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Been lurking this thread for about six months goggling over everyone's skill and results and getting slowly amped up about finally getting to painting after years and years--and finally got settled in after moving with a workspace, paints and a big pile of Reaper Bones figures. It's been a really long time since I've done any painting and I never figured on being particularly good, but I figured I may as well share the results of taking a crack at it finally after trying to absorb what I could reading along. After rifling through tons of white plastic bones figures an axe-wielding fellow caught my eye, so here he is:     For the most part I kind of blundered along, but I'm fairly happy with how he turned out. I primed him with Army Painter barbarian flesh, base-coated with leather brown, fur brown, oak brown, plate mail, gun metal and a mix of gold and bronze for little fiddly bits, then tried to do some highlighting with barbarian flesh + bone white. Lots of new stuff I tried for the first time after reading in here that I'd never touched before. I tried my hand at mixing up gunk to thin paints after reading about it in here--in the past I never used to thin my paints at all and it really showed. I'm way new to highlighting and just about anything that isn't 'basecoat everything, touch up paint and seal it'. I used a matte varnish on him, then a soft tone wash from army painter for general flesh and lighter areas, then went back with a dark tone wash for areas that ought to be darker. The base I just painted a stone gray then used a dark tone on it. Overall, I'm pretty happy with how he looks (espeeeeecially compared to my old stuff) and I'm geeked to tackle more models and try more new stuff.
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Aug 26, 2014 03:19
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Aww, thanks everyone.  I am pretty stoked, he's not super elaborate but it looks worlds better than any of my old stuff. I was hesitant to do drybrushing on him mostly because I couldn't really figure what to go with and I got kind of anxious about messing with him much further. I took those shortly after the wash so he's dulled down a bit, but how would I go about toning down how shiny he is, just another matte pass? On an aside, Bones seem to chip paint super easily; is there a seal or something that can help mitigate that at all or is it strictly handle with care? Sydney Bottocks posted:This is really nice work and now I want to buy and paint this figure as well. Here's the figure, he's pretty cheap Bones.
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Aug 26, 2014 06:04
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I will definitely see to checking out some varnishes and floor coats--I'm a little cagey about going the spray route and would generally prefer something I can apply via brush, at least initially. For Bones figures moving forward I'll take to the brush and dish soap to make sure they're in good working order; I'd tried out the boiling water & ice water method for fixing a couple bendy weapons last night and it worked very well, so that's encouraging. Last night after posting and feedback on Mr. Barbarian's shiny sheen, after the wash had dried I went back with some brush-on anti-shine matte and applied two coats to any flesh & leather to see if I could tone down the luster of his mighty thews. I kind of figured that it would be OK for the metal bits to keep some shine. It's embarrassing to think, but even as simple as this guy is he's still probably the best results I've had with a mini--so I want to work on him some more with finishing touches before he gets sealed up!   Having a hard time getting the full model in focus when taking shots, but hopefully this isn't too blurry. These are after the tones settled and he's had some anti-shine; I also did a bit of dry-brushing on the base to try and make the stone look better and then felt a little goofy and mixed some red gore with gunk and a small drop of red tone to add a little red haze along the blade of his axe; it's nowhere near the technical paints or anything but I think it turned out alright. Mostly after stepping away from him and coming back, I noticed details that I missed as far as materials--his right leg should have metal on his calf between the knee cap and foot since that's actually a plate there, there's leather hinging under the chain hanging from his belt, that sort of jazz. I am also thinking now that it would help add more character to do a bronze or gold on the head of his axe before the blade, ditto the raised part of his left shoulder-pad which is a separate piece at the top. Since highlighting and finishing work were never really things I did before, I would certainly appreciate any suggestions for this guy; I feel like he could use some dry-brushing as well but I'm not sure what or where.
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Aug 26, 2014 15:17
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Captain Invictus posted:For better photos, create a little alcove of white or black to put him in so the camera can focus entirely on the model and not worry about background stuff. A bed or pillow sheet should be good enough for creating an unbroken effect, but a large sheet of paper can work too. Yellow does not a white/black box make, but it did seem to help bring things into focus a bit; kicking off from your suggestion I grabbed an orc from the big pile and tried to take a crack at doing highlighting with a before/after wash + touch-ups, etc. This is my first attempt at highlighting; I think this guy was a little over-heavy on the primer initially. Here's basecoat + 'highlights':   And here's after washes and whatnot:   I, uhh, abandoned the yellow box after it warped the coloring and freaked my camera out, but I wanted to keep the pre-wash shots. I used goblin green for skin rather than greenskin because I wanted it a bit lighter to begin with; other than that, he got oak brown for his hilt, leather brown for his boots, bracer wraps and belt and fur brown for the trimming under his armor. Plate mail metal for the chainmail and I'd initially applied that to the spiked plates and his breastplate too, then I messed around with a gold + bronze mix on those and then went for a gun metal with a little bit of black later on. Kind of worried that ended up making that look too dark, but I also like how it contrasts with his skin too, so I'm torn. What I was going for with the chest piece in my third pass was trying to use the gold/bronze edging to make it pop a bit more and have a sharp look to it that worked with the little spikes. You can really tell that there was too much primer around his hands, but I am overall fairly satisfied with how this guy turned out! I have no idea what's going on with his base though, it's kind of a total mess.   Pals. 
GaistHeidegger fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Aug 27, 2014 |
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Aug 27, 2014 03:13
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So I had primed a couple of orcs with Army Painter colored primer before I was particularly used to it, and in the process it ended up going on probably a bit too thick--obscuring details, etc. Should I be scrapping these to a dunk tank of simply green (sorry orcs!) and trying to start over on them, or do they seem relatively salvageable for painting as-is in the grand scheme of things? Also: I thought it would be fun and helpful to try and put a light box together for taking pictures, but I think I may need another pair of shop lights in the equation?   Second one white-balancing seems to have helped a fair bit? Either way, I am on the fence on how rough the faces seem to be after priming and I hadn't had files for mould lines before they got primed, either.
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Aug 29, 2014 02:16
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Is there a particular sort of Simple Green I should pick up, or will most variations be safe for not melting Bones into goo? Eyeballing any of my old stuff just makes me cringe sheerly from not having bothered with any mold lines or paint thinning or detailing or highlighting or aaaaaa. But, that's all for learning for moving forward now I suppose. So I'm working at cleaning up and prepping Bones figures now, particularly mold lines--but I'm having a bit of a hard time -seeing- the lines due to how white the material is under the light; at the very least I'm catching and seeming to do an OK job of getting rid of the really obvious egregious ones (like ever Bones Orc has a line right across their frigging head I swear) but I'm finding a lot of them seem to be fairly cleverly 'hidden' e.g. where gear joins or along the edges of weapons, etc. I have a soft needle file I'm taking to it, it's just slow going trying to make sure I'm not missing anything. After, I'm going dish soap + toothbrush on them and hopefully my trigger finger will be a little less ridiculous with priming figures from here on out. A lot of the really cludged ones were from when I initially got army painter supplies earlier in the year (around end of Bones II I got all fired up for 'Hey, I should probably paint my Bones!' and stocked up) so I've got about a dozen figures that need dunk / scrub / file treatment. Edit: After filing / cleaning / attempting a lighter touch at priming, I thiiiink that I'm probably still off when using the goblin green primer in particular--but the fresh ones still seem to have come out much more reasonably than the previous ones? Here's a side by side, with the left being the ones in line for the dunk tank and the right being the ones I just prepped + primed. Am I still overdoing it, or do the new ones seem alright now?    
GaistHeidegger fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Aug 29, 2014 |
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Aug 29, 2014 03:34
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BULBASAUR posted:I've been working on this squad for a few months now. Conversions took me forever and the banners were a complete and utter bitch to build from scratch. I learned how to make cool greenstuff oaths of moment though. Here are my 23 mans all undercoated, varnished, hairsparyed, and zenthial primed: Even just primed this whole lot look super cool! Do you have the shields and whatnot permanently affixed or have you finagled magnets or such? The weathering looks fantastic too--all this zenthial priming business has me jonesing to get my priming under control something fierce. So much stuff I want to try out after seeing it done in here. El Estrago Bonito posted:My advice would be to be careful priming Bones minis. They don't react well to most primer. Generally I seal mine with a light coat of varnish before I prime them because otherwise it won't take. Also wash them before hand, even when using acrylic primers like liquitex because the mold release agent on them will cause acrylics to bead and act strange. Gravitas Shortfall posted:I had no problems using Army Painter coloured spray primer on my Undead Giant, but I did carefully wash it beforehand. Refind Chaos posted:I use the Simple Green I find in the automotive department. It comes in a big jug and I've never had it cause harm to my minis, plastic or metal. I don't know how long you've been painting, but honestly keeping stuff around that is from your early work is a good idea. Everytime I throw a new mini down next to my work from when I started 3 years ago I feel better and better about my increasing skill level. I will snag some Simple Green for a recycle tank then, I am just having such a hard time over something that ought to be dead simple; it's got me hesitant to prime and paint models that I'm excited to work on for fear of screwing them up with the primer. The army painter coloured barbarian flesh primer seems to go down smoothly, it just seems like there's something about the goblin green one that's giving me grief--I'm keeping 20cm distance, I'm keeping the canister moving, it isn't humid, I just don't know. Solid point and argument on the old stuff; I hadn't been painting for probably 8+ years after being totally amateurish back then, but I feel like I've picked up gobs of really good tips and techniques just following along with folks here. I am pretty stoked about even simple results so far and it has me jonesing to tackle more figures, it's just getting over being spooked about priming at the moment. For those comparisons on the orcs for priming last night, I'm not really sure if I hosed up the faces or not with primer, but they -seem- like they'd be alright to paint; I am just having a super hard time examining Bones figures during prep and kind of wish I could temporarily wash them or something just to hunt the detail out and make sure I'm not screwing things up. I picked up liquitex gloss and liquitex matte varnish bottles, I think I will keep an eye out for snagging a satin one too to sweep things together; if I'm going to be using these for brush-on sealing, I suppose setting up a couple dropper bottles with them and then just refilling from the big bottles ought to work alright, and I dig the notion noted above of mixing matte + satin. I can definitely say that following a little guide to set up a dropper of 'gunk' with liquitex drying retarder & flow increaser and using that for thinning my paints has -felt- like a substantial improvement when working now which--coming from a history of not thinning my poo poo at all has made a pretty huge difference. I have been watching a couple different folks on YouTube for various painting things, and EngineerJeff has a bunch on Bones painting that I have been digging; one of his big things is he has a love for using dayglo paints for weird lighting effects, like torches casting light and whatnot--that's one of the things I have been seeing folks doing in here (light sources, not so much dayglo paint) which looks super cool, I was curious how different people like to tackle that sort of thing. A bunch of the little goblins from Bones are carrying torches and seem like they'd be fun to practice that on. Finally, just trying to mess around with basing shenanigans a bit as another 'thing I never did before but wanted to pick up' and started by screwing around with highlight test-orc since his base came out just kind of a horrible pukey mess post-painting. 
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Aug 29, 2014 15:25
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Pushing on still working away I got these two guys put together--hopefully they show well, they were both a surprising amount of work. Little Pathfinder goblin was tricky for me for being so small but having a lot of little details--and trying to put a lot more effort into highlighting and whatnot, he turned out to take a good amount of time. I'm happy with how his face & hat turned out and I'm starting to poke at basing some more. I also dug out a couple of my old figures for a, uhh, comparison I suppose.   I've been attempting to work around shadows and lighting more with the highlighting as well as using different colors / intensities of wash. Gobbo ended up with a bit of mould lines squeaking by without notice unfortunately, but he's still a lot smoother than most figures had been at least. Now that I am clearing mould lines, scrubbing before priming and using matte varnish and (at least attempting to) highlight it has made a pretty big difference to me.    Now -this- guy may not look like much, but I worked really hard on him--he's got a ton of different paints despite being predominantly browns, but he surprised me with little details between the layering of furs over chainmail, etc. I actually really like the little bracer on his left arm, as underneath it had fur lining strapped down which I think looks pretty neat. I still need to mess around with his base and he has some fuzzies clinging to him after varnish, but overall I like him. Together they're another pair of buddies.  The goblin was pretty fun to paint. I'm trying to decide what to do with their basing, eventually I want to put all of them onto 25mm bases though since ultimately my intent is to use them at tabletop.
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Aug 30, 2014 14:47
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I'm really stumped on what to do with this guy to finish him up; I wanted to tackle another muscled barbarian fig to get more practice on highlighting and whatnot but I've been circling on how to best wrap it up. I think I'm getting a lot better at the actual highlighting part, but after giving him a coat of matte varnish before trying some washes, I just plain couldn't find a look I liked and ended up wetting and cleaning the wash back off. Here he is when I was done with base coating, and then here he is currently:   I don't know what he's looking at off to the side. He might just be bashful about his paint! I don't like his armored bits or axe, but I think his flesh is looking pretty solid. Where do I go next here?
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Sep 1, 2014 16:59
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Unzip and Attack posted:A dark wash on the armor bits will produce some nice creases and shadows. I would also consider a dark gray or black along the trim lines of the armor. Some blood on the axe or spattered all over the figure might be cool as well.   Introduced some gun metal to the top and bottom plates on his boots before hitting some armor wash in, ditto the main shoulder-pad, axe-brace and bracers. I took a red tone wash to his trailing cloth, a soft brown tone onto the furs for his boots and loincloth. I tried some clear red tamiya paint on the axe-head, it is hard to get it to streak but it seems to have come on generally alright. How's this?
