Right now there is not much in this section. I really don't wish to repeat what others already have on their web site for tips and tricks. Plus at the moment I do not have a digital camera any more, so I lack pictures to show examples, but I hope to have example pictures eventually. The majority of this section is composed of personal tutorials i have wrote. In time i may add tutorials from other people with their permission, if i do it will be noted who did the original tutorial. As well the tutorial will have a link back to the original author's site if any. Credit where credit is due after all.

Sometimes your inks and wash don't flow just right where you want them to go. Most of the time this is due to your water tension in the wash mix. Much like water and oil ink is lighter then water is and so it will float on the top. Most of the time stirring the ink and water will mix them together enough for most uses. However sometimes, and especially it seems with GW inks, the ink refuses to flow into the recesses correctly.

This can be easily fixed by adding a small drop of dish washing soap to the mix. Basically the soap is heavier then both the ink and water, plus it bonds with the ink in the mix. The result is that the ink will now be sucked right down into the cracks where you want it. Of course you need to be careful as the wash now has some soap in the mix and could leave a soapy residue if you brush to hard on the mini with the wash.

Now and again you paint a miniature and it doesn't come out right. Or you find this awesome mini but someone else painted it with a hammer. Maybe you have an old mini you painted early in your career or before you learned that one trick that took your skills to the next level. Are you shit out of luck? Nope! Something a lot of mini-painters know and do is strip an old paint job off and do the miniature again. It took me a year to figure this out on my own but Pine sol works wonders. In fact just about anything with pine oil will work on stripping the paint.

By doing this you can strip all or almost all of the paint and varnish from the mini. The best part is that, as far as I can tell, the Pine sol is harmless to metal minis. However plastic bases and minis have the negative effect of becoming soft and could make the mini look like Quasimodo's butt ugly bell ringing sister.

Now I have nothing against NMM, SE-NMM or chrome styles artistically. However personally I don't like the styles most of the time. The NMM gold looks to yellow and the NMM metal looks to gray. Now saying that there are some people out there who do fabulous NMM, SE-NMM and chrome styles that I am completely in awe of, Arjay, Jenova, Slave to Paint, Blackmoor and Ironhalo to name a few. However if you wish to paint metallic with metallic paint there are a few tips I can offer.

Use a darker metallic, such as GW's Boltgun, as the base color and highlight up with GW's Chainmail and Mithril. Once the Boltgun has been applied use a thin black wash over the Boltgun. Wait for the black wash to completely dry and apply a second thin black wash, make sure the wash gets into the recesses of the Boltgun painted areas. Next dry brush Chainmail onto the areas that normally would reflect light. Then sparingly apply dry brushed Mithril on the Chainmail highlights.

If you wish to make the armor a darker steel color add a small drop of black paint to each of the metallic you are using before you apply them. For a rusted metal or muddy look apply thin wash of Chestnut Ink or Flesh Wash before you begin highlighting the Boltgun. The same tricks can be used on Gold, Bronze, Brass or any other metallic paint to add more depth. One other way to add a bit of depth to metallic paints is to apply the paint as a very light dry brush, this allows more of the primer to show through but only works if you used black primer.

Simply put if you ask 10 mini-painters how to paint skin you will get 10 different replies. No one is saying one way is correct or better then another persons techniques. It really all depends on how you wish the skin to look when you are finished. Myself I prefer to use a dry brush technique to do skins. This technique however does not give a smooth satin like finish to the skin but a more gritty look, as best I can describe it.