Using a camera to spot painting mistakes: Blessing or Curse?

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

As the title says. I am currently busy with improving the face of a Wargames Exclusive model with the help of a camera and it´s not a picnic. So how is your stance on that matter?

[Heraclite]

I dont really do it on propose but it's true that pictures put a big emphasis on painting mistakes or missing details. Sometimes i go back to the mini to rectify it, sometimes not, depending on the actual visibility of the mistake.

 

If, once spotted, I can't unsee it even to the naked eye, I have to do something about it.

 

But if it's not too visible, I'm happy leaving it as is.

Edited October 8 by Heraclite
Stupid french autocorrect on m'y phone

[Grotsmasha]

I always check focal points of mini's in my pics, and will go back and correct something I'd missed with my own eyes. Generally it's face details, or slightly wonky edge highlights.

[Firedrake Cordova]

It's useful to see errors in the image from the camera (i.e. missed bits or paint on the wrong bits), but I'm firmly of the point of view that if I can't then see the issue highlighted without optical aids, it doesn't matter.

[Magos Takatus]

I need to take more WIP images, because I only notice these flaws after I'm done with a model and it's maddening.

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

8 hours ago, Firedrake Cordova said:

It's useful to see errors in the image from the camera (i.e. missed bits or paint on the wrong bits), but I'm firmly of the point of view that if I can't then see the issue highlighted without optical aids, it doesn't matter.

There was a smear of paint across one cheek. Impossible to see without viewing aids. It looked really gross when the pic was enlarged.

[Evil Eye]

I think it very much depends on what standard you're aiming for. If you want GD winning literally faultless paintjobs then I think it's very helpful, but if you want something that looks great on the table and doesn't take an eternity to paint a single model it can actually make you hypercritical of things nobody will ever notice on anything short of a highend painting competition, let alone on the tabletop. Perfect is the enemy of good enough, etc. For example I was painting the pole arm wielding woman from the Dread Pageant, was quite pleased with the progress and took a photo. Then I looked at the (high res, macro) photo and hated it. So I sent the pic to a friend who is very accomplished at painting, and she gave me a more realistic perspective- that it looked very good and the flaws would A: be covered up by subsequent steps anyway and B: were only even noticeable because of the zoomed in, high resolution lightbox photo.

 

What it does work for regardless of desired outcome is as a fresh pair of eyes. Sometimes you spend so long on a model you can't really see it anymore, and a photo can help you see more general things ("the shading needs to be pushed further" for example) that it can be hard to see when you've spent hours hunched over the model.

 

Hope that helps!

[WBRBloom]

I have actually went a step beyond that: I bought myself a macro-camera (basically an electronic magnifier advertised as a camera) and took some pictures of faces of minies I painted a while ago, as well as miniatures painted more recently, and made comparisons between them to see how I am doing.

 

I was astonished at how much better I am doing from what I initially believed. Granted, the end result does not show as it does in a finished miniature, and isolating a part of the miniature that you believe or that is actually is good, looks better, but this is my opinion.

 

However, looking the finished model as a whole made me realise some things that could not be seen previously by the naked eye, e.g. how some older paints behave compared to newer techniques and/or paints for example, or how much the mould lines show in this scale, compared to what I see without the camera.

 

Yeah, it is the great teacher, macro photography, or how else you want to call it in this scale. If it's not considered too much 'tooting my own horn', see some examples below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[WBRBloom]

And some from my GSCs: