Testing, Testing, 1-2-3 (Hobgoblin Skin)

What is the number one thing that ‘pro’ painters are doing that you aren’t?!

Yeah, I’m goofing around with a clickbaity opening, but at the same time, what I want to talk about today genuinely is something a lot of us aren’t aware of, and this hobgoblin figure gave me a good example to use to illustrate the topic.

He doesn’t look like a helpful sort…

Over the years I have seen a lot of people ask questions along these lines:

When using paint colour X, what colour should I use for a wash or painting highlights?

My recent experience painting Kadarg the Scarneck Hobgoblin Warrior for Reaper Miniatures is an example of how you can learn to find your own answers to those kinds of colour questions. (But if you just want to know the specific paint colours I used on this figure, I’ve also included those at the end of the article.)

Kadarg is a commercial 3D print figure, which I hope to discuss more about in another article, as it is an innovation that fascinates and excites me! He is the October 2023 miniature of the month on the Reaper Website. You can receive him as a gift with minimum purchase, and he’s also available for individual sale.

People who are less confident in their painting skills may not realize that they are making some erroneous assumptions when they ask questions like what colours to use for shades. One of those assumptions is that there is a single or a most correct answer to those kinds of questions. Another is the belief that the amazing painters they admire ‘just know’ the answer to questions like that. In fact, I suspect many of us believe that  always knowing the right colours to use is a big component of what being skilled means.

I had those same questions and assumptions for many years, but both my thought process and my painting process have since expanded. Certainly it has been helpful to study colour theory, but memorizing its general guidelines doesn’t provide the answers to every situation. When my questions are more complex, or when I’ve got multiple options to consider, the tool I use to find the answers is experimentation and testing.

I did not initially approach the idea of testing with a positive attitude. I resented any hobby time that did not directly contribute to a finished project. I thought that the only reason that I had ‘waste time’ messing around with colour on my palette or doing painting tests on throwaway minis was because my knowledge or skills were lacking. I did it through gritted teeth, holding on to the hope that eventually I would improve and then I would ‘just know’ things the way my idols seemed to.

The more I experimented, the more I realized how wrong my thinking had been. Eventually I realized that the willingness to test ideas and take risks is a crucial element to building expertise. Sometimes the reason skilled people seem to ‘just know’ answers to hobby questions is because of previous experiments and practice. And on occasions when past experience doesn’t provide answers, they know they need to try things out and do some testing.

Accepting that not every brushstroke will directly contribute to a ‘finished’ figure has helped me learn more easily. It also puts less pressure on my hobby sessions. I have found that experimentation and practice runs can even save time and frustration in the end. A quick test takes less time and effort than repainting when things don’t work out!

So how does this relate to Kadarg the Hobgoblin? I was given a very specific brief for the skin colour of this figure. I had a couple of different paint combos in mind that I thought would work, but I was not confident of the best option just looking at the paint in the bottles.

Kadarg was designed to go with the Goblin Warband I painted up a few years ago, which you can see below. Both were sculpted by Bobby Jackson. Just like the figure design, the skin tone of goblins and hobgoblin needed to be related, but also distinctly different.

The Goblins article includes closer view photos of the figures. (These figures are available in three sets: Pillagers, Raiders, and Wolfriders.)

I started the warband by working on just two of the goblins precisely because I wanted to test out colour and paint ideas before putting a lot of work into the whole group. And after the initial tests, I did end up making some changes to my initial approach. You can read about the testing and the rest of the painting process of that Goblin Warband and how I chose the colours for them.

If you’re going to be painting the same colour scheme on a lot of figures in a unit or army, it is definitely worth doing a test figure or two! It is an opportunity to assess not just the end result, but also the painting experience. You might find that a paint or colour you’re considering would be too annoying to work with on a mass of figures, or you might come up with some ideas for shortcuts or cool effects.

I also ended up designing a quicker tabletop version of the Goblin colour scheme when I worked on the Goblins Quick-Paint kit for Reaper, which you can see below.

