 Hello everybody and welcome to another hobby cheating video and today we're gonna talk about painting rocks. Wait, wait, wait Don't leave yet. I promise this is gonna be really really fun Let's get into it. The strict techno man sir that is Vinci V Let us get to the technique and learn it Vinci V style I've touched on painting rocks and stone a few times over the course of hobby cheating videos but today I want to do a really deep dive as part of this awesome figure the morrigan and This presents a real opportunity because I think too often when we're painting stone. We just sort of Default to colors. We just think well, it's supposed to be gray I'm just gonna paint it some grays and I've talked lots of times about how integrating hues so actual things off the color wheel Into your neutral tones like your grays makes them more visually interesting compelling and credible But I also want to talk today about how doing so can help you integrate it into the overall piece The lighting and the scene you're trying to create So let's head over to the desk and we're gonna go ahead and see how we can make some rocks Really interesting while also just having fun at the same time. Let's do it All right, let's make rocks fun and interesting the paints are gonna scroll up top as always We're gonna move a little quicker here at the beginning And I'm actually starting with this very deep red brown color which might seem unusual, but trust me Rocks can be lots of different colors and what we're gonna play with here is the magic of complementary colors and using them to create Warm shadows while having some nice cold highlights to match with the rest of the piece You'll also notice that I'm using a big flat brush I feel the flat brush is often disregarded in miniature painting and that's usually because for things like A traditional space marine or something of that size There's not really enough room to work there with it But with something like this with these large flat surfaces or with terrain or anything like that or when we go up scales Don't sleep on the flat brush We tend to be pretty Addicted to the round brush in miniature painting and it's the right tool for most jobs But in something like this with this with the flat brush I could just it perfectly lets me work along all these surfaces And what I'm doing here is really a sort of like very wet or heavy sort of dry brush However, you want to think about it? I'm not working in the traditional way. I'm painting. I'm just Really focusing with more paint on trying to catch things like ridges and pull out the texture So as I apply the paint and then you'll notice I continually work it and work it and work it and smooth it around So I'm constantly pushing it around the miniature on the actual You know with the brush itself with the bristles I don't just let the paint rest and place it as we might with the traditional round brush Instead, I sort of try to follow the individual textures You'll notice I'm trying to like follow the cracks the highlights the edges things like that But I'm working very quickly And the goal here is just to slowly build up this individual texture each time I'm trying to cover a little bit less, but not much And that's one of the things when you're working on something like, you know rocks or when you're working in these unusual colors As I mix these reds together with these greens You'll see I get this very strange sort of gray brown color a really nice color for sandy rocks Like honestly where we're going here if I was just interested in some sort of like desert type of rocks This combination alone would be good and set you and you wouldn't need to go much farther This could be a really interesting place to stop But I'm going for something a little brighter And so we're going to keep working up and once again I'm going to keep pushing with the flat brush not a lot of paint on there But you see how I'm trying to just not only follow its textures But also just let the brush play let it fall wherever it may as the brush hits the miniature And hits these textures on the rock and deposits paint what's going to happen is it's going to leave some interesting little individual Artifacts behind bumps and scratches and bruises and into the into the stone effectively right little places where paint has been deposited And as I continue to work the thing especially in the later steps when I do go to a smaller brush What I'm doing is trying to build on each one of those So in other words, I'm wherever the brush if the brush said hey, this is a raised spot Great, I'll focus on that and cover a little less in that place with the next Pass I'll effectively let the brush tell me the story of the miniature Not really having to worry as much about what's there although with things like that big giant crack in the back I am still going to focus in on it and and you know there follow what the miniature says But I can I can add to it I can enrich the experience And that's where we come to the story of texture You know things in nature are very Random when it really comes to it You know rocks these these rocks form over millions and millions of years whatever this throne is you sitting on these rocks are millions of years old right and so There's going to be all sorts of unexpected texture and bumps and cracks and Deformities in the rock and stuff like that that we can use to our advantage And whether that's there in the sculpt or whether we add them doesn't really matter that much In the end it will all sort of blend together as long as we bring it out And so as I now reach the sort of end of my value scale, you'll notice here I'm touching very little hitting just sort of the edges and the parts that I had previously pulled out So you notice that with the way I let that flat brush run there's a whole bunch of texture and scrapes and scratches and and sort of Brushstrokes there that weren't really intentional on my part. They just happened But because then in later steps I continued to build them up They feel very much like it's naturally part of the sculpt even though in as a point of fact The back of that is you know relatively smooth by comparison And so I can just continue building up what the brush already did to tell a more interesting story And effectively enrich and add to the story of the stone But of course we can't just work our way up the layering alone although a cool effect isn't quite enough In addition to going up we have to go down and here I'm going to use some known oil And once again, I'm going to work with this big flat Big fat flat brush. There we go. That's a tongue twister say that seven times fast The idea here is pretty straightforward. I'm not going to gloop on this wash I don't want it to just cover everything I did You'll notice I'm applying it very carefully and I'm spreading and spreading and spreading and spreading the wash out Over the whole surface going back making sure to clean up any kinds of pools or anything like that I do not want this anywhere But basically in the recesses and you see it has a pretty significant effect In toning down the overall color palette after a couple of thin applications I then want to basically create a cold transition