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JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Lincoln posted:

Somebody talk to me about thinning paint.

I learned pretty quickly that it's all about eliminating clumping and brush marks, but now I'm having a problem with coverage. Even after three coats, the color is still blotchy, as I can see through to the primer. I hear "thin to the consistency of milk," which sounds preposterous to me because I'm not thinning my paint near that much and I'm still having coverage issues (this is Liquitex acrylic paint, BTW).

Also, what's the difference between thinning with water and thinning with Future? Is one definitely better than the other? Will paint thinned with Future have a gloss finish? If so, is there a matte acrylic thinner out there?

I use Citadel paints, and generally thin with water, unless I'm thinning it WAY down, like for a very top layer or I want it super translucent, in which case I use matte medium (probably Liquitex, whatever they had at the art supply store) and a little water.

Milk is way to thin for most painting. I would say half and half or cream is closer to what I shoot for. Also, if you use a wet palette, the paint will stay at the right consistency for longer, and you have to thin it less, I find.

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JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Leperflesh posted:

Alright, I kept thinking I was going to catch up with this thread before posting, but I just can't do 400 posts and anyway I have a question that has probably been answered several times. I apologize for my rudeness.

Paint brush conditioner. My brushes are losing their points after just five or six painting sessions at most, and it's really annoying. I'm using generally pretty high-quality brushes, sable and similar, and I think what's happening is paint is getting stuck in the ferrule and causing the strands to splay out.

So: recommend me a paint brush conditioner. I looked on Amazon and found "Pink Soap" for pretty cheap, does that work well?

Try not to get paint in the ferrule to begin with. It has kept my Series 7s like new for years.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro
Just found out I will be borrowing/storing/painting a friends completely unpainted big space marine army, so now I am agonizing over what color scheme to use. I have narrowed it down to:

Not Purple (I have a purple CSM army, and part of the reason I am doing this is to take a break from painting purple power armor)
Not White (because gently caress painting white)
Not Black (because I find painting black boring)
Not Red (because I have a speed freeks ork army and I already paint a lot of red)
Not something that is a huge pain in the rear end to do for a hundred guys (so no quartered designs or hand painted camo or something)

Any of those could be secondary or highlight colors though.

That's about it. If I can come up with a color scheme that can share vehicles with a Purple/Green/Grey CSM army that's a bonus. I'm just having designer's block I guess.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro
Oh holy gently caress Salamanders do own, and I think he has a bunch of hammer termies so that's perfect. It would give me an excuse to A) Paint a bunch of badass black dudes, and B) Get and paint a Vulkan.

WhiteWolf123 posted:

Imperial Fists effing own. And they're not any of those banned colors.

Those are the yellow ones, right? Hmm, it's a possibility. Painting yellow used to be a huge gently caress you until Jesus descended and gave us Iyanden Darksun.


E: WTB Finecast Vulkan Hestan, come on GW.

JoshTheStampede fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Jul 25, 2011

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Hal Gill username posted:

Ok so here's a question: For anyone who has ordered stuff from miniwargaming.com, do they usually include a package of Mike & Ike's in with your stuff?

I ordered from them several times maybe a year or two ago, and there was always candy, though not always Mike & Ike's.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro
Does anyone here have any experience with using colored (ie, not black or white) spray paint to basecoat plastics? Cause unless I am missing something it seems like a pretty easy way to prime/basecoat something like your average Crayola chapter of marines (Blood Angels/Ultras/Fists/Salamanders/etc).

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Ashcans posted:

GW used to sell spray paint in the various common Marine shades, so it is certainly something that you can do (this is also basically what people airbrushing their stuff are up to, after all).

The only thing I would be wary about is trying to skip the primer with this. Many paints, even spray paints, are not really designed to adhere directly to clean surfaces, and may not sit as well without a primer coat. So if you decide to skip priming, definitely test it on something first. But if you are going to spray some primer and then spray a basecoat, knock yourself out.

Well, with plastics I usually just prime with matte black spray paint anyway, which is why I thought I might skip a step. Metals and resin need more dedicated primer, though, I know.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Lethemonster posted:

I bought some series 7 brushes today and just realised that they are nickel plated - which I'm allergic to. Anything anyone can think of that I can cover it up with without risking ruining the brush - bearing in mind its going to be dipper in paint, water, and spirits.