The kit includes two copies of each of these figures, eight paints, and a brush.

Orange is the old school Dungeons & Dragons skin colour for goblins, and Reaper’s request was for a similarily old school Hobgoblin. I reviewed the colours I had used on the goblins, and picked out a couple of potential options that could work for hobgoblin skin, but I thought I needed test them.

Sometimes I do colour testing on paper. Sometimes I test colors digitally. Occasionally I do a really deep dive analysis testing. In this situation, I felt I would need to do a quick paint on some test figures to really be able to judge which colours worked best. I ended up painting these test figures on an episode of my Beyond the Kit stream. I paint the figures and talk about the idea of testing during the last third or so of this video. (The earlier part of the video includes prepping and priming some of Reaper’s other commercial 3D print figures.)

Just a few examples of colour testing I’ve done in the past.

Colour tests can be especially helpful when you’re painting something for someone else. We all see colour a little differently. My personal parameters for defining a colour as yellow or purple are not as broad as the general definitions, for example. Some people may not visualize very well (or at all), and they may request a set of colours that sounds good in their head, but in the end doesn’t really match their general idea of the character or creature. 

Dear Wikipedia, your examples for shades of purple and shades of yellow are incorrect. ;->

Had this just been for my own fancy, I might have gone straight to painting the figure and just lived with it if the results didn’t turn out as I’d thought. Although I think testing and planning are very useful tools, I am definitely not a painter who always meticulously plans! In this case, my client had a very specific vision in mind. If I just jumped into painting and Reaper didn’t like the skin colour, it would have been a pain to repaint, especially that tucked away shield arm. (I recommend you paint that area early in the process if you get one of these.)

I would hardly ever go to this extent, but since I had the prior versions of how I’d painted goblin skin handy, I arranged the options and comparisons in a single picture for easy comparison. I included digital sampling of some of the lightest, darkest, and mid-tone colours on each figure. Ron had sent me an example photo with colours he liked. (Since what he sent is a copyrighted image, I’ve substituted a scrambled graphic in the image below.)

Ron liked Test 1 the best, so it was time for me to get down to the painting. I mixed 9457 Goblin Skin (which is the base of the goblins I painted) with 9070 Mahogany Brown to create a darker Hobgoblin variation on the colour. Some of my mid-tone mixes were a little bit transparent (which is the nature of many orange and red pigments), so to speed the painting process up a bit, I mixed in some of the more opaque 9110 Oiled Leather for my foundation layers, and then used my Goblin Skin/Mahogany mix from there. There is just a touch of 9671 Golden Glow in the lightest value highlights, and the 9066 Blue Liner was mostly used for, well, lining.

Requiem Red is one of the Kickstarter 6 colour that has not yet released. You can add them to your Kickstarter 6 pledge. Mix a bit of black into a dark red for a similar colour. Golden Glow was a promotional colour, just mix some white into a vivid yellow for something similar.

Here is what the paints looked like on my palette, though I see now I should have stirred them before taking the photo. The bright red and bright yellow were used for another purpose.

Happily, I also painted out swatches of the mixes onto an index card. I do this for my own benefit, not just to create writing or teaching examples. If I am going to paint something over several sessions or for some other reason will need to repeat the mixes, it is very handy to have painted samples of my initial mixes. When I mix the colours again I can test them against the previous swatches. (You have to let the dab of test paint dry before you can accurately compare new with old.) The little dabs of paint next to some of the larger swatches are tests of fresh paint I mixed during later painting sessions.

The painting of the rest of the hobgoblin is another in the continuing series of attempts to paint a drab and dreary colour scheme that is still visually interesting. I’m not sure I hit all the marks with this one, but I’m confident Reaper will give me more opportunities to practice in the future.

Below is information on the colours I used on the other areas of Kadarg.

Brown Leather

Black Leather

Non-Metallic Steel

I did not use the blue on its own, rather touches of it were included in the mid-tone mixes.