Painting "Wet" clothing on Mini's

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Saintofm
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Painting "Wet" clothing on Mini's

Post by Saintofm »

A couple of questions on painting the closths on minies.

1. How do you say mae it look wet, like a soldier or adventurer wadding through a swamp or marsh.

2. In relation to this, how would you make cloth look see-through, such as a wet toga.

The former is for something some time down the load, maybe with a skimishing unit.

The latter are for a couple of Reaper minies in particular, but might work for GW.

Aquarious
https://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/ ... down/03290
Image
Drowned Spirit
https://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/ ... down/03727
Image
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squirrelloid
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Re: Painting "Wet" clothing on Mini's

Post by squirrelloid »

So, not that I'm particularly an expert on *doing* this, but this should work... (in theory)

See-through
1. Start by identifying which parts of the garments are clinging closely to skin. These will be flatter parts that follow the contours of the body. These parts are going to get painted like skin.
2. As a final highlight on the skin, blend what would normally be your skin highlight with the cloth highlight and use that instead
3. Optional: Areas where the folds are just starting to emerge or the fabric is just coming off the skin should create a sharp and narrow gradient from skintone to fabric. Your second image could have done more with this. (Example is more sheer than wet, but the same sorts of principles apply: http://www.darkswordminiatures.com/shop ... ister.html )
4. Areas which would be shadowed, and are near (but not clinging to) the skin should get a blend of skintone shadowing and cloth shadowing, like some of the area around the foot on your second picture.

Note that your drowned spirit model doesn't look like the fabric is actually clinging like it would if it were wet. The skirt, especially, is hanging from the legs as if it were dry.

Even less sure for the other... Wet adventurers. Some thoughts.
-Most adventurer clothing materials get darker when they are wet and be less reflective. So go darker and subdue your highlighting.
-Water tends to wick up fabric, so if adventurers have been sloshing around a swamp, decide how deep it was, and then take the wet area higher. Water also tends to splash. Neither of these processes are even, so the border between dry and wet should not be a straight line. (And splashing will get wet splotches above the wet/dry divide). Water wicks faster where fabric is pulled tight, iirc, so up the front of the leg more than the back, for example (if water is knee high).
-Metal, otoh, will get shinier. You're going to have to do NMM to do this right, and you'll probably want to treat the metal as a gem in some respects (with spots of light in the deeper shadows where water droplets are catching the light and reflecting it).
-Obviously metal does not absorb water, so if it's just been pulled out of the water, the water that's still on the metal will condense into droplets, and those droplets will merge and run. So depending on when in time you've decided to depict it, there may be obvious channels of water. Once most of it runs off, you'll have a field of water droplets. From there it will dry from the flat surfaces that are exposed to sun first, leaving water reflecting in crevices and around the base of spikes and other projections. I'd recommend filling a baking pan with water, then dumping the water in the sink, and seeing what it looks like from across the room, and get an idea of the impression it creates, because water droplets are obviously too small for model scale. But I'd guess doing wet metal right is going to be a pain in the butt.

Anyway, that's how I'd approach it. Some experimenting probably necessary.
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