Painting faces when suffering from Agnosia

[Valkia the Bloody]

Hi there,

big question.

I am not sure if anyone here also suffers from agnosia (or, more concrete, Prosopagnosia) and paints Warhammer, and has similar issues with painting the faces.

How do you deal with it?

Have you found a solution?

As an explanation, Prosopagnosiais when you have difficulty processing faces.

You might have trouble recognizing people by face alone, or you might not be able to picture faces in your head, there are many different degrees to it.

In day to day life, I get by with also using voice and hair colour and clothes and behaviour and usually, I am quick enough to react to cues.

 

Painting the faces of miniatures is tricky for me.

This is why most of my models wear helmets.

I have trouble visualizing how the face is supposed to look like. For example, I cannot close my eyes and visualize a face.

Of course I know that there must be eyes, nose and a mouth, that is not an issue, but I just have trouble to do anything more than simple overbrushing.

Like I did here with Fabius Bile.

I just wonder if there are other hobbyists like me who might share how they deal with it.

 

[Leonaides]

Well, that already looks better than most of my efforts to paint faces so don't disparage your work.

 

Faces are hard, really hard, and the majority of painters would be plenty happy with matching what you have done there. There was a pretty comprehensive tutorial for faces on the whTV app a while ago, or I'm sure there are plenty on YouTube or wherever you care to look online. Maybe don't try to paint a face, but look for a methodology to paint a face-shaped object (if you see what I mean). Learn a step-by-step method and just repeat that method, a bit like,e doing a paint by numbers picture.

[Chaos Moomin]

Have you tried using reference images while painting? I don't have the condition but I've found it helpful for painting stuff in the past (including faces).

[Firedrake Cordova]

As Leonaides said, Mr Bile's face looks fine to me. :) I suppose one question is are you able to reduce a face down into constituent parts, and would that help at all? (at it's most basic expression, a head is an egg with a wonky pyramid stuck to it)

 

There was a pretty comprehensive tutorial for faces on the whTV app a while ago, or I'm sure there are plenty on YouTube or wherever you care to look online. 

Duncan Rhodes, Vince Venturella, Zumikito, and GW all have one on YouTube. :)

[Xenith]

Bile looks great, and way more effort than I usually put in.

 

My face recipe at the moment is: wraithbone undercoat -> 1 thin coat of guilliman flesh -> done. On characters I'll maybe add another recess shade of guilliman, but at that point, the main features of the face have been picked out by the wash. 

[Valkia the Bloody]

Some really good suggestions here!

Thank you!

Yes, I am able to look at component parts. This is basically what I am doing. I am basically a dyslexic for faces.

Dyslexics can see the letters of a word just fine, but the word itself does not form as a whole in post-processing.

I can read very fast and basically process two words at a time when reading, but faces never are more than their components (letters).

Does this make sense?

So yes, I can concentrate on just the eyes or just the lips. Fabius here for example I gave him red lips.

The problem is, I cannot put the letters together as a "word".

So I am not really doing eyes very often anymore, because they tend to come out "cross-eyed".

I know it has to do with symmetry and it will look "wrong" to me, and I can try to correct it.

I think I could do it purely mechanical and just do "single components" (yes, I think I will have to watch some step by step videos!).

[Firedrake Cordova]

Having had a bit of a further think about it, have you tried looking for portrait artists with your condition to see how they cope with it, and if there's anything you can learn from them? A quick search yields Nik Sebastian who has a step-by-step guide of how they draw their faces. There's also this answer on Stack Exchange which may give you some other people to look for, along with this post on Reddit  and this one on DeviantArt.

[Arkhanist]

 

So I am not really doing eyes very often anymore, because they tend to come out "cross-eyed".

 

 

Avoiding cross-eye syndrome, or a 'surprised' look because of doing too large whites is a very common problem - they are super fiddly, and it takes a lot of practise to get it right even with no disability, and even after doing em for years, you'll still need to correct them sometimes.

