RPG Stuff: WIP Guardia Small Gates Painting Day 4 Part 1

As this paint job / review process continues, we are showing off day four of painting and our paint process. We’re going to show off the model in a separate post and use this one just to talk about our setup and our process.

First off as I’ve said previously I prefer inexpensive crafting acrylic paints over pricey RPG model paints. 50 cents vs $6. Do the math. They need to be primed.

After you get your priming done, I suggest getting a shoebox full of acrylic paints. Get not just base colors, but several shades. This may seem silly at first, but it allows you to have fast control over colors while working quickly. It’s a water based paint, but on small scale, you use small amounts. I don’t mix my paints in a palette, I mix them ON THE MODEL as I go. Yes, I also paint paintings this way with acrylics. Which brings me to another thing that will shock most artists…

See those open lids of the paint containers? Not only do I mix the colors ON the model, but I dip and dab straight ouf of the lid while I’m working without cleaning the brush. If you use bare minimal amount of paint, and use extreme caution when dipping into white, yellow and other near white colors you won’t actually have much of a problem. It feels scarier than it is.

If you look at my wood paints, you’ll notice I try to recreate natural wood tones, chemical leakage (such as black tar) as well as the dirt and grime of water run off and sun bleaching. I start by using a base color such as “burnt umber” above and work lighter or darker as I need be. In some cases, I might start painting by putting a dab of black or “khaki” in a a corner and then just mixing it in within a centimeter of that. Cracks are good places to deposit a lot of black, don’t just depend on the object being 3D to cast shadow. It’s not naturally going to cast DEEP shadow. We need paint for that.

My stone work follows a similar concept. I start with a base and then move outwards from the base using one other gray, white and black. You can paint one brick at a time, DON’T. Throw on a base, and them modify live. All you need is some slight variation to create realism.

Guardia Small Gates is a small, modular set piece for TTRPGs sold by Centrion Studios on Etsy. Here is the direct link to this item on etsy.

But they also have a website! https://www.centrion3d.com/

This gate plugs directly into the Kingdom Of Guardia Wall System.