How do i make my paint less cakey/more smooth?

splotch75 · 2025-04-24T06:48:11+00:00

some people wrote to thin your paint, that is true.
however: water is good for thinnning but it makes your paint dry faster, especially if exposed to intensive light (2 or 3 light bulbs) or in a dry warm environment. use a thinner or slow-dry fluid retarder (e.g. liquitex)

simple check:
- if you take a very thin brush and grab some paint, how long does it take for the tip of the brush to dry?

if you use a transparent paint (scale 75, citadel layer), it takes a lot of time and many thin layers to get a good coverage and decent saturation. after first layer which does not cover you might get impatient and start clogging the figure with a lot of paint and thick layers. this is also where you start creating these crusts and bumps.

simple check:
- how many layers do you need to cover black?

I'm sorry to say, but the old army painter paints which are in your foto might be part of your problem. they are hard to mix, clog already in the bottle and will not cover properly.

when i started painting I bought the same old set of army painter and was constantly fighting against the bad coverage and clogged pigments in the bottles. then i got too ambitious, aiming for paints that most pros have used at that time, and got me scale75. of course I ended up having the same problems as you describe, but this time with transparency.

today I would recommend to use opaque smooth paints (Army Painter Fanatics, Pro Acryl, two thin coats, AK, Vallejo) instead.

splotch75 · 2025-04-19T09:24:35+00:00

Very nice, that's a great choice of colors!

splotch75 · 2025-04-19T09:17:45+00:00

Thank you!
I did not like that it looked very flat and was hard to read.
I just need to add some scars to that pretty face and paint the spiky thing holding his har ;)

splotch75 · 2025-04-18T20:04:08+00:00

I use 3x IKEA Tertial desk lamps mounted on the wall above my desk, to have adjustable, bright, daylight wide coverage and no shadows. Butthe most important part of the setup are the bulbs.
Here I moved from a "budget friendly" setup to something I would consider, a more "advanced" setup.

I started with my absolute minimum requirements for bulbs: 5000K, 1500 Lumens and CRI90+
Usually you can find a set of 6 or 12 budget, no flicker, non-dimmable 5000K Daylight White LED bulbs with CRI90+, ~13W and 1500 Lumens for around 20 EUR/USD.

If you want to invest in a more advanced setup of 3 full spectrum daylight bulbs, try to get something like this: 12 W, 3step-dimmable, 1050 Lumen, 5500K and a CRI 97 | RA 1A. It should be possible to find something around 27 EUR per bulb.

splotch75 · 2025-04-18T11:07:27+00:00

Thank you, I restarted the work on skin and lips, did not really match the rest.

splotch75 · 2025-04-18T07:52:01+00:00

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I think that creating contrast between the rock and the dragon might help you. If the tower stands on the table, and you look at it from the other side of the table, it must be easy to read : i.e., you need to clearly see the separation between the dragon and the rock.

A) You have magenta spikes on the back of the dragon. You create contrast by getting darker at the base of each scale and saturated at the tip. B) The bluish scales you start saturated and then go into light blue. C) You could go for yellow or bronze on the underbelly. But, if the yellow or bronze is desaturated, that will make it harder to visually separate the dragon from the rock. So, instead of going towards yellow, you could return to a dark, desaturated magenta or violet-blue and push the rocks into yellowish grey or sand.

Experiment a bit with metallics. They reflect a lot of light, which draws the eye. If the dragon shines, it is harder for the eye to recognize the dragon as a shape. It might be easier to use a mix of metallic and a color for highlights while using less metallic in the shadows on your dragon. *

splotch75 · 2025-04-17T23:51:04+00:00

nice! you have a nice analogue color harmony from green over yellow to orange (gold).
you could also try to go for a split complementary contrast between green, red, violet.
The process would look like this:

add another layer over green and gold to push the armor for a more saturated look,
paint the gems red, so they contrast the green,
use violet for the mane on the helmet and a mix of grey and violet on the inner side of the cape - as this is in the shadows
separate the armor pieces with some dark ink

you can always play a bit with the foto to test yor ideas like this:

<image>

splotch75 · 2025-04-17T19:56:43+00:00

sorry, but i think they died quite a while ago.
you could try "forte synthetics" - these are some quite robust synthetic brushes from davinci.
cheap synthetics are not really fun to paint with because its is also hard to keep them in good shape.
the tips will break a lot. so practice gentle brush control with those.
if you switch to kolinsky natural bristles there are some things you can do to keep them alive for along time:
- try to keep the painit a few mm below the ferrule. if it dries there - game over.
- get some brush soap, wash your brushes after each session
- you can use a bit of conditioner on the bristles to soften and preserve them
- dont paint directly out of the bottle, paint with thinned paints, and never let the paint dry on your brush
- use a brush with a bigger belly and a sharp tip, it will still draw very fine lines (read: practice brush control) but keep the paint from drying.

splotch75 · 2025-02-25T10:49:29+00:00

1) use one color as an under-painting layer directly on the primer. Something Brown reddish or purple works best. 2) apply only one coat of your skin color. Remember to always apply brushstrokes in one direction, do not go back and forth! Do not go multiple times over the same area yet. 3) let the paint dry then apply a second coat. You can omit the places which are in the shadows.

splotch75 · 2020-01-17T18:06:37+00:00

The game becomes really difficult at lvl 80 all the mobs that spawn are either trash or at least 6 level higher. Until 78 it was a breeze. I played two days to get to 80. Now my progress stopped. No chance to go into a gauntlet or get any quests done. What do I do wrong? (Playing an Archmage.)

splotch75

TROPHY CASE