 

The only time you ever actually *see* if they're done on a human scale model is when you pick a model up to inspect it closely, or if you're putting a large photo up on social media. Rest of the time you'll never see if they're fully done or not, as at 40k scale they are just very small, so it's perfectly fine just not to bother.

 

One trick though is to add a little extra shade to the eye *sockets* (most people have a bit more shadow there due to eyebrows and bags under the eyes) and ignore the eyes themselves; the extra shading alone will help without painting the rest.

 

For a little extra, paint a small flesh-coloured highlight on the top eyelid, as you do on the ridge of the nose, which helps sell the illusion of eyes a bit more. Painting the full whites and pupil is only really worth it for maximum quality display models in my view, or if you're a masochist. 

[Valkia the Bloody]

Having had a bit of a further think about it, have you tried looking for portrait artists with your condition to see how they cope with it, and if there's anything you can learn from them? A quick search yields Nik Sebastian who has a step-by-step guide of how they draw their faces. There's also this answer on Stack Exchange which may give you some other people to look for, along with this post on Reddit  and this one on DeviantArt.

Thank you for sharing.

Just made me laugh.

I had the exact thing happen to me they mention in one of the posts, where I thought the person I was going to school with and the person in my scout troop were two different people.

Luckily, I have quickly become a master in apologizing to people and explaining the condition...

People at my work place now know about this and so we can all laugh about it together.

I just walk around apologizing and laughing a lot....

 

 

So I am not really doing eyes very often anymore, because they tend to come out "cross-eyed".

 

 

Avoiding cross-eye syndrome, or a 'surprised' look because of doing too large whites is a very common problem - they are super fiddly, and it takes a lot of practise to get it right even with no disability, and even after doing em for years, you'll still need to correct them sometimes.

 

The only time you ever actually *see* if they're done on a human scale model is when you pick a model up to inspect it closely, or if you're putting a large photo up on social media. Rest of the time you'll never see if they're fully done or not, as at 40k scale they are just very small, so it's perfectly fine just not to bother.

 

One trick though is to add a little extra shade to the eye *sockets* (most people have a bit more shadow there due to eyebrows and bags under the eyes) and ignore the eyes themselves; the extra shading alone will help without painting the rest.

 

For a little extra, paint a small flesh-coloured highlight on the top eyelid, as you do on the ridge of the nose, which helps sell the illusion of eyes a bit more. Painting the full whites and pupil is only really worth it for maximum quality display models in my view, or if you're a masochist. 

 

Yeah, you are right.

To be honest, for exactly that reason I have now given up on wanting to paint eyes. None of my recent bare headed models has eyes painted anymore.

[N1SB]

I thought about this issue seriously, Brother, and I might have a solution. I don't have Prosopagnosia...but I too lack confidence in painting faces...so we have that in common! My solution can be summarised as follows, with an example below - you don't have to paint faces, the sculptor sculpted them for you, you're just painting that thing on top of the miniature's neck in flesh colours.

I am not sure if anyone here also suffers from agnosia (or, more concrete, Prosopagnosia) and paints Warhammer, and has similar issues with painting the faces.

So I believe I understand your issue, and let me share why, so you know where I'm coming from. One of our D&D friends also had Prosopagnosia and is one of the smartest people I know. PhD, is a professor in one of the better universities here, but she can't recognise faces. She looks for other things, like glasses, hairstyles, to identify people. You change your glasses, or you take them off and wear contacts, she won't be able to recognise you.

When I changed my hairstyle to something that resembled her husband's...oh my god it became so awkward. So I understand a little bit what it's like.

+++ Incident Where I Found a Possible Solution +++

This is one of those stories where I discovered a new painting shortcut by rushing a miniature out for a game, because necessity is the mother of invention.

It was Christmas time. Our local Warhammer Store Manager invented this multi-player game mode where each player just brought 1 40k character, for a Christmas day event. How you know how it is around that "most wonderful" time of the year, lots of social activities with friends & family when all you want to do is play some Warhammer. It was Christmas Eve when I finally got a chance to build a miniature, base it, but then I had to go out for Christmas Eve dinner.

