🖌️ Painting -

Highlighting

Highlighting is adding lighter paints on raised surfaces where a light source would hit to create detail. It's edge highlighting is coloring just the very edges of shapes.

A good trick to visually see where the shadows should be is to hold the mini under a strong light source coming from the direction you want it (most people want it from the top, so called "zenithal lighting"). This puts all the highlights and shadows into strong contrast so you can easily see where they should be.

Smaller models require only one or two highlights. You can also use your basecoat as your first highlight if you apply a darker filter wash between. Using basecoat + wash + 3 highlights is already an overkill for your average gaming miniature.

Mix your midtone with yellows to create highlight colors. Yellow adds luminosity. Mixing your midtone with white can desaturate the color and this isn't what you are usually looking for. Read more about mixing paint.

Color properties are: hue, luminance and saturation
* Hue is the color e.g. red, green or blue
* Luminance dictates how bright or dark the color is
    Yellow colors increase luminance
    Blue colors decrease luminance
* Saturation is the strength of the color
    White and black both desaturate the color as it becomes less of the original color

To speed things up:

• only highlight the edges pointing towards your imaginary light source, usually up
• only edge highlight face, shoulders and the surroundings