Also found a shop that sells Vallejo paints and grabbed a bunch. Super excited to use those soon. Spent half an hour stripping metal sisters with fairy power spray, spent an hour and a half cleaning the bath I did it in.

With a toothbrush.

Inhaling power spray. Fuuuuuunnnn evening.

It's just the ferrule that is nickel plated, right? If so, wrap the ferrule in electrical tape (or grip tape or whatever), leaving just a tiny bit exposed so you dont accidentally tape the bristles.

Electrical tape is mostly waterproof, but the worst case is you have to retape it every now and again. And you shoudln't be getting paint in the ferrule anyway so that is just another way to foster good painting habits. :colbert:

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Kasonic posted:

Dipping.

I can't paint worth a gently caress. When I played 40k, I played Orks, and they responded wonderfully to a sloppy two-coat paint job and a dip in walnut wood stain before a matte varnish. I'd get compliments all the time before I'd explain that I'm a horrible cheater.

Now that I play Khador in Warmachine, I'm wondering how well their models respond to it. It looks like Doom Reavers or Uhlans would respond really well, whereas Iron Fang Pikemen or jacks would just look sloppy on flat areas like their shoulders or shields. So what I'm asking is, has anyone dipped anything Privateer Press, especially Khador, and how did it turn out for you?

Edit: I plan to genuinely give painting a shot, but if I get x5 the detail for a quarter the effort on a few models, I'll do it.

Using the GW washes is roughly as easy as dipping and doesn't leave the models with that dripping wet look, so it may work better on some models that aren't really dip-friendly.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

NecronSchmecron posted:

To those who suffered or are suffering from painting burnout: How did you overcome it if you did? I'm not churning poo poo out like I used to and have only completed a couple models in the past few months. Should I just oath a bunch of stuff again? I feel like the oath thread may be part of the cause of my burnout. I've tried painting figs from other systems (infinity) and though the models are cool, I don't think it's helping with my motivation.

I've been painting a 5 man IG Company Command Squad this month, and though I feel that euphoria again somewhat, I feel painting too much more, a squad of 10 or 20 guys for example, might send me too far down the hole. This happened once long ago with my old Star Trek modeling hobby. I don't want it to happen to my tiny space men one. :)

The Oaths definitely contributed to my burnout. I had oathed something, was sort of bored painting it, but felt like I couldn't put it down and paint something else because, you know, oath. So instead I just kept finding other things to do, vaguely dreading painting, and I wound up not painting for almost a year.

IG is sort of rough for that, since most of your stuff will be same-y, but it helps for me to just find something drastically different to paint. I get bored painting my purple chaos marines, I paint a tank or an HQ guy or an ork thing or one of my friend's eldar, whatever, just make sure it's different.

quote:

edit: Oh, and clean your space and reorganize your models.

Seconding this, too. What got me back into the hobby at all was cleaning my basement, which involves cleaning my painting desk and gaming shelves/table, and yeah you raelly do start to think "wait, huh, this poo poo was fun, I should do this again.

Just try to avoid putting yourself on a timeline. If you say "I think this squad will be done in 4 days", then you start to view 4 days as your deadline and it really becomes work.

JoshTheStampede fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Jul 28, 2011

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro
Crossposting from the Warham thread:

So this is probably a longshot, but does anyone have some spare bits they would sell/trade/give me? I'm looking for the cloak from a fantasy Dark Elf Corsair, and a plastic nemesis force halberd.

Two guesses what I'm making.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Bavius posted:

What's funny is that I have both lying around and have zero interest in salamanders. I don't have a PM option, but if your bold enough to give me your email I might be able to send out both for sale.

Wow, sweet. Yeah, email is fine with me. joshthestampede at gmail.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Drumstick posted:

How does the Baal Red wash look? The images on GW make it look more pink then anything. Id like to give my Purifiers a red tint and assumed that would be the easiest way after seeing some of the GK painting guides using Asurmen Blue. But id like to avoid making them pink.

