Painting a Leather Belt

Transcript

All right, today’s the day. Here we go. This is day one of trying to get good at and taking painting seriously. So, I am starting off with a Richard Gray’s guide on how to paint a leather belt.

Right up next, a GW paint. I somehow surprisingly not only do I have, but I’ve never used it. So, just put a little bit of this on the Bugman’s Glow. Up next, I had to put this one through the vortex mixer. So he uses Cadian Fleshtone as the next highlight. This is the closest I have, which is yellow ochre. And he uses Morghast Bone. I have buff. And again, I’m just going by what my computer screen shows it looking like.

All right. I told myself I was saving this and I’ve had it for a couple of years now. Fresh out of the package. Double Windsor & Newton Series 7.

Okay. So, I’ve learned that I’m going to have to get a different paint setup or a camera setup because it’s very hard for me to paint into these tiny areas with the camera in the way. So, I just finished base coating it. I’m letting it dry. You can see it’s still a little wet. Definitely also not—this is not the same as using a wet palette. Using this kind of sucks, but we’re making it work. I’ll definitely be getting a wet palette. Maybe getting another one tomorrow.

So, I’m letting this dry. And the reason I’m talking about it is if I don’t let this layer dry and I start trying to come in and highlight it, I’m going to tear this layer. So, that’s the secret to getting those smooth finishes is you have to let these layers dry. And I could go get the heat gun and hit it, but instead, I’m going to paint this top strap. And I’ve already kind of started on the first coat, but instead I’m going to paint that first strap or this top strap up here brown as well. So, just getting some on. Just getting the excess off. And again, it’s not about how fast you’re going to paint because you’re using this tiny little brush. I want to make sure I don’t get any paint up into the ferrule.

And let me try zooming out a little bit and see how that helps. And right, obviously I’m pretty far away from the model. I wouldn’t be doing that normally, but I’m here. I can afford it because it doesn’t really matter if I get paint on other areas just because I’ll be able to paint over them right now. So, just doing this.

So, now this is that Mournfang Brown and I’m testing it on my thumb here so I don’t have a huge big glob of paint. And actually, I think I got too much paint on the brush itself. I don’t want to get paint up in the ferrule. So again, just checking how much paint we have on there.

And now I’m going to come in and—this one is still really not going to stand out too much. But we just want to start building up highlights. And we don’t want to overwork it. Like you can see there’s—it looks a little bit scary right there right now from that glob of paint on it. But that’s okay because it’s going to dry and I just don’t want to keep hitting that same area.

And so what I’m doing here is I’m building up the texture and the highlights. I’ll come in here and hit the top of this. And I’m using the lamp that’s right here as my guide and just building up this texture. But I’m realizing that I definitely—to kind of capture this painting, I am for sure going to have to get a better camera setup. One, because of how difficult it is for me to paint like this on top of already being pretty technical, but just so you can actually see what is going on.

And right. So this—we’ll hit the top. I want to let a lot of this because this is going to be really fading into darkness here. So again, I’m just kind of—it’s not really stippling. I’m really like just scribbling with a paintbrush. And you can kind of see how I’m building up this texture now. And this is my first time attempting—I mean, I guess I painted with scribbles before and even recently on the non-metallic metal. They’re not—it’s not scribbles, right? I’m using these brush strokes to build texture carefully. We’re back in this top strap now. And I think in the camera it’s a lot brighter than it is in real life because the paint is wet. And so now I’m just coming back in and creating that texture here with the brush strokes. And again here, it’s important—like I don’t want to overwork an area. So I kind of need to put in some strokes and then move on.

Right now, we’re going to bring in this Bugman’s Glow. Making sure it didn’t dry, which it did. All right, Bugman’s Glow. Very carefully, I’m just making sure. So, this Bugman’s Glow is just on the very tip of this brush, right? Like, there’s barely any Bugman’s Glow on this thing. And the reason is I don’t want it to be pink, but I do want to paint the highlights in with it. So, this again very sparingly.

And this—oh, getting paint everywhere. This is going to be a little bit difficult honestly with this current paint setup I have. So I’m just mixing in some Bugman’s Glow from the pot into this. Just kind of thinning it on the fly. I want to be careful to not get that up into the ferrule.

And I really really want to be careful here. Put it right where it’s bending. And like this is—in leather working terms—right where the pull-up is occurring or right where it’s going to be bending or just worn and tattered.