Lots of food was eaten, lots of wine was drunk. I don't believe in drunk driving nor drunk painting, but needs-must, so when I got home I picked up a brush got to work.

Here was the situation. I was under time pressure. So I painted a Black Templar because I literally basecoated the mini black, just to give you an idea.

The face, I painted the head a flesh colour (it was Vallejo Flesh Tone or whatever, doesn't matter) and just inked it with Reikland Fleshshade before passing out.

Woke up the next day, the face looked TERRIBLE. He looked like he had one of those fake tans, it was too dark. But the game was starting like 2 hours later, it was a 30 minute ride to the place, I needed to eat something not because I was hungover, because I was still drunk...I literally just drybrushed the face with very diluted white. I managed to even paint his teeth by accident that way, because I was drybrushing so fast.

I bet it was still fully drying when I was taking it in transit to the Warhammer Store...and imho it looked pretty good, very expressive:

(I made it in time for the Christmas game! If anything I should have spent a bit more time inking the green laurels sticking up atop its back, like mistletoe.)

Here's the learning: the sculptor did the hard work for you. Inks, drybrushing, on the sculpted face with its grooves and raised surfaces, works fine, like an object.

+++ Now Recent Advances In Painting Tools +++

That was the Christmas before Contrast paints were introduced, iirc. Now, this may be a tool you may want to try.

I don't know if you noticed, the Contrast paint Skeletal Horde, just by itself, is about the right colour for actual Caucasian skin without even highlighting. Forget eyes, forget lips, let the Contrast paint and the sculptor do the work for you. You're almost delegating facework to the paint and the sculptor. It's like the face is just another body part, part of the musculature almost, and normally you'd just let inking take care of that for you. Same principle, I think.

You know how Contrast doesn't work well with flat surfaces? A face is not a flat surface, in fact it's just about that optimal scale for Contrast paint to work.

I was trying to understand your perspective. I imagine it's like, not only am I unsure of the correct painting technique for this thing called a face, I'm not even sure what it's supposed to look like. It's like when I come across something in a new miniature, I'm like "golly gee is this object the Primaris is holding, screw it, I'm just going to ink it then drybrush and move on." Even if it's not perfect, it might be the best way forward, and when I tried it on a few models previously it wasn't bad.

[Valkia the Bloody]

I thought about this issue seriously, Brother, and I might have a solution.  I don't have Prosopagnosia...but I too lack confidence in painting faces...so we have that in common!  My solution can be summarised as follows,

Wow, thank you for sharing and for this great post!

 

Yeah, Prosopagnosia has nothing to do with intelligence or mental abilities (I had to laugh about the story with your friend, sounds like we could get along, I also have a PhD.... :p Great shout out to your friend from my neck of the woods. This little issue of ours will NOT stop us!)

The condition is a lot like dyslexia, I think. When you are dyslexic, you cannot see words as words, you only see a pile of letters. There is no issue with your eyes, and no issue with your intelligence (one of my professors at uni also was dyslexic). It is a problem with the post-processing.

I can see all the "letters" of the face- eyes, lips, nose, but I am unable to see the "word", my brain cannot put together the whole.

There is an upside, I always joke with people "I meet new people every day!" (even if I have met them 100x before) :p

 

Well, I am a huge fan of washes and inks and drybrushing. This is basically what I have been doing for 20 years.

As silly as it sounds, since I still have most of my old paints here and still some of the 20 year old awesome Citadel inks I actually have NOT yet bought any contrast paints or even tried them out.

This is a very good suggestion you are making here!

I need to try this out and remember to pick some up when I visit the local GW store again (I have been avoiding the store, since I always spend too much money.....)

 

One thing I won't try is drunk painting.... that is a recipe for disaster (I am already clumsy while being sober).... :p I can see "Blood for the Blood God" being spilled everywhere and my living room looking like a bloodbath. :p

 

But wow, for drunk painting, this is an awesome effort. Looks better than most of my stuff I paint when I am sober.

