2 Color NMM Easy Peasy Style

Transcript

I really want to have an honest chat about this per vlog because this has been maybe the most happy I’ve ever been, the most exhausted I’ve ever been, the hardest I’ve ever worked, but also feel the most rewarded for it.

All right, we’re finally about to get started. Not with this though. We’re going to save that for later. Just going to start it with this two-color non-metallic metal on the permadeath mini. I’ve been wanting to start—to do this kind of thing for a really long time. And finally feeling inspired from both Miscast and Ninjon. We’re going to do it.

Starting off cleaning these mold lines off—the sculpt cast rather is really good. And I’m just using my favorite tool to get mold lines off metal miniatures here. And it’s a half round file. There’s a flat side, a round side. You can see me dropping everything in frustration. Throwing it out of the way. Starting back over. And I’m not going to spend a ton of time on this. I’m just kind of showing you how it works.

Basing wise, I’m just going to very carefully and slowly cut the bottom of this. And then I’m going to get fed up and go really fast to get it done. And this just gives the super glue something to hook onto. And I’ll do the same thing to the base. I’m just roughing it up so the super glue gets into it and has better adhesion to the base. And you’ll also see me just stick my finger in the paint water and dab it on the base here. And that’s because the water actually serves as an accelerator for the super glue. So instead of using like zip kicker or just another chemical that smells bad, this is just paint cup water dabbed on the base and it’s going to activate the super glue so it holds faster. And that way I can go right into priming.

And I primed with a rattle can. And I also didn’t wait for it to fully dry before I started painting because I want to stick to this daily hobby upload thing. So you can see I zenithalled it with spray cans and it looks like ass. But it’s not going to be a huge deal. Normally I’d airbrush it. But I forgot and left my airbrush dirty so couldn’t do that.

We’re starting off with Scale 75. This is yellow ochre. Of course I did it too fast to actually read it. Yellow oxide. And just—this is what we’re going to start with. And again, I’m not going to show you painting the whole model, but I’m going to show you how I get the paint consistency to kind of in between a glaze and a wash. And if you look on my hand, you can see exactly—like it’s very thin, but it still has a lot of pigment in it. And we’re going to start by just glazing over this. And like don’t be intimidated by the word glazing. We’re really just using really, really thin, watery paint kind of right before the pigment starts to break down.

And we’re just slapping this on top of our primer. And also, the reason I’m not using a wet palette is I went to open my wet palette and it was dry. And that’s how long it’s been since I’ve actually painted a miniature. My wet palette went dry. And I really wanted to actually do this, like make the video and post it. And I just kept running into so many different problems and weird things going on that I could have easily said, “Oh, not today. Today’s not the day. I’m not gonna actually paint this figure.” But nope. I just got my piece of plastic that is a dry palette and we’re going to run with it.

And you can also see like right here, my brush has paint up in the ferrule, so it starts going all different directions on me. And again, I could have stopped. I could have cleaned it. And eventually I do clean it because it gets so bad. But again, I could have stopped painting, stopped recording this video and then never actually started this YouTube channel. But I just want to kind of push through and make it work. And also too to show you that you can get really cool results with a busted paintbrush. Like my paint here is really good. Like the Scale 75 artist acrylics are an expensive paint. They’re a good paint and they’re going to do a lot of the heavy lifting for me.

Oh, look. Butt shot because I did not focus the camera. What’s going on here? All right, there we go. So now you can see I’m building this up for the non-metallic metal gold here. And this is still the same very thin consistency. And this is like—this is not a two coat base coat consistency. This would be like a five coat, six coat consistency. And that was me trying to show you how jacked my brush is. But I’m struggling to figure out how a camera works throughout this video.

Here we go. I probably should have edited this out. I edited a lot of cuts out, but we’re going to keep it in. We’re going to let it ride because I don’t want to have to re-edit it again after I already edited it once. So, now this stage we’re at now is still just that brown, that yellowish brown. And this is just working through building up the shadows of it. Now, they’re probably like two coats over it and then specifically focusing on the places I want to be darker. I’m just coming back in.

At this point, the paint itself is a little bit thicker. And that’s what I’m showing you here. So, it’s not as watery. Like, this is now like a normal base coat consistency. And the way that I’m twirling the brush there is to try and get my point back. So again, this brush is jacked because I let paint get up into the ferrule. And this is my favorite brush, so I’m going to have to fix it. But this is a size two, wonky as hell. And I’m coming in and just holding my breath and bracing against the table so I don’t get that brown on the white of the hourglass because I want that to be whatever color I want it to be. I’m not sure yet at this point. I want that to be bright and I don’t want to have to go back over it again. So, I’m holding my breath. I’m giving myself a lot of negative affirmations in my head about how big of a screw up I am so I don’t get any of that paint on that white.

And now like we’re getting our yellow. This is our second color. Really, we do most of the non-metallic metal with just these two colors. So, it’s two colors. And you’re going to see it really starts to kind of come together. And don’t be intimidated to try non-metallic metal because it’s really not that hard. And you’re going to have people who talk about light sources and like sky earth metallics and like where would the light be? And we don’t care because we are God. We tell the world where the light is going to be. I’m going to put a light source wherever I want to on this miniature because my paintbrush is a light source. You know what I’m saying?

