Why and How to Make a Wet Palette

Acrylic paints, espcially thick kinds, such as the Citadel colours, dry very quickly. This isn't news to anyone who's done any significant amount of painting, but if you use a normal dry palette, you soon stop thinking about how much paint you end up wasting on the palette. The hobby is costly enough if as much as half of your paint ends up drying on a piece of cardboard/plastic/whatever without ever actually contributing to the paintjob.
I must have known about wet palettes longer, but hadn't really thought to make one until recently, and I have to say I feel silly for not having done it earlier.

 All it really is is a shallow plastic container or a tray, some paper towels and a piece of baker's parchment paper. Add water and you're done. I wanted to use a container with a lid, in case I make a larger project with which I have to use mixesd paints. If I stop painting for the night and close the lid, the paint will still be wet enough to paint with the next day, albeit thinned down. It would probably be even better if the container had some sort of seal around the edges when the lid is down, but this works well enough as it is.

The actual "assembly" involves placing the paper towels in the container, getting them wet and laying the parchment paper on top of them. The parchment paper is used as one would use a palette The paper towels will wick water through the parchment paper, keeping the paint from drying. The whole project costs around as much as one or two pots of Citadel's paints, depending on how fancy container you want to use.

Thoughts on Basing and Posing

Basing miniatures is often considered separate from posing them. It's often done as something like an afterthought, where you try to come up with something to avoid just having the base left blank. While I, too, often just base my models to tie them further in with the rest of my army, sometimes I take the base into account already at the posing stage.

 One of the more basic techniques is to simply put the model on uneven ground. This is a simple method of making the model seem more dynamic and realistic, since 41st millennium wars generally don't take place on golf courses. It also serves to make some of GW's standard leg poses seem more natural and give a reason to why the model's legs are in such an extreme position.

 This also works with less humanoid models, as can be seen with this WIP shot of Kataphron Destroyer. These models have very posable waists and left shoulders, and this pose takes advantage of this.

Another way to make the base and the model interact can be seen on this older shot of Thunderwolf Cavalry, where I added rough terrain and a corpse over it to the space the mount seems to be going around. Again, this makes the model seem a little more interesting.

Conveying movement is important in a combat pose, but that can sometimes be a little tricky, even with posable multipart miniatures. Here, I chose a wolf cloak from the older Space Wolf Accessories sprue that GW sold until fairly recently, because it's flaring to the appropriate direction relatively to the movement I'm trying to convey on this Wolf Guard. I imagined him dropping down to his left knee from the left, while simultaneously slashing with both of his Wolf Claws. His cloak would trail behind him while he twists to his right.

Green Stuff Essentials

Getting started with GS can be difficult. The stuff seems to stick to everything except where you want it to, and I like to say that it needs to be persuaded to take any given shape, rather than simply told to. I plan to add an actual tutorial here later on, where I show how to make a (preferably beginner-friendly) project, but I thought I'd start with a simple post about what you need to get started.

 

Let's start with the obvious, the material itself. There's a good chance you've previously bought some from Games Workshop, which comes in small blue and yellow strips. I don't do that anymore. It is a lot more expensive bought that way, but that's not the reason (truth be told, you'd have to really use the stuff a lot for that to make a difference), but the fact that the two components touch in the middle. This leads to the middle part hardening, which in turn leads to inconsistent, lumpy putty. You may have to do some hunting to purchase GS in bars, but knowing the manufacturer's name (Polymer Systems Inc.) and the product's official name (Kneadadite Blue/Yellow Epoxy Putty) will get you far.

 You can do some sculpting by just using your fingers, but not really anything very detailed. Sculpting tools come in variety of shapes, and the "best" one is largely a matter of preference and habit. Pictured are two bought miniature sculpting tools and one that I made myself out of two sewing needles, a little wood and Green Stuff. The one in the middle is by far my favourite that I use for most of my sculpting. The one made of needles comes in handy when nudging the corners of a model's eyes into shape and other precise tasks. The bottom one is in the picture pretty much just to show that they come in that shape, too. There's nothing particularly wrong with that shape, though, I'm just far more used to the middle one.
Whichever tool you need, make sure you dip it in water, lick it or maybe use a sponge first. A dry tool will stick to the putty, making sculpting unnecessarily frustrating.

A miniature drill and a hobby knife are pretty much essential for modelling, but they have their uses in sculpting as well. The drill comes in handy when you're attaching a head sculpted at the head of a toothpick to the armature or when adding a top knot to a model's head, for example. Basically, whenever you want to expand a model substantially enough to need an armature, the drill comes in handy.
The hobby knife is there for when you will inevitably make a mistake and need to cut off the failed part and redo it. In some cases, you need to use pliers and/or sidecutters instead of or in addition to the knife, depending on the size and location of the part being worked on and if you need to redo the armature as well.

 Speaking of armatures, you'll want to have a variety of different thicknesses of wire. Pictured are 0.4 mm copper wire and 0.7 mm and 1 mm steel wires. These suffice for most situations, although I sometimes use 1.5 mm steel wire for some of the larger pieces. Choose wire thin enough for your purposes; you can always add more Green Stuff around the wire to give it extra support, but if you chose too thick a wire, the final piece will be too thick, too.
Cork is very useful material for basing. For sculpting, I generally use it to hold the piece being worked on. In this case, it's a work in progress shot of a head at the end of a toothpick. Triangular toothpicks are often pretty useful for using as armatures for smaller pieces. Unlike wire, they can easily be whittled thinner as necessary, and the fact that they're angular and won't bend makes them easier to hold comfortably..

One final piece of equipment I find very useful, if not absolutely necessary, is a miniature oven. Green Stuff cures faster in higher temperatures. However, if the heat gets too high, not only does it cause a fire risk, but the Green Stuff piece may distort and even start to bubble, obviously making a mockery of any fine detail you worked so hard to sculpt on it. When in doubt, the safe bet is to use less heat rather than more.
There are a several different methods for achieving the optimal curing temperature. I used to have a lamp with a 40 W light bulb right over a metal jar, until EU regulations made finding normal 40 W bulbs uncertain at best. Currently, I use the same metal jar lightly covered with a piece of aluminium foil on a coffee maker's heatplate. The piece being worked on doesn't directly touch the metal jar, but is being held at the end of a length of wire or a toothpick.
Whichever method you choose, pay attention to fire safety. Keep the heat source well away from any flammable painting chemicals (white spirit, acetone etc.) you may have around. Have a smoke alarm in the room you're working in, and a small fire extinguisher wouldn't hurt, either.

Hope this helps someone to get started. I'll try and think of an appropriate difficulty level project for a more detailed tutorial at some point later on.