With one coat over white/silver it is more pink than red, sadly. You can try multiple coats. I use it to glaze my red armor on orks and it really deepens reds.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Dr. Phildo posted:

Oh, we get Simple Green here too? That's awesome. How is the smell compared to Detol? I cleaned some sisters a while back and they still smell like a hospital :(

Simple Green smells very piney, not medicinal or "cleaning product" at all.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Gravitas Shortfall posted:

Yeah, but I wanted to avoid large amounts of red. Could give him a red helmet stripe. I figure white is for veterans so it mostly works.


No, it's the same cool/neutral white as the helmet. Was thinking of putting a green border on it. If it were bone or khaki I feel like it would just get overwhelmed by the yellow (and would be the same as the parchment on the purity seals)


Honestly the paint job is a bit messy, I was mainly focused on nailing the yellow color. Got another 11 or so of these guys to convert and paint so hopefully the others will get a bit better.

I thought "vets get white helmets" was just an ultramarines thing.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Ashcans posted:

Squad and company markings are actually dictated by the Codex Astrates, which all Space Marine chapters are supposed to follow. Of course, only the Ultramarinse and their successors take it that seriously, and many chapters deviate on it a lot (especially for stuff like heraldry).

It might seem like only the Ultramarines do this stuff because they are used as the showpiece for generic marines, and the other showcased chapters (Space Wolves, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Black Templars) are much less strict about the Codex.

Right, I knew the vets getting colored helmets was a Codex Astartes tradition, but I thought it was "different colored helmet" or "helmet of your chapter's secondary color", not specifically white.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro
So last night, after being out of the hobby for a while, getting back in, and spending a few days cleaning my painting area, priming, modeling, doing inventory, etc, I finally put brush to mini for the first time in a year. :feelsgood:

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

crime fighting hog posted:

Holy poo poo I could have been using corkboard all this time to base stuff and I just used it today for the first time. GOD drat

Yeah cork is like God's gift to basing nerds.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Ashcans posted:



I do use liquitex brand gesso and accessories, though, like mediums.

Liquitex Matte Medium is like liquid heaven.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Prefect Six posted:

Is using a separate brush for washes necessary?

Not strictly, no. I use a different brush for washes because I don't want to mess up my Series 7s by slopping stuff around on them. Using crappy brushes for washes means I can pay less attention.

Also, to the other guy: The reason they look crappy now is because they aren't done. Minis always look terrible until some magical tipping point in the process when it all clicks. Usually that moment is "when you wash it with Badab Black".

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro
I really prefer the finish/surface that a good spray primer gives, but spraying is temperamental, reliant on weather conditions, can't be done indoors, can't be done for 1/3 of the year cause it's too cold, and sometimes you just get unlucky and it screws up anyway.

Gesso is time consuming, needs touchups afterwards, and gives a...I dunno, less smooth surface. Not gritty exactly, but it just feels different to paint on than spray, and not in a way I prefer. I use it when I can't spray and that's a lot better than not being able to prime at all in the winter or when it rains. But they can take my Krylon Ultra Flat Black when they pry it from my cold dead hands. Oh, also I like gesso for bases, since it really does a better job of sealing the sand/rocks/cork on there than spray does.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

smokmnky posted:

What's a good gold paint? I want to add it to the pauldron spikes as well as some other places on my Khador 'Jacks.

Basically I'm using this as my template for how I've been painting my destroyer and juggernaut

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_vYE7d6wcPu0/SqKW2xpoqZI/AAAAAAAAArw/0Fjis2sP8xM/s1600-h/wb92.jpg

I use GW Burnished Gold, washed with sepia. Doesn't go on great over black so you need to put a layer of a tan or light brown first.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

thespaceinvader posted:

Since we're discussing paint stripping, has anyone ever had any experience stripping the prepainted D&D minis line? It's going to be a priority as and when I start painting, because that's going to be what I'm using minis for - so I'd really like to know if I can safely strip them. I'm concerned that the normal plastic stripping solutions won't work, because the plastic is crappy bendy stuff, not hard like warhams.

Suggestions of supplies available in the UK, if possible, thanks in advance.

You dont necessarily need to strip them - You can probably just prime over them. The detail on D&D minis isn't so fine that a good spray primer would obscure them.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

thespaceinvader posted:

The detail is fine enough that thick goopy lovely paint jobs plus spray primer probably does though. I'll have to buy up some cheap ones I don't mind ruining and runs some tests at some point.

