One of the hardest yet most rewarding aspects of miniature painting is having a cool freehand design. It's always a good idea to have your minis neatly painted, shaded and highlighted. It's another thing entirely to have an otherwise flat surface suddenly covered in a beautiful new design. It's one of the most powerful ways you can make a model your own. It's also an intimidating method due to it's complexity.
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| A world of potential... |
1: Concept
The forgotten step; taking the time to understand exactly what you want to do with your design. This will eliminate your first potential point of failure: trying to add or subtract elements mid-freehand. It doesn't have to be a doctoral thesis; a simple list will do just fine.In this example, I'm painting a banner for the Howling Griffons. Here's what I want:
- The quartered color scheme the Griffons use for their armor
- The Howling Griffon icon
- The name of the Howling Griffons home planet, "Mancora"
- Embellishments in the corners of the banner
2: Sketch
Unless you're freehanding your army symbol for the 50th+ time on the shoulderpad of a rank-and-file trooper, you're going to want to draw a design out at least one time just to make sure everything fits correctly. How complete an effort and how many times you need to do this is your call. It pays to keep a small sketchbook on hand to ensure you always have some scratch paper for notes, ideas, and most importantly, a practice surface.Now is the time to make mistakes, adjustments, additions, and subtractions. This is another critical step that if skipped can lead to disaster in your freehand.
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| Left: My rough sketch for the banner. Right: My reference sheet for the Howling Griffons logo. |
3: Base Color
I cannot reccommend foundation colors highly enough for this all-important stage. A solid and easily reproducable background will make your life infinitly easier. If not foundation colors, a paint with equal coverage is absolutely necessary.
This is where you're going to run into your first challenge, straight lines. Without a physical guide on the model, you've got quite the task. If you're working on cloth, especially dynamic cloth, you'll have some room for mistakes. But if you're painting on a tank hull or similar surface, even the slightest mistake will stand out like a sore thumb.
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| Get the outlines right first... |
7 Tips for straight lines
- Straight highlights will fool the eye into believing a less-than-perfect freehand is flawless. This only saves you from smaller mistakes, but it can be invaluable if a line is being stubborn.
- Focus on the lines first, then fill in the rest later. It's distracting to try have to stop and fill in larger areas. Also, with large patches of wet paint, you are forced to slow down and avoid getting the paint on your hand as you're working.
- If you have a line that is perfectly straight except for one little bump where you twitched while painting, consider covering it up with battle-damage. A chipped-up piece of armor will lend authenticity to your work as well as conveniently covering up mistakes.
- Just because there isn't a physical guide on the model doesn't mean you can't have one. Any straight edge will serve as a great guide for your brush. Just be sure to use the guide for the brush and not the bristles. Paint can sometimes flow between a straight edge and the surface you're pressing it to, creating an absolute mess. For straight and curved guides that you can easily get your hands on, just grab some warhammer 40k and fantasy bases.
- If you're a real stickler for precision and you're working on an enormous freehand, consider using painters masking tape. It may take considerable time to get everything in place, but there is no higher degree of precision.
- Make sure you have enough time to complete the job; a rushed freehand is asking for trouble.
- Don't forget to breathe.
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| ... then worry about filling in the rest |
4: Freehand
Please note, this step is optional. There's nothing wrong with just a simple geometric design if it's well done.
Here's where you're going to be adding anything extra beyond the initial geometric design. This includes, but is not limited to, text, characters, icons, honors, and patterns. How deep the rabbit hole goes is entirely up to you, but the technique remains the same. Get the line work down how you want it, then fill if necessary.
5: Correct
This is where using foundation colors really comes in handy. Time spent correcting mistakes can be kept to a minimum when a single coat of flat color can fix anything. Make sure everything is exactly how you want it, because the next step is going to make further changes time consuming and difficult.And for the love of everything, make sure it's dry and set.
6: Shade
A single heavy coat of magic wash is all you need here. Take your wash of choice and have at it. If this is a new color combination for you, test this first, you definitely don't want any nasty surprises at this point.7: De-Shade / Highlight
With a clean, damp brush, slowly draw the magic wash away from the areas you want to be brighter. Having the wash dry after this point will leave you with a very smooth series of shadows and highlights that go far and beyond any effect you could have done by hand in the same amount of time.If you have further highlights you want to do, be extremely careful, because any brush marks will be extremely apparent compared to the pigment progression you see otherwise.
Then just let it dry and enjoy. Congratulations, you've done freehand.
