This year I’m planning to teach classes at KublaCon and Reapercon. I’m teaching Two-Brush Blending at Kubla, and you can sign up here. At Reapercon, I’m teaching two sections of my popular OSL class, as well as Advanced Shading and Highlighting, and a class on tricky colors covering black and white.

Class descriptions (with presentation slides!) are below the fold.

Two-Brush Blending
Blending is a foundational technique in miniature painting, because it is used constantly across the figure. When practiced correctly, two-brush blending is a fast and effective way to create smooth blends. This class will quickly cover the basics of when and why to blend, and then will spend the bulk of class time showing students how to perform two-brush blending, with time to practice, and some tips for troubleshooting.

[slides]

Object-source lighting (OSL)
Lighting effects can produce amazing results when done well, but are extremely tricky to get right. In this class, I’ll provide my tips for creating strong lighting effects, including:

  • Placement of light sources for best effect.
  • How to make it look like a colored light source is producing illumination (it’s not as simple as just glazing!)
  • How different colors of light interact with different colors of material.

This will be a hands on class, where each student paints a goblin pyro using the techniques I’ve explained, with feedback throughout the painting process. This is my longest-running class, because it keeps being popular every year!

[slides]

[This class is based on my OSL tutorial.]

Advanced Shading and Highlighting
Shading and highlighting is one of the most basic and critical concepts in miniatures. In this class, we go into more depth and cover advanced topics in shading and highlighting, including:

  • The concept of “light area” and “shadow area”, and how to achieve the appropriate level of contrast in each
  • Matte, satin, and shiny materials, and how to highlight them
  • How much contrast to use for different colors and types of surfaces

[slides]

Tricky Colors (Black and White)
Black materials and white materials are harder to paint successfully, because it can be challenging to use an appropriate amount of contrast for objects to “read” at miniature scale without them looking gray. In this class, I will cover tips for painting materials so that they read as “black” or “white” while introducing sufficient contrast to make the model read well. Time permitting, I will also talk about ways to introduce color in order to add vibrancy and interest while keeping the perception of “black” and “white”.

[slides]

When teaching classes, I use a mainly hands-on approach. Classes start with a few minutes of demo and/or instruction, after which the bulk of the class is spent having the students try out the techniques of the class, and receiving feedback and tips as they paint. You can get a sense of how I explain mini-painting techniques by checking out my tutorials here on the site.