[Firedrake Cordova]

As silly as it sounds, since I still have most of my old paints here and still some of the 20 year old awesome Citadel inks

Yup, the old GW paints are great. You can still find them marketed under the "Coat D'Arms" brand. Privateer Press' Formula P3 paints are also made by the same company, and have some nice colours.

 

I actually have NOT yet bought any contrast paints or even tried them out.

Guilliman Flesh  Darren Latham also had a video on how to do faces using Contrast paint.

 

In my journey looking for examples of Guilliman Flesh, I also found a rather nice guide Tale of Painters had for faces. 

 

[N1SB]

Brother Firedrake Cordova is right, the Warhammer Store manager used Guilliman Flesh as his go-to.  He was trying to rush out Warcry miniatures, this was like the time when GW released a bunch of games, and they all needed minis painted up for demos.  So I helped him out, Guilliman Flesh is probably more accurate.  The Warcry minis are real Conan the Barbarian types, lots of muscle, so Guilliman Flesh looked really good on them.  Skeletal Horde is way paler (I probably prefer it only because I use a Zenithal basecoat usually)...like maybe Genestealer Hybrids probably look way better with that I reckon.

 

And now I understand the condition better, thanks for your sharing.  I actually have dyslexia, thus now I have a frame of reference.  That's why I do so much with charts and stuff, as it was an alternate way for me to conceive and convey information from when I was young.  When I was a kid I called it "This Lexia" because that's how I heard it listening to the school nurse discussing it with my mother and later, "THE Lexia."  I'd be like, "Guys, I'm sick, I have The Lexia."  Nicest kid in the class, Max, immediately ran up to me and hugged me.  I honestly thought it was transmissible at the time, so I was like, "No, Max, I don't want you to catch The Lexia!"  Then proving himself to be one of the nicest people on the planet, Max kept holding on to me, shouting, "IT'S OKAY, WE'LL HAVE THE LEXIA...TOGETHER!"

[Trokair]

As a fellow Dyslexic it always annoyed me growing up that it is such a horrendously difficult word for us to say, write or otherwise deal with.

 

 

Valkia, just wanted to say, kudos on that Fabius Bile face. Faces are hard, and having read your analogy I can begin to imagine how awkward it must be for you to deal with them, and they are already one of the hardest things to paint in our hobby.   

[WarriorFish]

Is it too late to say I do faces with two pots of paint? A flesh coat and a wash Unless they have an open mouth in some form, then they can get another one or two pots depending on the type of open Most people don't look that closely at models anyway (especially not at over two feet away gaming) and even if they do it's usually once.

 

I only have one good eye so I struggle with any detail, and even painting normal bits takes me longer than it would for others - the important thing is you're trying to get better where you can and understanding any hurdles. That's winning at the hobby, and all the more so when your models look very good already. As mentioned people don't really look at single models as it's part of a whole - it's one of the reasons why a fully painted army always looks great, so this should always be the primary objective

 

 

[jaxom]

Lots of great face painting advice for minis. Regarding the agnosia, one trick I picked up from art classes is to take reference images and turn them to an odd angle or upside until the brain starts seeing a collection of lines and shades rather than a collective whole. This may be worth trying?

 

 

 

As silly as it sounds, since I still have most of my old paints here and still some of the 20 year old awesome Citadel inks

Yup, the old GW paints are great. You can still find them marketed under the "Coat D'Arms" brand. Privateer Press' Formula P3 paints are also made by the same company, and have some nice colours.

 

I actually have NOT yet bought any contrast paints or even tried them out.

Guilliman Flesh  Darren Latham also had a video on how to do faces using Contrast paint.

 

In my journey looking for examples of Guilliman Flesh, I also found a rather nice guide Tale of Painters had for faces. 

 

 

First, oh jeez, that Chestnut Ink made the best and easiest dark bronze I've ever seen. Also, yeah some of the Contrast Paints are dark magic. Huge collection of what they can do: http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/356485-initial-contrast-experiments-from-us-all/