Painting light from matte to gloss

 We’re going to focus on painting cylinders as many parts of a miniature are roughly cylindrical, whether it’s an arm, leg, or torso. The principles we’ll discuss here can be applied to other shapes. Understanding how light reflects off different surfaces is key to techniques such as non-metallic metals (NMM) and generally creating realistic highlights and gradients.

We’ll consider 3 broad categories of surface: matte, satin, and gloss. The key characteristic of these surfaces is how diffuse or specular it is. In scientific terms, a diffuse reflection means the surface is reflecting light in many different directions, typically due to many microscopic surface imperfections. By comparison a specular reflection is mirror like, with all the source light being reflected out at an equal but opposite angle.

A diffuse reflection on the left, and a specular reflection on the right.

Matte surfaces are those with diffuse reflections, gloss surfaces have specular reflections. Satin surfaces are somewhere in between, with the light being reflected in a tighter, but still diffuse pattern.

So what does this all mean for painting? In short, as a surface tends towards matte, the contrast reduces and the brightest highlight covers a wider area. At the other end, a gloss surface has high contrast and the brightest highlight may be a fine line.

By following this rule, we can create surfaces anywhere on the scale from matte to gloss.

Swatches showing matte, satin, and gloss reflections from left to right.