting and can't wait to implement this theory to my miniature painting.
I mean it will be 2 main things Skill level and Time spent
golden demons and golden brushs the artists are of insane highskill and alot of those projects are year long protects
I personally am happy at my skill level for someone whos only painted for a few years and my time spent varies I very rarely spend more the 2-3 days one hero/monster models and squads of 10 will take me 3-4 days so useually i go 1 ro 2 heros a week or one squad of 10 a week or 2 depends on how much time i have
keep painting you will get better, unless you are some genuis getting better can be a bit of a slow grind but you will get there, Don't get upset at better models try to learn from them and see what you can take form them for your own work
This was an amazing video! I would love more on the subject on 'highlights in shadows' and 'shapes in shapes'. It is difficult, but I feel like I am on the verge on understanding it from your explanation. I would love some more examples.
thank you emil! very inspiring
Have you done an example of painting the light source on a model going to darker area?
Hey Emil!! First time commenting on one of your videos (I think) but I've watched loads, so thanks for all your content so far!! Your vids are great during the lock down and keep me inspired. I loved the theory in this video and a full theory class series would be amazing!! Keep being awesome
Love your vids, bro! Awesome channel!
Brilliant video. Very informative. I learnt a LOT.
You described it easier then my art teacher lol good job , I like these new learning videos from you .
How did your teacher describe it?
Just described it differently , well painting is whole different idea then painting minatures , they taught us how to make contrast on 2d plane to make it look 3d , but it wasnt two light sources it was all the light in the room , but for painting you are using all that light and for minatures , it is a little easier .
Me: Can barely keep wash where it's supposed to go.
Squidmar: You should highlight the very center of every fold.
There are levels to this game :s
i would love to see you and Goob do a colab series taking people through the steps. People who have never painted anything to a complete 1st model
I like your contents, well done! I'm thinking to start this hobby I know nothing about that at the moment....
just don't get primaries marines
@@tommoblue2296 what should I start with?
Great video. I’m kind of struggling with light sources on bases with flat tiles/ brick work at the moment
Damn... amazing work!
Mind. Blown.
How do you actually paint shadows and highlights the way you describe? I understand the ideas you have presented in this video but unsure how to apply them to my miniatures without it looking blocky and hard transitions from one paint to the next. Can you recommend a video walkthrough?
This can actaully get pretty hard epecailly if you are impatient like me and to get it to stop looking blocky you need to learn to Glaze, which some people will tell you is easy it took me a long to understand Minimaniac has some good videos for that stuff which helped me learn ^^
This really helped me understand. Thanks