An early Do Not Miss for May with Elías Alonso

I'll post tomorrow night the real Do Not Miss selection for the month of May (which by the way is really big this month), but before that, I needed to post this because it can't wait until tomorrow (you never know if you will run out of spots!).


The gods of painting know this is THE OPPORTUNITY.
I'm definitely going to try to make it happen! I'm already going to Pedro Fernández's sculpting workshop in Alcalá de Henares on the weekend of July 6-7, but no sane painter should miss this one!

Metals

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Metals are difficult surface to represent with paint. The natural shines that metal produces and its capacity for reflection of light makes it very complicated. In traditional painting, metal represented in two dimensions is relatively easy to achieve: we force contrasts and glares, and simulate reflections that occur naturally, limiting ourselves to the context of a single view. In sculpture painting, three-dimensional, this is something much more complicated. Glares and shines are something that depends on the relative position of the viewer to the figure, and therefore traditional methods do not work as easily, because, when we switch views, shine spots are fixed in one place and do not move with the viewer's point of view, thus ruining the feeling of metal.


Polished metal shines on a ball pen.
To achieve a realistic metal effect, paints wich metallic pigments were developed to simulate the natural shine of these materials. When painting with these pigments, all the surface acquires a metallic feeling, but despite being a good approximation, we do not get the natural reflection of polished metals (although with some very specific paintings we may get close enough). We will try to fool the eye forcing the glare to be always in the same position, as we do with any other surface in miniature painting, but this time the placement does not depend so much on the light scheme chosen but rather on our intention.


Even when rusty, metal still has strong shines.

Shines on metallic spheres.
The secret of metals is therefore represent the reflection of light in the appropriate manner. The more polished metals are, the more they suffer from specular reflection, i.e. the more they resemble a mirror in how they reflect those images. This is what we will try to do when trying to represent our miniatures. For this we will use two features that when properly controlled will define the quality of our painting:

• The first feature is that the use of very strong colour contrasts is essential, going from light to dark in a extreme way. We will be able to go from black to white in silver metallics, from light to dark browns in golden metallics, etc. The great difference from painting any other type of surface is that we will extremely differentiate changes of places and position of highlights. The latter, which at other times is determined by the position of light sources, in this case is arbitrary, almost at will, representing the fact that metals act like mirrors. We will use all forms of contrast that we have seen and will use them combined with each other.
• The second feature is the cleaning of transitions. Metallics with dirty transitions will not be believable, and this is especially critical the more polished the metal is supposed to be. When we paint metals with metallic paints we will play with gloss contrast, and that contrast is very sensitive to the smoothness of transitions, as improper blending of transitions in glossiness are easily noticed and spoil all the work.

Metallic armours with slight colour reflections.

Worn out metal with rust and blood effects.
In metal, light spots will be specular reflections of light rays either from the sun or from an alternative source of light. The shadows will be reflected images of nearby surfaces surrounding the metal, and we will ensure that the more polished the metal has to be, the stronger the reflection we will have to insinuate. These nearby surfaces mark the colour that we will use for the shadows. We will have to do a study of the metal surface to identify where the lights go, and what they are reflecting with the shadows. At times when there is no object close to the metal to be used as reflection, we will use a creative license. We will use the sky if the metal is looking up, so we'll use blueish colours, or the ground if it is looking down, so usually we will use the same colours that we use for the base. We can also use the predominant colour of the miniature, so that the metal is kept in harmony with the rest of the figure. The possibilities are endless.


Polished metal painted using metallic paints.

Polished metal painted using non-metallic paints
That said, let's look at the two most popular styles of painting metals that we have in miniature painting, True Metallic Metal and Non Metallic Metal (NMM). The two forms, despite having names so pretentious, are actually the same technique. The difference is that in the first one we will use metallic pigment colours and gloss while in the other we will use matte colours.

Happy Towel Day!!!

It's that time of the year fellows!!!


¡Feliz Día del Orgullo Friki!.
Today is May 25! A super intergalactic coincidence of very important anniversaries happens on this date, and if you are a nerd (who I'm pretty sure you are since you happen to be reading these lines), I don't need to remind you that Star Wars was released today more than 35 years ago, or that it's Towel Day for the Hitch-hikers of the galaxy everywhere. Today is known as "Towel Day", or as an even cooler name that we have for it in Spain: "Día del Orgullo Friki" (translated as "Nerd Pride Day").

All of you must be preparing their best galas for the Nerd Pride Parades happening everywhere, or maybe preparing to re-watch Star Wars at home. I am celebrating it doing even more translations for the super DVD set from Painting Buddha, Season 1.1 "Target Identified". While resting from one of my long translating sessions, I'm sharing with you this wonderful teaser trailer for the DVD set, released today (obviously had to be today) by Mr. President Bartels from masterminis.net.


Check out the TEASER TRAILER!.
From Painting Buddha himself:

The Budget Box will be a no-thrills box which holds all the essentials you need to become a better painter: 6 full loaded DVDs in a beautiful DVD Collectors Edition and our Hero's Brad & Yanet (without the base) protected by a stylish metal box. And of course it had to be 42€!

But we are nerds, and we wanted more. So we stuffed all kinds of goodies into the deal and realized that - if we sold it for 42€ - we would be in the red. Not that red is a bad color, but hey,... A suporter box at 84€ is twice as hoopy as 42!

You wonder what kind of hoopy gifts we will put in the Budget and the Supporter Box?

Look at this bit of Wonderland!.
I tell you, I can't wait for this to see the light! Or at least... to finish the subtitles in Spanish! :D

Subtitle translation mayhem!

You might remember this.


Join the Revolution, NOW!.
And these three motherfuckers:


The happy family of Ben, Mati and Michael.
Well there's some DVD goodness Season 1 coming very soon (seriously!). But all great release comes with great responsibility. And I wanted my fellow friends in Spain to be able to enjoy the videos even if their English level is not that great. So because of that, this week I'm immersed in a subtitle translation mayhem because I want to make sure that everything in the DVDs is properly subtitled, not only in English and German, but also in SPANISH!


Even Ben Komets will speak in Español too.
So you'll be guessing that with a 6 DVD (!!!!!!) translation task as huge as this one, I won't be doing much of anything else this week...