Tips and hints for customising/repainting/sculpting

Since I know there are many customisers on this site, I was wondering if maybe some of you guys could share some tips and advice with the rest of us mortals?

It's always a good idea to pick up new knowledge whenever you can. Maybe this could be a place for people who are stuck with a particular problem to come and ask for advice?

And tutorials and the like are always welcome

Here's a question I'm curious about- what kind of paint do you guys prefer to use to repaint your figures? At the moment I like to use Vallejo hobby paints, and some artists acrylic (Amsterdam Acrylic, Liquitex and others) Just wanna hear some opinions here

Hi i don't really use paint to customize my models ,I use pastels. Scrap your pastels into powder and paint it onto your model. what kind of animal do you customize? :) maybe i can ask for some paint customizing tips too! :)

tyrantqueen wrote:

paint do you guys prefer to use to repaint your figures? At the moment I like to use Vallejo hobby paints, and some artists acrylic (Amsterdam Acrylic, Liquitex and others) Just wanna hear some opinions here

I use a variety of arcylic brands, I like Daler and Rowney (system 3) but I also use Crawford & Black. Some paints I bought in Holland called Van Eyck, very similar for C&B. All of them a nice quality.

I pastel too, often on top of an acrylic/primer mix basecoat. I have one pastelling tip, or rather I'm going to shatter a myth:
Everyone says you can't start out dark and go lighter. This is true in most cases (whatever you do, don't attempt yellow over brown unless you're aiming for a truly repugnant color) but you can paint red over black. For rich dark brown colors, if you're starting from white, you'll have to spend a lot of time and there's always the risk of graininess that comes from the many, many layers of pastels it takes to build up a dark color.


This horse started out basecoated black (I use Bob Ross black gesso mixed with Citadel paints) with a little bit of red mixed in. I then pastelled her with layers of reds and browns until I reached this shaded dark bay color.
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(Hey, that's another tip: An animal is never (well, hardly ever) only one color. Natural countershading means that the belly is almost always lighter than the back, and this goes for the inner legs as well. In addition, the sun causes colors to fade, turning black hair brown, red, even yellow. The longer the hair is, the more time it has to fade, so a black longhair outdoor cat may look very brown compared to her shorthair counterparts. This varies a lot from individual to individual however, so use reference photos when you can.)

I use to start with a light base, mainly because my primer is white xD And I use pastels too.

Sumo wrote:

This horse started out basecoated black (I use Bob Ross black gesso mixed with Citadel paints) with a little bit of red mixed in. I then pastelled her with layers of reds and browns until I reached this shaded dark bay color.

I love this one Sumo!

Yes Sumo, great work on this one!!!

About tips I don't know if I can add anything to those which were already said I use Vallejo paints and Koh-i-nor pastels, several different brushes etc, just like others Also spray primers by Vallejo and fixative by K-I-N.

Also, I think You are familiar with technique of dry brush or "wash"? Both techniques show the texture of model nicely-dry brush goes only on top of texture and wash goes only to deep part of texture, so if You put light color by dry brush and dark by "wash" You have kind of additional lighting effect, but it's not a rule and You can try with different combinations (on schleich wild rabbit there is whitish background and black dry brush what gives impression of soft fur, just an example). Also, from Valejo You can get "inks" they are semi transparent and gives "watercolor paint" effect.

I also work with airbrush sometimes, and I think this is interesting too, especially for soft shading.

If it's better to start with light colour or dark? I think it depends of animal If it's darker then perhaps it's better to start from dark colour and vice versa :) At least that's what I do

And, I think, any experiments are always welcome