Miniature Painting Styles?

I occasionally like to get artsy fartsy on this blog. In this case I’d like to talk about miniature painting styles. This has been spurred on by my recent delving into Grimcandy/Grimbright painting, but also this YouTube video from Lenric’s Realm:

So as Lenric points out most painting styles come under the heading of ‘realism’, this means an attempt has been made by the painter to create a realistic effect no matter which means they use:

First up the standard base coat, wash, highlight or dark shade, medium shade, highlight I’m calling ‘Classic Realism’ is the miniature painting style we all learn at first. Whether you get there by carefully layering or drybrushing, this is all Classic Realism.

Although arguably Slapchop is just a technique I’d say that the aesthetic of Slapchop is different enough that for me at least it’s a style of it’s own under the heading of realism. Slapchop is achieved through layers of drybrushing greys and whites over black for your shadows and highlights and then with a thinned paint, ink or contrast paint applied over the top for colour.

I think Blanchitsu at least within dark fantasy or sci-fi settings is true realism – if realism can be defined as painting something as it is or should be in reality. Details are crumbling and rusty, everything is decaying. Blanchitsu normally employs textured paints to add additional effects or paint chipping and falling off, flesh blistering and cracking. In my opinion the cleanness of Classic Realism never suited anything Nurgle, only Blanchitsu fits.

It can be argued that Monochrome is pushing the limits of realism, but much like black and white films it’s not necessarily a surreal or abstract style. Monochrome painting is normally an attempt at depicting the thing ‘as it is’ but just not the colour, light and shade is still depicted realistically.

However like Lenric bringing red into his colour scheme, I too have pushed Monochrome slightly outside the realms of realism:

This departure from a stricter realism also crept in while attempting to speed paint a chaos army a while ago:

Picking out the important bits of a model in a single spot colour not really considering the material of those parts in reality fed into my own World Eaters force:

And then I suppose finds it’s current expression in my Grimcandy style:

And while continuing to play with Grimcandy I have thought about other more bizarre things… I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the Toy Soldier style:

Toy Soldier is again arguably realism (or was realism) when the first soldiers were produced as the style was down to ease of manufacturing and durability of paints, but they were still attempting to depict real things. Now however painters attempt to mimic a style that was realism, not painting a figure to look like an actual soldier, but to look like a Toy Soldier (albeit a real one?)… that’s making my head spin a little. So what if your goal with a Space Marine was not to actually paint a figure to look like a real Space Marine within the 41st Millenium but a real toy soldier from the 41st Millenium?