From: pshyvers@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com (Peter Shyvers)
Newsgroups: alt.models
Subject: Re: Painting a large figure model
Keywords: painting, figure
Date: 25 Jul 92 04:55:01 GMT
Reply-To: pshyvers@pyrnova.pyramid.com (Peter Shyvers)
Organization: Pyramid Technology Corp., Mountain View, CA
Originator: daemon@sword.eng.pyramid.com

In article <36114@sdcc12.ucsd.edu> jlkim@sdcc3.ucsd.edu (Justin Kim) writes:
>
>	The figure has a lot of creases in its clothing
>and I can't see just painting it one color.  I think that doing so
>would not give the proper "depth" to the clothing for it to look
>good.  So, can anyone help me with some suggestions?  

Shep Paine in "How to build Dioramas" gives lots of pointers. Here's an excerpt:

"...there is no point in including detail on a scale figure that would not be
visible on a man standing an equivalent 1:1 scale distance away - if you can't
see it in real life, you shouldn't be able to see it on a figure.

The light you paint under is important. If you find the lighting that is least
flattering to your figures and paint under that then any other viewing
situation will be an improvement. Bright diffuse light is best for painting
because it shows up all flaws in the figure and the paint.

If you have trouble working at close distances, buy a binocular magnifier, the
kind that has a lens for each eye. A single-lens one is not good, because you
need the depth perception afforded by binocular vision to judge how far your
brush is from the figure's surface."

...(long section on mixing, paint selection, etc.) (he prefers artist oils for
their blending ability.)

Painting figures is a 2-part process; the first part is figuring out where the
colors go, and the second putting them there. Let's start our discussion
of shaking and highlighting with a couple of questions: why should we bother
painting in supplementary shadows and highlights if it takes so much time and
effort? Won'the room light cast its own shadows and make the job easy for us?

No.

If you look at a model figure painted in solid colors under normal ight the
light is not intense enough to pick out the tiny shadows, and much of the detail
is lost. This is because we have scale down the figure, but not the light 
source. Unless we develop a special scale light source for each diorama, 
we must suppllement the existing light with painted shadows and highlights.

How do we determine where those painted shadows and highlights will go? Let's
start by observing that there are two kinds of shadows: direct, cast by a
specific light source coming from a specific directions, and indirect, cast
by no specific source, just light from somewhere up above. The difference
between these shadows is essentially the difference between a sunny day and
a cloudy day. For painting figures, we'll let room light cast the direct
shadows, and paint in indirect shadows, because indirect shadows are what
indicate an object's shape. Our eye automatically translates the patterns
of light and shadow into shapes and forms. We can tell that an object is
curve or bent by its shadows, even when we cannot see its profile."

Paine goes on to discuss how to shade, faces, how folds and creases should
be shaded to accentuate them, etc.

pete

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