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Sep 1, 2014 20:08
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Unzip and Attack posted:MUCH better in my opinion. What do you think? Thanks! I am definitely a lot happier with him with the tweaks, I like how the fur on the backs of his boots came out too. Tamiya clear red is really cool paint, this is my first time trying it out but I really love how it looks when holding the fig. He still needs eyebrows and I'm going to see if I can get his eyes to look halfway decent, but for the most part I am pretty satisfied with him now. The red cloth could probably do with some more touching up, but he's also kind of at that point now where I'm afraid of screwing up stuff that looks good by fumbling at other stuff. What I'd like to do is base him on an acrylic base and then try and blend his rocky one out onto it with some green stuff--I was kind of keen to see if I could pull off using more of the Tamiya to make a wet-looking 'blood pool' sort of half-on / half-off the base to try and make it look like it was slightly 'off camera' I guess. I haven't used green stuff before either, but all of this working with Bones figures is meant to be a learning journey of discovery anyways!
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Sep 2, 2014 22:04
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I really want to up my game on armor and metal bits in general with figs, since while I feel like I'm getting a good hang of handling flesh armor's always been something I historically just threw some wash on and called it a day. Highlighting with metallics seems a bit trickier. My eyes are still kind of goggling over how much I like the look of the Chaos Warrior from the tutorial in the op here and I was particularly curious about the combo being used here--with Tamiya clear orange, chestnut ink and black. Is that the sort of thing where it is practical and doable to concoct a custom mix in its own dropper bottle for future use, or is it best whipped up separately any time you're looking to apply it? On a side note, that Chaos Warrior fig looks awesome as hell in general and I kind of want to find more like it to paint up. I had also picked up Liquitex Gloss & Matte varnish respectively and was wondering at setting up smaller droppers for both; do you mix them with water or thinner or anything, or just generally take light coats directly when they're being used for brush-on application? I saw a few mentions of a gloss coat followed by two matte coats, but I also saw some talk about a matte + satin combo having nice results. I used matte brush-on directly with a Bones figure I'd painted and ended up with a slightly milky look in some recesses and I suspect it was just from not going thin enough with it during application. Finally, I'd bought a cheap little palette for painting and it's basically covered over in paint now after painting a couple figures; it is feasible / worth the bother trying to clean the thing off or should I just move on to trying parchment paper wet palettes and whatnot?
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Sep 3, 2014 21:51
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Poring over some more guides and checking out additional approaches to things, I decided to try a different tack with prepping the fifth fig out the gate--and there was a dwarf figure among the Bones lot that looked like he'd be really fun to paint, so he was the recipient of this time around. I'd ordered and received a wet palette and man, these things are -super- cool; it made a big difference when I was mixing, thinning and tweaking paint this time around. I wanted to take more shots along the way and try to write up my approach since this thread has been super helpful to me and I'm feeling like I am making good progress as I continue and wanted to share! Here's the latest entrant into the growing line of figs hanging out on the desk awaiting dungeon shenanigans: Mr. Dain Deepaxe.  Cut and filed mould lines down for a good while--especially around the horns on his helmet and the head of his axe; I found post-painting that I'd missed / not been able to get some lines down around his boots, but for the most part Dain came out the cleanest so far in the prep process. I gave him a good scrubbing and after debating over different colour primers and not really being happy with giving him a color out the gate, I decided to just go with a matte white this time before doing something else that was so silly simple that it was stupid I hadn't been doing it before--putting down a black base coat for different sections after thinning it out a bunch. I also thinned down a leather brown to give me a quick breakdown of the appropriate bits and after only ever giving figs brown or black hair over the years, decided to see if I couldn't give him a more exciting beard--and I was really excited by the results of trying a thinned lava orange over the white for his beard, even out the gate I think it looked really promising.  From there it was on to getting the base coat down for everything else and sorting out colors; I poked around in the paint box and decided that a nice blue would go well in contrast to how attention-grabbing his beard was feeling and it would help to keep him from falling into 'Here's a dude wearing tons of leather and metal' that my figs generally always fell into. I had been doing a gold / bronze mix for bits on the orcs, but for a dwarf a full and proper shining gold felt appropriate for his trim and fancy tidbits. Initially his full compliment took greedy gold, shining silver, lava orange, crystal blue, leather brown, oak brown, tanned leather, splintered bone and later fur brown and some linen white tossed around to lighten some bits.   After tweaking and touching up and covering small details I had initially missed, I started working on the highlighting and raised details before giving him a thin coat of matte varnish to prep him for washes. I sort of stumbled into the coloring for his horns while I was painting the tufts of fur around their bases--the white I had used was still a bit wet, the brown mixed with it a bit and it got me to go experiment with tweaking the two together until he ended up with a slightly gradient tone on the horns that I thought looked pretty good. I wanted his shield to have color as well, so I worked on getting the crystal blue involved to continue his colors outward and then added gold detailing. Now it was time for washing--and after drooling over that freaking chaos warrior tutorial with his fancy armor, I wanted to try my hand at doing a 'custom' mix for a wash to use on the dwarf. I put two drops of matte black together with some tamiya clear orange, some strong tone ink and a liberal mix of gunk to thin and water it down a bit--and putting it all together on the wet palette, it seemed to come out with a very workable consistency. Going to work with the new mix and backing it up with a couple regular washes thinned down, I spent a good amount of time in application before finishing his face and eyes--and I'm pretty thrilled with the results!     I'm most happy with how his face and beard turned out, since I feel like they're the focal point of the model and pretty attention-grabbing; it also may seem like a really stupid or minor thing to more experience folks in here, but I'm actually really proud of his shield arm and hand--it's probably the best results I've had with shading and highlighting on fingers and flesh tones yet and I am happy with how it looks. Right now he's drying a second follow-up coat of matte varnish to bring down the shine a bit, since I definitely noticed it after the post-wash pictures were taken. I think he's coming along really well though and I am pretty geeked about it. He needs touch ups still and I'd like to figure out some better highlighting for his shield and axe head in particular, but after a return to painting I am feeling pretty good about him.
