Learn to paint black and white with Roman Lappat on his miniature painting workshops
Last week I welcomed Christoph @christophk51 for his third private coaching with me. In these two days I pushed him through learning all that is to learn to paint White and Black for his projects. No questions left. Thank you for the cool two days, Christoph!
"Painting black and white had always been a challenge for me. Most of my “black" looked like dark grey or brown. As for white I also struggled with just how dark a shadow should be amongst other things.
When I gave the topic to Roman I told him it would be “ebony and ivory” hoping he would sing it on his Instagram introduction to the coaching……
We started out with some fun exercises finding just the right contrast STRECKE for different black articles paced in different light situations. This opened my eyes quite a bit as I usually had the mid-tone to light and also the highlights muuuuuch to light.
I then got to practice on a mini giving Murata from Ilyad Miniatures a nice silky Kimono in the ambience of a fresh green garden.
On the second day we renounced the dark side and focused on white. Roman had a cool exercise for me again to start out. He’d prepared a roll of paper towels with some colorful paper underneath and different light from above. I’d then try to mix the colors on my wet palette (which I also learned how to organize much better). I could test the success of my mixing directly on the towel and was surprised how light the shadows were. The recap on both days for ambience and light colors was much appreciated.
When starting to transfer the knowledge to the mini I went a bit overboard with the colorful shadow which ended up being a lot of fun. The mini will be placed on a glacier to justify the colorful shadows :-)
In the end I did the shadow quite a few times trying to figure out how to best get it colorful and still nicely blended into the light. In the end it worked best for me to go from a desaturated shadow to the mid-tone and lights and glaze in the color afterwards. The mini is a banner bearer from the knights of the light from Ilyad minis.
My three recommendations coming out of this coaching
Book a private coaching with Roman – learning a ton and lots of happy painting.
Read the Black Moon Chronicles graphic novel where both of my characters stem from.
Don’t start collecting minis from companies that are defunct more than a decade like Ilyad."
- Christoph
Learn to paint black and white with Roman Lappat on his miniature painting workshops
