Painting canvas vs painting minis

I haven’t painted on canvas for a long time (ten years or so) but as part of my therapy and working through surviving domestic abuse and violence I’ve started again. While I’ve been painting on canvas it’s given me the chance to reflect on canvas painting vs mini painting and how one medium might influence how I approach the other. This is a bit of a ramble but that’s ok…

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Motivation

My motivations for canvas painting are vastly different to miniature painting and that has only just dawned on me to be honest. I paint on canvas to create value from nothing, to say something that’s in my head. It’s a creative release and lets me express myself absolutely. I only do it for myself, I don’t do it to show anyone and I don’t care what anyone else thinks about the outcome. The motivation to paint on canvas is purely intrinsic; I do it for me, I love to do it and it excites me.

Actually where I’m at with miniature painting is very different. I used to paint for tournaments. Now I’m starting to paint single models with half an eye on competitions one day. When I paint on canvas, there is no such thing as ‘wrong.’ There might be things I don’t like and I change as I go along but when I’m finished, my canvas paintings aren’t wrong. Or right. Or good. Or bad. They’re just a creation of value from nothing that I enjoy.

When I paint miniatures I hold my standard up against the internet, against competition winners and against tutorial videos and all I see are the ‘bad bits.’ It’s like body dysmorphia only for painting; even if something I paint looks great, I only see the bad bits. This is not a ‘woe is me,’ post. Given that I might think about entering some mini painting competitions soon, I think the drive to improve is a really good and healthy thing

When I think about it, these two motivations drive so much of the outputs and how I feel about painting on canvas versus painting minis.

The paints I use

Before now, all of my canvas painting has been with oils. Lockdown pressure meant I couldn’t get hold of any so my new paintings are in acrylic and I hate them. The working time is too short for the ‘happy accidents, I like to create (more on that later) and the coverage and vibrancy of acrylics is a lot lower than oils. I’ll definitely be painting on canvas with oils again soon

All of the issues I have painting acrylic on canvas are true with acrylic paint on minis too. I’ve never been big on paint additives (other than thinner). I find retarder medium, flow aid etc quite difficult to use. It also feels like a lot of work to make a poor product (acrylic paint) work properly. Recently I’ve seen some tutorials for oil paints on miniatures (not just oil washes) and for skin tones (for example on my BCR) they make a lot of sense so I’ll definitely try that in the future.

TL;DR Acrylic paint sucks.

Colour

I’ve just started to get back into miniature painting so I’m building my collection of paints slowly, miniature by miniature. Here’s where I’m at.

I’m pretty sure you’ll have more miniature paints than me and I’m sure this will represent a rounding error in my total paint numbers in a year or so. Before I escaped domestic abuse I had hundreds of paints.

Here are my canvas paints. Spot the difference? Three primary colours + black and white. That’s it. Using these paints I painted every colour on the triptych you can see at the top of the post here. The pink wall, the ruddy under feathers, the dark walls. All with three colours plus black and white.

When I canvas paint I love to mix colours. I usually have a vague idea of what I want but I let the paints surprise me sometimes and just go with whatever comes along. I think that’s linked to intrinsic motivation because that’s not at all how I choose colours for miniature painting where I’m a lot more controlled.

Brushes and brush technique

For miniature painting I use Citadel or hobby shop brushes for base colours, washes, dry brushes etc and Windsor & Newton Series 7 brushes for detail work. I love W&N brushes. I know they get a lot of hate for their QA but I’ve never had a problem with them. Generally I use a size one everything because all I’m painting is infantry size minis at the moment but I’ll get bigger brushes for bigger models

For canvas painting, anything goes. I use household decorating brushes, rounds, chisel brushes, fans, rag cloths. My only rule is no small brushes, I like large brushes and large arm movements. What I find is that using large brushes and bold arm movements generate ‘happy accidents.’ I do start from a rough sketch but then I let the brush work make the shapes and with big brushes, the bristles separate and generate detail and texture by themselves. It’s really fascinating and I love doing it. I also like to paint big on big canvases.

This is the key difference for me. Miniature painting at competition level relies on what I head described as ‘brush control,’ I recognise this from my own efforts. Painting using brush ‘uncontrol,’ is key to what I consider personal success in canvas painting. It’s just so liberating.

Calling it done

When I finish painting a mini, I put it on a visible shelf and brood about it for a few days. Then I might change something. Or not. Either way, even a finished mini will occupy me for a long time. When I’ve finished a canvas painting (which usually takes me about the same time as painting a mini, ie. a few weeks) I’ve usually fallen in love with it. I set it aside and don’t look at it, I just think about the image and feel really happy with it – it’s an expression of something inside me and I don’t really need to see it again to feel that way. I just remember the painting and it makes me feel happy. Weird right?

So that’s it really

No great philosophies here. Those are just some of the differences between canvas and miniature painting. Rereading it makes it sound like I don’t like miniature painting but I do. Just in a different way. One of the ways is the community. I enjoy reading the community outputs and feeling part of that. i don’t have that network with canvas painting and I don’t want it. If I could sum this post up it would be: If you love painting minis but feel unfulfilled with it in some way, just try some canvas painting as well (not instead of) and see if it helps. It certainly helps me.

Comments always welcome!