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Sep 6, 2014 15:54
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I had a hiatus being out of town and wrapped up in things, but after returning decided to revisit the dwarf and barbarian for touch-ups and seeing if I could ascribe some solid basing as well. After that, I decided to dive right back in with another figure, 'Duke Gerard' from Reaper. I really dug this guy's overall look as far as his armor, shield and little details--but after clean-up and prep it became quickly apparent to me that his head is... weird. It's shaped sort of like the master sculpt squished it to one side and once he was primed and I was painting it really messed with me; if you look you may be able to tell, but his face does not continue back to his head proper on his left-hand side. My other biggest problem is that his face itself is sort of 'flat'--so I tried to do what I could to fake some more depth during the painting process. Here's Mr. Gerard, looking a bit better than my Bones copy of him:  And here's where I'm at so far with painting him; I ended up leaving off after a while with the intent to return later, but I'm kind of circling on what I can do to make him look better from here.    I accidentally missed painting a small leather satchel he has on the back of his right hip, so I know I need to go do that; he could also probably use blending with the cloth behind him. I haven't had any experience with doing highlights on metal armor, though; so far I took another stab at that chaos warrior tutorial for mixing up a custom glaze/wash with tamiya orange, black and a brown wash all thinned down together. In the meantime, here is the dwarf now feeling all fancy on his nice acrylic base with some extra fixings:   And finally at long last I managed to get some shading that I was happy with for the barbarian; his green stuff expanded basing was also done so I went back to do very basic paint there for now; I'm undecided what else to do with basing for him, though. Before: After:   poo poo, I didn't notice the goof on his axehead, that'll need to get fixed.
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Sep 25, 2014 16:40
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Fyrbrand posted:Just finished a character unit for my Trollbloods, the Sons of Bragg. All of these look really great, this guy in particular to me; how do you go about painting your armor / metal bits? I feel like they turned out looking really slick and I'm jealous!
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Sep 26, 2014 17:27
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Presuming folks do a decent amount of painting with Reaper series paints as well, I was curious to hear what anyone thought about the shadow / highlight triad system they've got going on; I was specifically starting to eyeball picking up some of the three-paint sets for different skin tones and the like and was wondering how they handled compared to just tackling shading with flesh washes and highlights with base tones + lighter whites / other colors. I really want to nab Adamantium Black from their line, it looks pretty slick from what I have been checking out.
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Oct 3, 2014 20:50
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JoshTheStampede posted:I use mostly Reaper. The triad system is great, but my only complaint is that sometimes the 3 colors are a little too close together for the level of contrast I want so I wind up using a darker or lighter color as a final shade/highlight. That's really encouraging and basically fits to a tee the main thing I was mulling over--most flesh tones from other paints feeling like they're a bit cartoony. When going over the reaper paints for olive skin tones and the like they looked really great. Hair colors that aren't red, black or brown are also a bit rough for me yet, so their blonde / blond highlight for instance looked appealing as well. I saw the liners, but wasn't sure about how they're actually used in application--what I gathered was that they were mostly just particularly dark pigments? Would they be pre-laid for darker recesses similar to the black -> white approach to handling eyes?