So, here we go. This again, showing you the consistency on my hand and also like you have to let everybody know that you’re an interesting person by having paint on your hand and it’s bonus points if it looks like poop. So, we’re coming in a little bit of water, probably like 50% water, 50% paint here and we’re edge highlighting. We’re edge highlighting a glaze. Doesn’t that sound super intimidating? What we’re doing is we’re just poking. We’re lightly poking our miniature with watered down paint. So, that should really make it not scary.

Like, for so long, I was so afraid to do non-metallic metallics. Because I mean, you do have to have brush control. And if you don’t have brush control, you just got to paint a lot of stuff. Like, there’s no easy way around it. You can see here I’m using a miniature holder. Don’t buy this one. Get a cheap one or like make one out of wooden dowels, which I’ll show those eventually, I’m sure.

The hand holding the miniature and holding that miniature holder is on the table. And when I get in really tricky spots, I’ll brace those hands together. So everything—my hand is very rarely like free floating in the air. I always have it braced against something. And you can see that we’re already starting to get this non-metallic metal effect just by very carefully stippling. Like we’re poking at this point on this hourglass. We’re not even edge highlighting anymore. We’re more—it’s like a dry brush, but a very controlled dry brush. And it’s called stippling. But you’re all just really dry brushing, right? I’m dragging that brush very haphazardly, but also with intention. And again, this is still like 50% water, 50% paint.

Here I am kind of just scoping out where we’re looking. I’ve kept the brown in the—oh yeah, that’s right. So at this point, like the paintbrush is just too jacked. Like it’s going in three different directions. I use Masters to try to save it. So I get a little bit of the point back. So I can now come back in with this. At this point it’s probably 75% paint, 25% water. And I’m edge highlighting again. Don’t be scared to edge highlight. Especially on this sculpt—it’s so cool that the ridges of the sculpt are thick and they stick out far enough that it’s very easy to edge highlight it. And this one I’m dry brushing. Like this is just a flat out. I’m dry brushing with the very tip of my paintbrush.

And you can see like it’s jacked still. Like look at the condition of this paintbrush is terrible. And the paint still looks good. Like it’s not going crazy.

And then this is our final color of our three-color non-metallic metal. It’s a violet. And what we’re going to do is severely water this down. Like we’re going to take it to a wash level and then go one level past that in terms of consistency. So you’ll see it on the palette here that’s out of focus because I’m a great cinematographer—just how thin it is. And then I’m going to bring it to my hand. When I do the first stroke, it’s pretty opaque. And that’s because these paints are so pigmented and are very good quality paints. But as I spread that out, you can see it’s very transparent. It’s only just a hint.

And what that’s going to do is give us a hint of shadow on this gold. And one, it’s going to tie it into the rest of the model with how we paint it. And two, this is going to interact with the yellows and the browns and the oranges to bring that purple into a brown.

And I’m working it. I’m starting in the brightest parts on this back piece and then dragging the paintbrush down into the shadows so the bulk of that paint deposits in the shadows, but it tints the whole area of the gold. And then same thing here. I’m dumping it on the model and then I’m using the capillary action of this busted brush to pull the paint back up so it doesn’t leave water marks. And then you can see here going pretty fast. It’s already dried and you can see how it’s really toned down the overall gold.

So now this is the first time I’ve actually touched this model with 100% of that yellow paint. And look, I’m doing these dots with this brush that’s like four-pronged. And you just hold your breath, brace your fingers on the table, and you tap it like you’re just poking it. It’s easy, guys. Don’t get scared.

Same thing on the front. Just quick brush taps. And that’s how you do it. You poke it a couple of times with one color, poke it again with the second color, and you have non-metallic metal. Easy peasy, guys. Don’t be afraid. And keep painting.

Okay. I was going to try to finish him, but it started to be midnight and I was pretty sleepy. So, I base coated this robe in Caribbean Ocean Army Painter Speed Paint. I don’t really like how this looks. So, we’re going to call it quits for tonight. But in day two, we’re going to finish up the robe.

But also, now that everything had really dried and the gold had sat for a while, I decided to record some more out of focus painting. And what I’m doing now is I’m just coming back in again. This is pure yellow now. No water at all. And it’s really the most paint—actual paint I’ve ever had on the brush. And I’m just refining these scratches really on the back. Just kind of haphazardly. And I did this before, too. Like this is how I painted the whole back piece with the yellow. I just didn’t want to have to keep showing it over and over again. And I’m not even showing it to you here. So you don’t even get to see it.

I’m building up these scratches intentionally. Like it’s haphazard, but the brush strokes themselves are very assertive. That’s not what I’m looking for, but like I’m pulling the brush down quickly with intention and intentionally leaving those brush strokes, but I’m also still doing it lightly where it doesn’t look like a brush stroke. That’s probably a terrible explanation, but again, I’m just coming back in here and poking it. I’m just poking it over and over again to make this effect.

And it looks pretty good. At least I think so.