Yeah, the quality (of both the sculpts and the painting) on those minis really went up considerably over time. The first couple of sets were atrociously done, and would look terrible next to anything GW makes. The more recent stuff would stand up much better I think.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Drumstick posted:

Im sorry, I know this is asked pretty regularly, but what are some suggestions to highlight chaos black? Trying to decide on painting my purifiers black, or silver with a red hue.

I find painting with Charadon Granite (a really dark charcoal grey), highlighting with Codex Grey, and then washing Badab Black gives a pretty realistic black.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro
Knarloc washed with Badab looks a lot like that.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Ghost Hand posted:

Just wanted to show some WIP stuff I am doing for my Ultramarines Army. Was working on this guy today - still a ways to go but I like the way its developing. I snapped the pictures with my iPhone (yeah I know.)under a bright light. When he is complete I will get some pics in a photo booth with a real camera.









Comments, thoughts, and criticism are welcome. Just bear in mind it's still a WIP. Need to finish the handle of the Crozius and the bolter as well as some general cleanup.

What grey is that black highlighted with?

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro
Cannot recommend this enough: http://www.awesomepaintjob.com/index.cfm/resources.recipes

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro
I hear people badmouth Citadel brushes a lot, and with the older brushes that's warranted. But it seems they have switched to Kolinsky sable for their newer brush line. Are those still terrible? It seems like they should be decent, and the prices are on par with other sable brushes (S7, Raphael, whatever).

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Torabi posted:

I'll try my hand at thinning the paints and I might give highlighting a go too. Do I just dry brush it over the shoulder pads for example?
Or did you mean that other highlighting technique where you draw tiny, tiny, tiny lines of white all over the model. Since that seems significantly harder.

Highlighting isn't as hard as it looks. BAsically you just take a color a shade or two lighter than your base color, and apply it at the edges, wherever light would hit the model, if it were full size. Just look and think about where the light would fall and paint there.

Alternately, you can just drybrush that lighter color lightly over the model, and it will for the most part hit the same areas that you would be line highlighting. I tend to drybrush for basic troops since I can't be arsed to painstakingly highlight all 30 of my marines or whatever, but HQs and more important models I try to take more time on.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Torabi posted:

Does Warhammer and 40k use the same set of paints?
As in you might see the Ultramarine blue color on some Warhammer model and vice versa? My guess is that some paints are specific but others are not.

Citadel only makes one range of paints. They don't have, say, two different versions of the same blue, one for fantasy and one for 40K. Some of the paints have names taken from one or the other but that's all.

That said, you don't even have to use Citadel paints at all if you dont want to. Several other companies, like Reaper and Vallejo, make acrylic paints for miniatures as well, with similar ranges of colors and people can argue forever over which one is superior. Most of us use Citadel just because it's easy to find and buy and discuss colors when everyone knows the range. They aren't required or even necessarily the best.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

MasterSlowPoke posted:

Ultramarine is actually a color in of itself:



Been around for hundreds of years.

In the grand tradition of silly 40k naming backstories, the Ultramarines are not called such because they are blue marines, but rather because they come from Ultramar. That is a Marvel comics level of convenient naming.

Unrelated content! So I am making Salamanders, and I have a basing quandary. I want to do lava bases because lava is easy to paint, looks great, and fits Salamanders fluff. I ALSO really like red planet style bases, and think the red would look good with salamanders. I'm having some trouble deciding whether those two things would go together (red planet AND lava) or whether it would look dumb. Anyone have any input?

JoshTheStampede fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Aug 9, 2011

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro
I'm obsessed with those Les Bursley washes now. I just spent an hour in a haze mixing up the perfect wash to go over red planet style bases. I want to make washes for literally everything now.

Anyone have any experience with Scibor minis? Some of their stuff is clearly made to be 40k stand ins. Just looking through their SF range and it's like "Oh, hey, a Vulkan, a Marneus Calgar, some Space Wolves, a [insert Blood Angels angel character here]", etc. They look great on the site but greens/site pics always do.

JoshTheStampede fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Aug 10, 2011

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Ashcans posted:

Thanks for the input, guys! I'll have to think about which of these to go with (or maybe find time to try them both). I have a little bit of purple in the main force, so a purple/yellow might be a good choice. Eyeballing it, a red-blue could also be boss.

Fluffwise, Harlequins aren't affiliated with a particular army/Eldar world, they are roaming groups that turn up to help Eldar forces. So there isn't a particular reason they would be wearing the army uniform, rather than their own particular outfits/styles. Having said that, I am sure they could bring a change of pants to help fit in.

I have trouble looking at bright red and blue schemes and not thinking of Spiderman. Purple/Yellow I think is better.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

TheCosmicMuffet posted:

How old are you people? I started this poo poo ... 18 years ago? Something like that? And they had washes then. I'm pretty sure washes and inks existed from model railroading and the old historical miniatures days. Testors had washes 26 years ago when my dad got me a model of a Spitfire and we built it together, and I wanted the single-piece canopy and he wanted the old-timey iron-cross bar reinforced canopy.

I didn't use washes when I started because I didn't know that it was allowed and nobody made it clear that it's *the* way to get poo poo accomplished. WD is basically to blame because the Heavy metal guys were spergy psychopaths who preferred to blackline chainmail with a single-hair brush and highlight in 5-6 barely discernible layers (with a different unique layer of GW branded paint for each layer).

I'm blaming society.

The old washes required watering down, and were not super magic one-shot shading like the current citadel ones are. Now, basically that means that yes, you could easily have made Badab Black in 1991 or whatever, but it was an extra step that most people didn't know how to do. Now it's literally open pot, slosh on model, and the stuff looks a million times better than it used to.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Lethemonster posted:

Why don't you guys just buy normal artists inks and washes? There's hundreds of those. I keep meaning to pick up some Dayler-Rowney white to try checkers on my orks.

I do, now. But when you're just starting out, buying artist inks and mixing your own washes is not really realistic. The GW washes are amazing results with zero work. It's not that they made something possible that was formerly impossible, it's that they made something trivially easy that formerly took some amount of practice or knowledge to do.

The kid in the GW store looking at the paints doesn't know how to make his own black wash and have it be better and orders of magnitude cheaper than buying them, he doesn't have a tub of matte medium or flow aid at home, he can barely paint inside the lines yet. But he can slather on some Badab and have his first model look great for it, and that will go a long way towards getting him into the hobby than making his first model.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Flipswitch posted:

Gotta ask, coming up to finishing my first actual model, and is painting flesh always a pain?

If you mean normal human flesh, then I find faces pretty easy but larger areas are hard, simply because getting it to look realistically human is hard. Painting ork flesh or zombies or fleshy beasts is easier because it's all poo poo that doesn't exist, so it doesn't have to look right to look right. We all know what human skin looks like though, so it being a little off takes away from the model.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Kasonic posted:

Complete newbie who needs guidelines rather than specific directions.

I paint from the bottle(Reaper Master) and I get good coverage, then my paint looks thick and muddy.

I thin(5:1 paint:water) and my coverage is poo poo and shows black through 5 total coats of three shades of red that look sparse and barely applied. :psyduck: I'm still practicing my brushing but I'm being as even and consistent as possible.

Any good, simple tutorial videos on loading your brush and applying the right amount of paint?

Yeah, red is just balls over black, dude. You aren't doing anything wrong. Your options are thin and it takes forever, or go buy a pot of GW Mechrite Red. Covers in 1, maybe 2 coats over black, even thinned, and then you can put whatever red you want over that.

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Torabi posted:

So I want to try highlighting for my fourth space marine.
If I mix skull white with the ultramarine blue color and apply it to places like the shoulders. Won't it look immensely bad? This rough transition between the dark and bright. How do I make proper highlights?

Small transitions between colors is key. Also remember that it isn't going to look smoothly blended from close up unless your wet blending, which you definitely are not at this stage. Instead you're doing layers of successive shades, as many as you feel the insanity to do. It fools the eye into seeing highlights from a normal distance, like a Monet painting.

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JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro
Why do I have a sudden desire to paint something dark blue? Am I the painting version of pregnant?

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