Osl

[Thryth]

For my next quesion... :)

I was wondering if anyone might want to offer advice on how to paint OSL. I have tried it on a couple of miniatures now, but have never felt comfortable doing it, nor was the result great.

Do you paint the miniature as you normally would, then try to change the tone of the miniature where the light hits?

Do you go, back put a base of white and paint the lighted areas from scratch?

Thanks in advance.

[pae]

Do you paint the miniature as you normally would, then try to change the tone of the miniature where the light hits?


On the few occasions that I've done it, that's what I did. I also made sure that my highlights and shading were such that they were influenced by my light source.

For where the light source was hitting the figure, I'd do glazes of the midtone of my lightsource.

[gi6ers]

I prime black then use a white spray from the direction of the light for a guide.

[Ritual]

You need to change the way you place your highlights according to the direction of the light source. The method gi6ers mentioned is good as a guide. I find that OSL works to its best effect if you have no (or very little) general lighting and let the light source be the main light source. That way you can more easily avoid the common mistake of having the coloured light reflections darker in tone than surrounding areas.

[EricJ]

Listen to Ritual, he know's! But I really don't think there is a big secret here people hide about how to do it. When you're painting a non-osl mini you are painting highlights from a light source as well, it just happens to be "outside the frame" so to speak, so you don't see the source of the light, but usually there is a lighting effect coming from the upper right or left and as you paint the mini, you keep this in mind as you're adding your highlights. OSL is exactly the same except in this case the light source is in the frame of the miniature scene you're painting. As you're highlighting/shading each area, do it exactly as you would, but just take into account where the light source is reletive to that area on the mini. The first step to effective OSL is use of highlights and shading to make it look like light is coming from the source object. The color of the light is another step, and one I feel is less important really, if you want to adjust the hue of the colors toward the light source, that's fine, but be sure not to kill your highlights. Remember, it's Object Source LIGHTING, not Object Source Coloring.

[vincegamer]

The only OSL I've done, I painted it black then highlighted yellow/orange/brown. Done.

[Thryth]

Hi,

Wow! Advice from some of the best! Thanks! :)

I'm definiately going to try to put the advice that I received into practice on my next OSL miniature.

@Ritual: I have no background in arts, so I would like to ask for some clarification. You say "...common mistake of having the coloured light reflections darker in tone than surrounding areas...," and in your comment on my Something Wyrd entry you said of the reflections on my miniatures "...are generally a bit darker in tone than the 'regular' highlights..." What do you mean by tone? The dictionary definition of color tone is the amount of gray in a hue. I don't think that is what you mean.

Thanks again for taking the time to help me, to everyone who answered! I appreciate the help.

This is a really great site, with really nice people. The information that I have gotten here has helped my improve my painting over the year since my return to it.

[Ritual]

What I mean is... and I'm not entirely sure I use the correct terms as I'm self-taught too... that colours have a brightness that is independent of their actual colour. If you're going to have coloured light reflections on a surface with another colour you must make sure that the coloured reflections are in fact brighter than the surface they're reflected on. Otherwise the light source darken the area and that's not the effect you desire. I think the brightness of a colour is usually called tone (in art software at least...), but I could be mistaken. So, to avoid this, it's better to focus on actually highlighting the area that is lit, like Eric mentioned, than focus on the colour of the light. (Also, because of the fact that different colours may or may not reflect light of a certain colour...)

About your entry, what I think I meant was that you had regular highlights on your mini (like we always do, with a light source somewhere above the mini) and your OSL reflections that should be brighter than the 'regular' highlights due to the added light in fact looked less bright.

I hope this makes sense! :)

[Thryth]

What I mean is... and I'm not entirely sure I use the correct terms as I'm self-taught too... that colours have a brightness that is independent of their actual colour. If you're going to have coloured light reflections on a surface with another colour you must make sure that the coloured reflections are in fact brighter than the surface they're reflected on. Otherwise the light source darken the area and that's not the effect you desire. I think the brightness of a colour is usually called tone (in art software at least...), but I could be mistaken. So, to avoid this, it's better to focus on actually highlighting the area that is lit, like Eric mentioned, than focus on the colour of the light. (Also, because of the fact that different colours may or may not reflect light of a certain colour...)

About your entry, what I think I meant was that you had regular highlights on your mini (like we always do, with a light source somewhere above the mini) and your OSL reflections that should be brighter than the 'regular' highlights due to the added light in fact looked less bright.

I hope this makes sense! :)

Hi,

Thank you very much for following-up!

Makes sense. Now if my skills allow me to implement the advice... :laugh: