The Joy of Miniature Painting
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Ruby Conference 201511 / 66
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00:00
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Video gameBitMultiplication signProcess (computing)Water vaporMultilaterationSoftware crackingContrast (vision)AreaError messageNeighbourhood (graph theory)Endliche ModelltheorieMoving averageSineRight angleMereologyGame theoryChainLink (knot theory)Texture mappingCodecPlanningMathematicsGroup actionInheritance (object-oriented programming)QuicksortPulse (signal processing)Suspension (chemistry)Physical systemFilm editingGame controller
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GenderCollisionCondition numberSelf-organizationData conversionAreaTexture mappingEndliche ModelltheorieOffice suiteSystem callEntropie <Informationstheorie>QuicksortSource codeLimit (category theory)Closed setBitNoise (electronics)Online helpSoftware testingArithmetic progressionPeer-to-peerInheritance (object-oriented programming)MathematicsInclusion mapRule of inferenceMereologyComputer animation
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Virtual machineOrder (biology)Device driverPoint (geometry)Water vaporComputer programmingQuicksortSound effectRight angleBitComputer animation
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Stress (mechanics)Food energyInteractive televisionDifferent (Kate Ryan album)Multiplication signAkkumulator <Informatik>YouTubeType theoryForm (programming)Pattern languageStatisticsEntropie <Informationstheorie>ResultantSelf-organizationNetwork topologyDistanceData storage deviceNeuroinformatikCodeComputer animation
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NeuroinformatikQuicksortTask (computing)Software developerCurveSoftware frameworkMultiplication signWage labourEndliche ModelltheorieSpeciesPixelOrder (biology)Information technology consultingGroup actionProcess (computing)Scripting languageCoefficient of determinationComputer animation
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Multiplication signComputer animation
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29:38
Videoconferencing
Transcript: English(auto-generated)
01:18
numerous techniques which can be used.
01:21
Many of these, such as striping, glazing, or two-brush blending, are time consuming. Others, like pigment shading or zenithal highlighting, involve additional supplies beyond brushes and paint. If you've done any painting on canvas or elsewhere,
01:41
you may recognize some of these terms. They're really not unique to miniature painting. They're just techniques we've appropriated, and I'm going to complete something today. I'll be going over just a few tools
02:02
in a painter's utility belt. Dry brushing, washing, and base coating. Can't go over 45 minutes, because we have a mean old organizer with no sense of humor.
02:23
D is sort of a general term. I also dabble in things like converting miniatures by changing them from what their sculptor intended. Changing a pose or swapping body parts. Basing them by giving them interesting surroundings
02:42
that help bring the models to life. By showing them running over rocks on a bridge or crouching behind a fallen pillar. Holding terrain to make the battleground more interesting than a flat, wide open field of green grass.
03:04
There are less glamorous parts of the hobby, like cleaning mold lines, or picking the super glue out from under my fingernails after I assemble bits. But most of my time is spent painting, because it's the most exciting to me.
03:26
Painting is my hobby, let from work, that I find more satisfying than lying on the couch and watching Netflix. It lets me step away from the technical
03:40
and interpersonal demands of my job. It uses the creative, imaginative half of my brain that gets less exercised than the logical, analytical hemisphere. I can lose myself for hours getting the right wet blended color gradient for a rippling cloak,
04:04
transition between the shadows and highlights of a muscular arm, wood grain, but I do that too. Super important.
04:20
People with hobbies are generally healthier. They're also at a much lower risk for depression and dementia. I came into this hobby already depressed. Helps me forget that.
04:40
Painters soon learn. There are a few super easy ways to take a flat and boring piece and give it vibrancy and visual interest. The first step of painting a model is to base coat it. This is the step where you throw down the base color of each section.
05:02
Paint a leather belt in a mid brown. Stone is gray. Cloth might be green or blue or red. You usually want to add some amount of water to thin the paint. You can change drastically based on the brand of paint
05:21
and even on the specific color. Description of the desired result when thinning is that the paint should have the consistency of skim milk, just a little bit thicker than water. That's not super useful. From what I've been able to gather
05:41
when people say that, they're mostly regurgitating something that they've been told. They'll get a feel for the right amount of water for a paint through some amount of trial and error. Also not super useful. For base coating, you might want somewhere in the neighborhood of two to one, paint to water.
06:03
Other painting may be closer to one to one as desired. Paints that we paid so much money for. Doing so prevents them from clogging small details on the model's sculpt. And it allows for a much smoother coat.
06:23
Think about it this way. When we paint the walls of our houses, we want to fill in tack and nail holes. We accomplish this by using undiluted paint straight from the bucket. Roll it right onto the wall and all our sins are forgiven.
06:42
In a miniature, a lot of details aren't even that large. Paint helps keep from losing those details. In my experience, not thinning your paint sufficiently, especially during the base coat step,
07:01
is the only thing you can't come back from by staying calm and thinking about how to fix something. This is why you see real life me painting a miniature with some paint already on it. I'm because it's a little bit boring to watch.
07:21
I wouldn't do that to you. It can be fun. A base-coated miniature could totally be used in a game. Yeah, that's just right.
07:43
But there are some tricks you can use to get a better looking model without much more work. And it really makes all that time spent base-coating pay off. The first is shading. This is the process of relatively brightening
08:03
some colors in your model by darkening the parts where the light doesn't shine as much. The simplest way to shade is to use a pre-mixed wash liberally over an area of the model. Highly textured areas work really well for this.
08:24
Chain mail? Throw black shade over the gray or metallic paint to really show off the links. Blue shade to add depth and character to the area.
08:41
Show these nice folks how shading works. Go ahead, I'll wait. Well, hello there folks. Needed more time. Okay, so we have here a nice little wall. It's got lots of texture in it. And I'm very sorry for the audio quality, by the way. It's all my fault, but.
09:04
Got a lot of texture in it, but it's not the easiest thing to see. So what we're gonna do is I'm gonna use this pre-washed brown ink, pre-mixed brown ink, little bit of red in it.
09:21
And just like with the paints, we're gonna water it down a little bit. We're making a wash so we can make it pretty thin and get away with doing way more water and we can just go over in more detail later. We need to.
09:44
So this sinks right down into these cracks. I'm not gonna do this whole thing, but that gives you a little bit more contrast in there between just the base coated, it's actually just primed, and then the shaded area.
10:07
That's all there is to it. It's super easy, you guys should do this. While the paint dries on that, I'd like to talk about something more serious.
10:23
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, one in four adults in America experiences mental illness. These can include schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, and others.
10:44
Approximately 60% of adults do not seek treatment. Illness affects our work and personal lives. Serious mental illness costs America almost $200 billion in lost earnings each year.
11:10
Four of us is probably suffering from some sort of mental health issue.
11:21
There's a stigma around mental health issues. We're afraid that if we admit to being sick, others will judge us for it. We are afraid to seek treatment for it, for fear that others will find out. And sometimes we even create false limits for ourselves
11:41
because we are unsure whether we will be able to succeed. Do you, if you feel that you may have some illness, to seek help? You should be able to feel comfortable going to friends or close coworkers to discuss things like this.
12:02
Certainly, feel free to come and talk to me. Sometimes just talking through these things helps out a lot. Then again, sometimes we need a little bit more help from a professional. We shouldn't be afraid to do that either. This is your bravery test.
12:24
With each other is really important. We need to be sensitive to each other's situations. Caught in the zen that we may not know all the rest to know about them. People in support of our friends and peers.
12:42
There are some much smarter people than me talking about this. People like Ed Finkler and Jenna Kuhlien. You can find a few of them on Mental Health Prompt. MH Prompt, this is a wonderful organization dedicated to get the conversation going to help people working in the tech industry
13:01
affected by mental health issues. And that's the biggest way we can make a change. We can beat the stigma around mental health by simply talking about it more. All right, let's have a little fun.
13:22
Once the wash has dried, we can move on to the simplest way to highlight an area, dry brushing. With dry brushing, we break our paint thinning rule. Usually done with a brush with firmer bristles and without a point, dry brushing takes undiluted
13:41
or only slightly diluted paint and applies it very lightly over an area. This is accomplished by taking the lighter colored paint onto the brush, then wiping most of it off onto a rag or a paper towel or the back of your hand. This is the hardest part of this method. If you can do this, you can do anything.
14:03
Once there's almost no paint left, we can lightly run the brush over a textured area to leave the paint mostly on the highest areas with the sharpest corners. Shwoop! You have to make those little noises or it just doesn't work. These are the opposite of the dark areas
14:22
that the wash settled into and they leave us with a really cool progression of light to dark paint. Give myself a cue that time. All right, the paint has not dried on that yet.
14:41
It's still pretty wet. So we're going to go ahead and just dry brush the original area and you can get the idea. It's a nice color
15:07
and this brush already has some water on it and that's basically all we're going to add. I'm gonna use this dry brush. It's got much firmer bristles.
15:22
Just pull some in. You can see this starting to come off a little bit. Once there's almost none coming out, you just go right over this
15:43
and I can see it so I can promise you it's happening but I know that you cannot. So we'll go a little bit more drastically just to show the effect.
16:12
This is much easier to do even in the shade. I was super impressed when I learned this.
16:22
I hope you guys are impressed too. So the order of those two, doing the shading and the dry brushing, it sort of depends on the effect that you want. So if we were to dry brush over this, then we would have that same brightness
16:43
and if we were less concerned about the brightness, we wanted sort of a more muted thing as we might if we have, for example, a white dry brush. Then we can go over this and get some of that those very high points brought back down and wash it over top of that paint
17:04
and you can go back and forth and do multiple layers and whatever you want. It's tons of fun. Whatever feels right. Okay, once more. So this is all stuff that I learned before I ever picked up a brush.
17:24
I'll be with a coworker as an excuse to spend more time with him and to learn a new thing. A large worth of miniatures and supplies but we were too afraid to start. We watched YouTube tutorials together for days.
17:47
Thing is believing that you can do it. Believe you can do strongly enough, you can do anything as long as you believe.
18:02
More generally about hobbies. Since I'm the one on stage, I guess that means I get to do that. I promised I'd talk about how hobbies can prevent burnout. In the original title of this talk, Painting Miniatures to Stay Fresh, the concept of stay fresh was more about
18:22
not getting tired of what you're doing than acknowledging how cool you are. And you are. Yep, you. Burnout is a form of psychological stress and vital exhaustion.
18:41
While the American Psychiatric Association does not consider it a disorder, it is recognized by the World Health Organization. For our purposes, we can say that it is a mental health disorder. It manifests as being tired and without energy, feeling demoralized, and increased irritability.
19:04
According to the MacArthur Foundation, it's been suggested that it can be a result of resources for adapting to stress being broken down. We have heard the metaphor of a battery representing the certain amount of mental energy available to us each day.
19:22
As we use this energy to solve a problem or interact with each other, that reserve is depleted and we need to find some way to recharge it. It's different for everyone. Burnout can be considered similarly. We have a certain amount of battery
19:40
for dealing with the stresses presented to us by our work, by writing code, and just by sitting in front of a computer. We all recharge differently, but for many people, doing something very different than what they're burned out on is what's most effective.
20:03
People with type A behavior patterns are more likely to be affected by burnout according to the World Health Organization's international statistical classifications of diseases. Type A personality is characterized by high ambition, desire for achievement,
20:21
impatience, competitiveness, and a sense of urgency. Some or all of these traits are present in many of us and I certainly recognize some of these in myself. Doing something creative and challenging that has nothing to do with computers
20:41
helps to break up the concepts of work and play. Do you ever go home and still have some work problem trending in the back of your mind? But it's not uncommon for me to untangle that sort of thing as soon as I stop thinking about it consciously.
21:04
Hobbies like painting are a great way to be focused on one task and unconsciously working through other things. You wouldn't believe how helpful it is to just step away. I know this is somewhat uncouth advice
21:22
in a culture that pushes developers to always be ahead of the curve. Step away from the computer. Not sitting in front of a computer to be very effective at increasing my happiness and in preventing and reversing professional burnout
21:46
is, to me, far more important than always being familiar with the latest JavaScript framework. I've had this sort of thing for a long time.
22:04
I've organized labor groups, petitioning for eight-hour work days, used the slogan, eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, eight hours for what we will.
22:22
Hobbies are great for building relationships and for meeting new people, all of some sort of an accomplishment. I want to show off my best models to people. I'd love to show them to you when we're done talking.
22:42
Carers want to brag about the rare species they saw. Grease monkeys might want to share the role of the engine and the feeling of a smooth acceleration. Hobbies give introverts like me an excuse to talk to people they wouldn't otherwise meet.
23:04
A great way to recharge. Yes, even us introverts. We also need time alone for others
23:29
and take my masterpieces back and put them into my showcase. Sites like Etsy are a great way
23:42
to start selling custom leather work or knitting. Ready, consider starting a hobby,
24:06
since we surround ourselves with so much as developers. An excuse to geek out with others and accomplishments to share.
24:26
It'll even make you happier. I'm about to wrap up here. I'd like to thank my employer, Thoughtbot, for both allowing me to come and chat with y'all
24:41
and for enabling me to do so by covering my costs. Thoughtbot is a fantastic place to work and they do a lot to help prevent occupational stresses. If you're interested in working with us, please do come talk to me about that. We are a design and development consultancy and if you have a product that could use an expert hand,
25:02
I'd love to chat about that as well. We'll co-organize Keep Ruby Weird, a Ruby conference up in Austin. We'll be back in October of next year and I hope to see y'all there. For more on mental health conferences and painting, follow me on Twitter, at Caleb Thompson.
25:23
Before I go, I'd like to give a big thank you to Bob Ross, Beyond PBS. My parents would watch him sometimes. Yeah, we bored me back then.
25:41
This talk, I watched a lot of The Joy of Painting and he's just a very happy, calming gentleman. If you ever watched any of The Joy of Painting, you may have noticed that there are quite a few Bob Ross quotes in this talk. And of course, I'm dressed up as him right now.
26:05
From all of us here, I'd like to wish you happy painting and we'll see you next time. Bit short. Feel free to hang out and watch me finish painting.
26:23
To come up and ask me questions as I paint. I'm happy to show you what I'm doing. And of course, I've got some of my best models up here and I'd absolutely love for you to come and take a look at them.
26:48
I know the lighting in here is not great. You are welcome to come on up and take a look. There's a bunch of painted and partially painted things up here. And I will repeat questions and answer them
27:00
as I continue going. Absolutely. Thank you. I wonder if we can turn up the house lights. It might be easier to see these.
27:30
I do it mostly for the, so the question was do I play games or is it mostly for painting? I do it mostly because I enjoy the painting aspects.
27:40
But almost all of these are from the same game called War Machine. These two guys are actually Terrence's and they are, yep, this is a Wookie and this is a, I forget what it's called. But they're from the Star Wars game.
28:08
Very nice. Ooh, and I like that. They might have cut me off. Oh, there it is.
28:20
So the question was what do I use for sampling colors? I actually, funny story, this guy is the first one of these that I painted, of these like mini copies of the same thing that I've got that I'm using here. This one was a test model for this color scheme and I threw it together in about an hour or maybe two
28:42
just to see what it looked like and it's a little bit more advanced than what I'm doing here just because I had more time. But yeah, I wanted to test out the color scheme and so this was just a cheap model that I had. I do have these colors and I was taking notes on my way through. So this is all of the different colors that I was using for this original model.
29:02
And there's a few in here that I didn't cover. This is just like a Moleskine that I happen to have laying around. And then this is a little bit more interesting. Down the middle are all of the base coat colors that I used and the highlight and shade colors.
29:24
And I wrote down what the originals were. So this is like my speaker notes for this talk. And then all of the different inks that I'm using to wash them afterwards.