Thursday 8 December 2011

15mm .. done Right

Tip of the Day

Surfing around the other day from TMP, and came across a professional miniatures artist by the name of Jen Haley.

In case you haven't seen her work, I thought I would highlight some of it here .. particularly her 15mm stuff.

You can visit her site here :  http://www.paintrix-miniatures.com/about.php

This was a professional commission for Kurasan Miniatures, and somehow .. I think someone forgot to tell Jen that you just don't go around painting 15mm figures as if they were 28s !!

Good thing nobody told her, since this was the result ... stunning stuff. Check these out.






Nice work !

Lots of layers of shading there, and actually very subtle. Keep in mind that when you photograph things of this scale up close in bright light ... then the graduations in the shading appear a lot more abrupt than they do to the naked eye.

She has managed to pull off this ultra realistic effect, with soft contrast and gradients .. without going overboard and appearing way too cartoonish. I really like that.


But if you thought that was good, now have a look again taking into account the scale.







Woah ! - Now, thats just completely nuts !  Well done Jen - I want to paint like that one day. (Don't we all ?)

What does it take ?   Time and lots of it to hone your skills, experiment, and learn.

Not just racking the hours up, but real time spent in real, deliberate practice.  Put in 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to your goal, and you too can be this good with a paintbrush ... maybe.

Works for Professional Racing Cyclists as well, apparently.

Mind you - I have been racking the hours on the bike as well over the past few years, and I am yet to get past a DNF in E grade .. wont be long though till the first podium  finish.


So I shall be working towards this painting goal, amongst other goals.  Little steps at a time, take some risks, push the limits, make mistakes and get better with it over time.

Documenting that journey here should be fun to write about.

My first real bash at upping the painting standard for 15mm miniatures, I have posted Here with a go at doing some interwar period 15's to a higher than normal (for me that is) level. 

Took some effort to do that, but it should get more natural over time.

2 comments:

  1. Wow, they're fantastic!!! Although I never want to paint like that, there's far too much detail on them and my eyes wouldn't take the abuse. What I do want is to have enough money so that I can afford someone else to paint them for me!!!

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  2. What Ray said! Way better than I can paint 28's.

    Peter

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