Issue 53 April 2026

10 Miniature Time Traveller The Tiny Canvas: 1:12 Painting Techniques. How to paint your own miniature . Simple is best. A simple pencil drawing and light washes of watercolours works well. Use a photo of your own, perhaps and adapt it to your small scale. Step 1. Find a good quality watercolour paper. Measure and draw up some shapes, either oblong or oval. You can do more than one painting at a time here. Keep them a distance apart of course. See below. Step 2. Now tape the paper to a solid board ( a chopping board if it has a smooth side is a good choice). Taping is important as when you wet the paper it will buckle slightly. When it dries it pulls tight against the tape and the buckles disappear. Keep the paper taped to the board until you have completely finished your painting. It is a good idea to already have some frames to hand so you can customise the sizes. My outlines match the inside edge of the frames. It is best to paint beyond this line so you don’t get an unsightly white outline inside your frame. The outlines shown have been darkened so you can see them but in practice it is best to make them faint. Step 3. Now it is time to get the paintbrush out! Use a squirrel paint brushes. The line is more exact and finer. Use the smallest size you can find for the really fine detail work. With watercolour it is best to start with your light colours. At the risk of teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, start at the top with the sky if you are doing the boat scene below. Method: You can photocopy the image on the right and work on this. Make sure it is taped around all sides, on your stiƯ board. It may wrinkle when you wash colour on it but it will dry flat. Lightly wash over the sky and hills with a very light blue, leaving the clouds unpainted. When this is dry, paint in your hill silhouettes, still keeping the tones light. Now darken your blue and lay the colour smoothly above an around the rocks. By now you would have got into the groove and don’t need a move by move description fromme. Continue working your way down to the bottom of the image. Shapes drawn on the water colour paper for portraits and scenes.