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Oct 3, 2014 21:29
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JoshTheStampede posted:The liners are dark colors with a ton of flow improver and are sort of translucent. They're meant for lining - as in darklining crevices and between armor plates and such. You can do that sort of thing with any paint but the liners just flow nicer and don't require thinning or mediums to behave the way you want it to. That does sound very handy then. I am putting together an order on Reaper's site and I could swear their paints used to be $3/bottle--did they have a price increase? They're $3.25 apiece now. They also sell the paints as triad sets for $9.85 which seems a little bizarre when buying them separately makes for $9.75. Edit: Whoops, 3.29, so you do save two cents on the triads I suppose. GaistHeidegger fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Oct 3, 2014 |
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Oct 3, 2014 21:49
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  Latest in painting and basing forays, a dwarven adventuring gal to join her fellow: Freja Fangbreaker from Reaper. I'm on some sort of dwarf kick now it seems and wanted to explore some more new things with painting as I keep trying to tread new ground; some went better than others for her, I feel. I'm not really happy with how the face has turned out in general, but I attempted to go with black -> off-white -> color on the eyes and had to fix / re-apply / touch up repeatedly to where I got worried about layering too much paint. I think she'd look a lot better if I could work up the muster to dot her pupils with black here. I'm fairly happy with how her hair turned out, but I haven't done a whole lot with her skin tone yet besides highlighting. Her armor was sort of a weird progression beginning with mixed pieces of plate metal, some new pig iron recently picked up from p3, a mix of a dark brown and gold for an off-bronzish sort of tone on some pieces and some shining silver for high-lighting and dry brushing. I used a couple different thinned washes in small applications to try and more finely tune my tweaks this time around, which I think turned out reasonably well. There's a slight tamiya yellow glaze in the mix and I also attempted to pull off a bit of a 'dusty / muddy' look to some bits of her gear (around the boots, some on her elbows / lower armor & attire, etc.) In keeping theme with her adventuring buddy, she's also got some battlefield basing with highland tufts of grass and the broccoli base from her Reaper origins I think turned out looking pretty good with a few different washes and dustings. I'm pretty happy with how her shield turned out--I'm still waiting to get my Reaper liners in the mail, but I tried to mimic the same application with some mixed blue washing and working with wicking / re-applying to shoot for edging in the shield face and the like. I also really dig how the wood on the inside of her shield turned out (though I can see I need to go touch up the metal adjoining it again.) Overall though I feel like I'm continuing to get better bit by bit and it is pretty encouraging and a good motivator; I've got flesh tone triads en route I am eager to play around with and I think the next figure I tackle is going to be an adventuring in painting leather textures / cloaks.
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Oct 8, 2014 21:27
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After painting a number of various smaller bones figures, I wanted to change it up and try tackling a bigger critter--setting sights on a 'huge' red dragon for my next undertaking. It's the first time I've painted anything larger than a beefy human basically and I've already found a number of elements a fair bit different (not the least of which being how much -more- there is to work with when it comes to getting a base coat down, etc.) I am feeling a bit lost now, though--as I'm struggling to suss out what I can do to advance further from here.   Probably not much to look at, but this thing's already got a few hours into it with base-coating, some varnish, some washing and so forth. My intent was basically to mimic this red dragon with the paint scheme:  Right now it's just sort of stuck. I realize going outright black with the horns / claws was certainly a mis-step. I think the scutes turned out alright so far, though I got a little overzealous at one point when base-coating and lost a bit of the grain / detail with a few of them, it's not especially noticeable (to me at least.) I'm mostly having a hard time figuring out what to do with so much red. Maybe some kind of orange-ish highlights / dry brushing? As an aside, the wings aren't currently permanently attached, I just stuck them in for the picture. I have room to maneuver there, still (and realize those are some pretty severe gaps, bah.) GaistHeidegger fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Nov 26, 2014 |
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Nov 26, 2014 18:39
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Alright, making progress I'm happier with on the huge red dragon; I decided to try and go with a pass at dry-brushing with a combo of the bronze flesh and more orange-ish suggestions, since I wasn't so sure how gray would work out--ended up doing something along the lines of dragon red + reaper's golden skin & pumpkin orange, since the pumpkin which came with the Halloween bag was a more 'muted' look. It ended up a vaguely orange/pink combo initially: Still, even like that it seemed to give it a hell of a lot more character than with how flat the base red + red washes had made things. Once the dry-brushing was situated, I went back through again with a dark red wash--and this time I tried to make a point of wicking it back up from highlighted areas while concentrating it a bit more in the shadows + laying it on a bit more thickly there. I think the effect it gave was a solid advance. I also did some light grey dry-brushing on the horns and claws for later tweaking, but even with it in a rough state I think it helped break it up. Finally, I painted its teeth, which I had overlooked somehow when doing my original base coat:  It's still glossy pending another coat of varnish and the like, but I wanted to take a shot while it was still shiny to try and show off some of the shadowing / highlighting efforts. I'm probably a bit late to try and do anything meaningful about the gaps between the wings and body (though they're still not permanently attached yet.)