From the light down into the warmer shadows So I make a very very thin glaze out of the pain's gray Now this is what we would call like a bridge color And bridge colors are really powerful They're how you can add saturation and hue and interest back into the miniatures Especially when you're dealing with something that's very desaturated like rocks Working in something that's an actual color and focusing it in on the mid tones Bridging between the highest tones and the shadows adds not only more visual interest But also helps hide your previous sins of brushstrokes One of the neat tricks here is that when you mix colors from opposite sides that are going to go toward the middle So for example here, I'm effectively using kind of reds and kind of greens, but I could do the same with lots of different tones I could even get to the same sort of place with sort of browns and oranges or something like that or purples and yellows if I wanted very very brown rocks So by mixing those two things together, but one of a very high value and one of a very low value You can get to this nice neutral tone that'll still give you the feel of rocks Because so much of what's wrapped up in stone is really with the texture How you're applying it and what the underlying figure itself is telling you through the sculpt So by applying these other elements the the stippling techniques the cracks and all these sorts of things It will feel like stone because in the world it turns out nature is pretty varied and there's lots of colors of rocks Okay, now it's officially time to get out the traditional small round brush and work in the details But what I'm doing here is really just an extension of what I did before I'm figuring out where the brush had sort of told me and where the sculpt is telling me There's raised areas Focusing on edges the underlines of cracks all these sorts of things and just kind of lightly picking those out Now I start with a rather, you know a sort of layer consistency to make sure that it actually Shows up. I also just kind of stipple and play and add some other detail But really we'll come back to that later As the paint gets thinner because my brush is fairly moist and becomes less impactful What I do then is work down from that upper area and smooth out that transition So that it looks like we have a little bit of a highlight And the upper area of the sort of roundish section of the rock Is then pulled out and giving a sort of natural tonal variation that we would expect I want to continue to do that as I go to an even higher highlight color But this time I'm focusing on just the edges just to those very very small spots But importantly, I am not tracing around the entire edge of the thing with this high highlight You'll notice I'm focusing mainly on the top and on the the left and that's because in this piece That's where the light is coming from and so that top left basically the light is at her Uh sort of 1 30 p.m On the clock face that means that's where we want to focus in our highlights Now once all that's built up and I have those edges It's time to add some more visual interest the next fun thing you can do with rocks is put some pigment to use I love dry pigment. There's so many places. You can get it. This is a wonderful green pigment It's not available anymore. Unfortunately. This is a secret weapon Uh green pigment, but there's lots of people out there who meet green pigments You can even just ground up pastels and stuff and use that Um, but I start by applying some on there and then really really work it around Uh, especially I'm focusing the green into the shadows and into the recesses. Why? Well, because it's going to be representing moss or algae or growth Of sort of life and in scale you wouldn't necessarily see actual You know texture or something like that The stone would just be tinted green from this micro algae that's sort of grown all over it And it would tend to grow down in these recesses Where there would be uh naturally water collecting and stuff like that And you can see here. I just kind of work it work it work it until it becomes very minimal Once you put it on you can continue to work it and wipe it with a brush or even your finger To reduce its impact but still leave the overall stain Now in the same thing I did with the Painting itself we're going to use the magic of complementary colors of red and green with pigments as well I adding a little bit of red into your stone is really important Not only is it a big part of this piece in the shadows down in the lower areas of the rocks But it also once it hits the green pigment is going to mix in and make a nice neutral sort of brown tone Again bridging out so it doesn't feel too incredibly strong Now my last step here is a little more careful on the front where you're going to be directly looking at the figure I want to create this impression that there's a little bit of extra light and texture here that's falling and pulling out some additional colors So this is more about creating those little micro details and making sure the light and volumes are all in balance across the piece This is a very heavily like strongly lit with a very strong shadow piece And so you have to constantly keep sort of working back and forth And that's what i'm doing here creating you see how i'm doing these little lines in the stone Just sort of show where the edges or the cracks or the texture or something like that would be picked out On the backside of it and now over the whole thing I then add the sort of micro detailing This means very small even too small for really the camera to pick up often But these little small Scratches and hashes and dashes and dots these little tiny chips and light catches and elements that will make for a That will again help sell the realistic effect of the stone And so just by adding those hitting the top top tippy top edges of some of the Bolts of the stone and so on And then if we're going to go to the light we can also go to the dark I thin down a very thin filter of the panes gray and now on the opposite side Basically under the light or where it's going to fall into shadow I'm going to create some natural places Where there where the rock is slightly recessed slightly tilted slightly a jar and so it creates a slight shadow Really, this is nothing more than contouring. It's exactly what you do in a makeup tutorial But we can do it too to create more verticality more impact and more credibility for our very fun stone So there you go There we go. If you made it to this point. Thank you so much I really appreciate you watching more than you know these kinds of videos Often don't do the best on the channel But I don't care I want to do them anyways because I want to help people no matter what question they have And painting some fun rocks is probably a question that people will have So if you did like this give it a like subscribe for additional hobby cheating in the future If you want to support the channel There's a patreon down below focused on review and feedback and taking your next step on your hobby journey We'd love to have you as part of the community As always, thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time