And at this point, hopefully you can see what I’m doing. At this point on this, like where this would be an edge highlight in a traditional GW system, I’m just stippling that on. And like this 3D effect we’re doing, it almost—I’m not doing a good job getting it on camera, but it’s almost like a cracked leather effect because I think like the official art—I mean the paint job in the official art is great, but if these are like the Final Hunt and the last of the Nyss, I’m just imagining that all their stuff is super old, you know, and not raggedy or falling apart, but well maintained and cared for. But in my mind, this is going to be pretty well worn.

And I’m going to go very sparingly up into the shoulder with this. And I don’t think I’ll use the next highlight color in there. Like I think that’s going to be fine. Just that little pop right there. Then hit up in here.

And again, there’s—I don’t want it to turn pink, right? So, there’s just very little paint on here. And I’m just sketching it in. It really does feel like sketching, like you’re creating this texture. And again, I’m not actually a professional yet, so just a guy trying to figure it out.

Oh god, it looks so—from tabletop. I’m sure it’s not coming through on the camera. And actually, from what I see, it looks pretty pink, but it doesn’t look pink at all in real life. And I’m already so very excited that I managed to do this. Definitely not humble at all.

Oh man, it looks great. I wish I had a wet palette. I think if I had a wet palette, I could have definitely had a better result. There we go.

And I’m using like two hairs of this zero brush at this point. Hopefully this isn’t terrible, but really—when you look at the results that somebody like Richard—and Richard is an amazing painter, but I’m nowhere near that level. When you look at the results they get as a whole, like looking at the whole miniature, it’s very daunting and intimidating. But when you get up in here, it’s really—and again, like his is definitely going to be better than mine, but I’m just saying I’m a normal dude, you know, like I don’t paint—I’m not a professional painter. I don’t have a classical paint background. I’ve been painting miniatures for a very long time, you know, but my point is that if you paint enough miniatures, you get the brush control and if you understand your paints you’re using, like you can—it’s not that it’s easy, but it’s like I wouldn’t call it hard, you know?

And again, I still have a long way to grow myself as an artist, but I’m just saying that this kind of thing even a year ago to me, I would have said no way. And I am just sitting here doing it really just because I decided I wanted to do it. Like it wasn’t something crazy that changed.

And I said I was done, but I don’t think I am. I have to have one more time. All right. Here’s where we are after that yellow and—iPhone camera. You can’t see, but it looks—it looks crazy from like—it looks so good. I got to figure out how to get a picture of this.

All right. So, now we’re going to do this buff. And that’s going to be it for tonight. At this point in real time, I am about an hour. I think I just hit an hour and 10 minutes of real time painting for this. So again, I know like at a competition level, we’d be spending hundreds and hundreds of hours at these little tiny belts.

All right, so I’m just testing that on my thumb. Let me see if I—oh, that’s terrible. All right, testing that on my thumb. And now this—I have to be very careful. Like I’m not even going to hit over here. I’m just going to do just a little bit right down through the middle of this. And then some here. There we go. And now I’ll probably let that dry honestly and then hit it again.

And even like—my—I’m down. So, dark violet. Four parts water to one part paint. I’m just going to capillary action that. And this is actually going to be good. Try that again. So, all right. So, this is probably closer. Maybe one more. All right. I think that’s probably what we’re going for. This is the part where we just mess all of our work up where I’m going to keep headbutting it.

Oh, there we go. You can kind of see. Maybe I can actually show you how good the belt looks. It’s pretty bright, but again, we’re about to darken it up, but I’m pretty happy with how this is turning out already.

Okay, so very—I’m scared. Oh man. All right. So, very carefully, we’re just going to put this just to help reinforce our shadows.

I messed that up. But yeah, again, so I wanted this to be very worn down leather. It’s very bright. Once I paint more of the model, if this still seems too bright to me, I’ll come back and I’ll just glaze over. Honestly, I’ll probably glaze over the burnt umber if it still seems too bright. But I want to paint the rest of the model because I think the model itself is going to be pretty bright just because I’m obviously got to do non-metallic metal now.

But I’m looking at the art, I didn’t realize that so much of this on her legs and up through here was actually also leather. So I am a little bit worried about maybe doing all the leather to the strap extent, but the straps are going to look more worn anyway. So I’ll probably do the leather on her clothes a little bit different.

But oh, now that the purple has dried, you can kind of see how awesome it’s turning out. And can I—we can—oh, here we go. Here we go. I’m figuring out this focus. And maybe—I don’t know if this will be better or worse if I turn that light off, but they’re about an hour and a half. And I’m going to call the belts themselves done. Got to do the buckles.

But it’s not as bright in person either. So, let me see. Half of the video is going to be me just trying to capture what we’ve done here. That’s a little bit better. And you can see there as I turn it, you can see more of how it’s actually dark and does look leatherish. I’m excited. Look, it’s looking great.