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Nov 28, 2014 01:20
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Had a painting hiatus for a bit after finally finishing the big red dragon mini, then rounded on a greatsword-toting barbarian gal from Bones--Deenah. I can now in retrospect say that I have a new appreciation for the distinction of a detailed metal miniature versus Bones plastic--at least when it comes down to gleaning detail off of a comparatively 'skinny' model. In a nutshell, I got a bit frustrated with this one. Here's the unpainted Bones figure and what I presume to be a painted metal fig--since the model details appear a lot sharper.   I'm mostly going off of the scabbard detailing, distinct boot laces, more fully formed rocks for the base and slightly 'thicker' proportions when I'm figuring the one on the right is originally a metal / pewter fig. I think it having separate distinct fingers instead of a blobby flipper-hand and having much sharper edges are the main cues. In any event, after going about the last several figs with my old hat of tanned flesh + some highlighting + flesh wash, I wanted to try for a fairer complexion using highlight and shadow tones instead and I also wanted to attempt to do black hair with some highlighting as well. I filed and cut mold lines (though ended up missing a particular one that stands out pretty readily in the end) primed black and went about base-coating such as it was:    It hadn't really been my intention to follow color from the painted example, but I dug the red anyway and it fit the motif in general. I was fairly happy with how the mouth and teeth turned out--and it's gotten a lot more natural feeling applying layers progressively, etc; I think the initial bones plastic coupled with the primer ultimately softened / obscured some of the subtler details before I got started painting.   Using 'fair' skin was challenging and the difference seems so subtle to me that I have a hard time noticing the shifting between areas; that being said, I started with fair skin shadow for the base coat, fair skin for first highlighting and then fair skin highlight for final highlighting. Is it better to go with shadow and work your way up or start at the middle and then shadow / highlight from there? The main example with the skin is her left arm, since there was a pretty 'easy' transition between the underside / body-facing portion of her arm -> middle -> highlighting about the bicep and muscle... which is not especially photogenic under white light. D'oh. For the hair, after all the other base coating was done I touched up black on spots where the primer had been nicked by other painting, then tried using a dark / deep blue followed by a very slight bit of wolf grey; I did a small amount of black wash after that then another light pass of deep blue. It likely doesn't look like much, but this is the first time I've tried anything of the sort with a figure's hair that wasn't 'base coat and wash' Went about highlighting and shadowing in what spots I felt confident enough in what is my current approach, which essentially amounts to a dab of linen white + base color for highlighting and some 'layering' of a strong dark wash in shadowed areas of equipment and the like. I think the axe handle turned out pretty solid as a result. Some red wash about cloth coupled with some darker washes for shadowing in places and I elected not to do any washing on any skin sections this time around. For the stone, I based stone grey, applied a soft brown / mud wash, revisited with some stone grey, applied a darker wash, stone grey and so it went. Finally, did some silver edge highlighting on armor and the sword, axe, etc. and came back with another round of satin varnish to try to dial down and seal. Transferred to a 1" acrylic base and added some light basing material and snapped some shots before the glue was done turning transparent--but this is basically the end result in and out of white light:     I'm mostly happy with how it turned out, but I desperately want to up my game when it comes to detailing metal specifically. The greatsword highlighting and such in the Reaper example utterly boggles me and floors me; I'm also way jealous whenever I look at the edging and gradient in metal for most of the figs posted in this thread. I'm still pretty gun-shy on painting skin and highlighting / shadowing / washing in general--but the main thing I want to improve on next is getting away from all armor and weapons on my figures boiling down to 'basecoat dark metal, highlight light metal, wash, possibly touch up light metal.'
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Feb 13, 2015 18:42
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El Estrago Bonito posted:http://www.coolminiornot.com/articles/1649-metallics Sorry I missed these before, but thank you--these look frigging gorgeous. I need to nab a fistful of knights and go to town. One of my biggest hurdles with metallics right now is getting smooth applications down; thinning to layer non-metallic colors is easy enough now but I frequently seem to end up with streaking on metals.
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Feb 13, 2015 23:06
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So after getting amped up and having a good time painting and feeling like I'm getting pretty steady improvement with each figure, I've started rounding again on eyeballing the mad world of airbrushing and getting envious of the results--especially in regards to priming and blending--folks have with such. Of course, having Bones II hit the queue too and eyeballing hundreds of miniatures left to paint and the dozen or so I've managed thus far is certainly a factor too. I've gone over the amazing HKR airbrush posts more than a few times the last couple months periodically teetering on trying to tackle an airbrush setup but I think doubling the 'backlog' is enough of a push to go for it. That being said, the main hangups for me are 1) if I'm potentially hitting a situation where I am over-gearing-up compared to my painting level and being an idiot in doing so, 2) if I can round up a cart of what I properly need to have solid tools to dive into things and 3) if I can make it all work in my current painting workshop--which is a room I use as a general office + hobby space with manageable noise and without killing myself with ventilation. For 1, I've pretty much posted most of what I've painted recently in this thread and been trucking along attempting to improve on techniques and pick up better approaches; it's pretty indicative of where I'm at in painting currently. For 2, I've been hovering around with an amazon cart roughly to this effect: Airbrush Tank + Compressor I'm fairly certain I saw recommended a few times in the thread, which seems to be well-reviewed, at a workable price point and is purportedly 'fairly quiet' as far as db are concerned. Iwata-Medea Cleaning Station seems to be the universal go-to-must-have recommendation. More or less ditto their airbrush cleaner. A mask to try and mitigate the 'don't kill myself' portion, and one I've seen recommended around a number of places. Airbrush itself is largely where I'm tripped up, since at least as far as I can tell I'm more leaning toward .2 - .3 for the needle--as I don't have any large vehicle painting on my docket in any foreseeable capacity. I've got some large figures from Bones and the like as far as dragons and giants and those sorts of things, but I expect a .3 would handle them fine. I am largely torn on over/under-committing on the brush because I don't want to end up being the doof with an expensive kit beyond his means but I also don't want to be pitching trashy $40 airbrushes on the regular with lovely results either. Since Iwata and Badger seem to be fan favorites, I've been trawling those two and roughly eyeballing this Badger and this Iwata. I can swing a budget in the neighborhood of $300 for the full monty of the setup without it being too egregious but obviously saving some cash would not be unwelcome. When I start eyeballing spray booths and the like is where my eyes start to glaze over and the price starts hiking; fabricating a booth setup with a fan and the like are an alternative, but I am clueless as to how critical it'll be to couple a respirator mask and a spray booth or its equivalent in my setup. I generally tend to use the same space for painting and office / writing work and it's not uncommon to throw down paints / washes and leave them to dry while shifting to the other side of the room to work while I wait. It may be modestly inconvenient to arrange direct ventilation to a window if sheerly because it's on the opposite side of the room from my painting work space; another alternative would be of course to have a setup/tear-down process for the lot of it, but if possible I'd prefer to aim for something that doesn't require it. Any insights or suggestions (even if it's simply 'hey don't get an airbrush dummy') would be appreciated!
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Mar 3, 2015 17:23
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Post 9-11 User posted:Naramyth posted some photos that illustrate a point perfectly: it's not the complexity of your technique that matters but how well its executed. You could spend years feeling like your models are pieces of poo poo because they don't have thirty color blends, those look really great and all but what matters more is competent brushwork and consistency. This post coupled with the reccs for the starter setup are really, really appreciated; thank you muchly! I have doubtless been over-fussing over things along the way with getting back into painting, but I've been coming away from most figs feeling pretty happy with how they look on the table now so I should probably be satisfied with that; I'm just keen to improve on things that I've been seeing some folks doing with fantastic results around here, especially with metallics recently (seriously felt dumb that I have never fathomed the premise of non-metal metals before, etc.) but beyond that, even picking up some really basic things over how I'd painted years ago (such as, hey, painting highlights!) has made a big difference. I dig the notion of the compressor kit with a bundle of airbrushes and the price is definitely tough to beat; my only two concerns/questions there are feeling like I'm going to end up really wanting a compressor with a tank long-term and a decent number of the reviews on that compressor note that it can be noisy. I'm hoping to be noise-conscious with my setup (at least as much as a fellow can reasonably be when working with a drat air compressor) and that's another reason I was figuring on a tank being handy (beyond the benefits of consistency I've read folks noting.) Still, that kit looks super solid overall. My last lingering concern remains how I'm going to handle ventilation and safety with the lot of it, particularly if I'm trying to set the thing up for a relatively-permanent fixture in an office slash hobby room; I can work with open windows but Michigan is pretty brutal about winter most of the time. I'm just trying to gauge what the best approach will be between mask / ventilation / etc. Thanks again!
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Mar 3, 2015 20:44
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I ended up pulling the trigger on that airbrush starter setup you folks recommended, so I am anxious to get cracking with that. I'd seen in a couple videos of various youtube painters that they do their airbrushing in small office setups seemingly without spray booths (though I don't doubt they at least wear masks) but I'm still looking to get a feel for safety-sake--if you mask up while painting with an air brush is it generally A-OK a ways afterward then? I'm not planning on going hog wild with huge battalions or anything but I am cagey. In different news finally got around to ordering nuln oil and agrax earthshade to have on-hand for options and I was curious if anyone had a good bead on how some of the different paint line mainstay washes shake out between one another. The bulk of my painting supplies were started up with an army painter set and then later expanded a good deal with reaper paints and then I've got an ancient decade+ old big box of hexagonal citadel paints with the flip-tops (the taller thinner ones rather than the shorter broader ones.) From those, I've -still- got 'armor wash' and 'flesh wash' etc. but I've been primarily painting using army painter's Soft Tone / Strong Tone / Dark Tone washes when I've used them since I started painting again--I'm curious where things might match up.
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Mar 4, 2015 19:28
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