monkeyboy30672

Thanks for all the compliments, everyone!! No, definitely not fishing for compliments, Mick... I just know that I am in the company of some truly exceptionally talented painters! Now that I'm on a train to New York City, I am really missing having brush in hand so I could finish up Pandora and get working on Candy! Wow, Pandora's hair is much more of a challenge to paint than I first realized...! Hopefully I can get her done next weekend, when I'm back home. I'll be keeping an eye on the Forums, though, for more images of incredibly well-painted models!!! Thanks again, everyone!

Very well done!! I can't wait to see it all covered in other scenery, too! Lucky you, to have a girlfriend to help you with it!! Mine would love to see me build stuff, and to paint, and would be fascinated by watching me work... but wouldn't actually be interested in helping. She's not a gamer. She just loves one.

Next! Finally finished a Sorrow! Sadly, it was the first model I started painting in my Neverborn crew... Just kept putting him aside for others, like Teddy, Baby Kade, and Pandora. I am almost finished with Pandora, just need to finish painting her base insert, then need to seal her. Will hopefully have a pic up tonight, since I will be gone for a week for business! Here he is... C & C are always welcome, please! Inspired by a lot of you here who are masters at OSL (SC, Mako, Ratty... I'm looking at you...), I tried a bit of it, myself, on this one. I had done a bit on Baby Kade, from the rift in the floor, and it came out okay. I really like the effect on the body and arms of the Sorrow. Not so much on the floor...

I read the Chronicles article about this. I was amazed!!!! Truly stunning work! I love the OSL!!!

Inspiringly beautiful work, Synth! Even the rust on the gate is fantastic...!

Wow! Truly wonderful work! If these paint jobs are your tabletop standard, I'd love to see your competition pieces...!

Touche', Mickmountain... Touche'...

Absolutely! THe camera never makes them look as good as if they were in person. And Pandora's eyes look phenomenal!!! I was working on my Pandora last night, and I swear, I've had to redo her eyes a hundred times... driving me mad!!!

Yeah, I can't imagine pre-painted models for Malifaux. It would, honestly, disappoint me greatly. The sculpts are so beautiful that they DESERVE to have the time and dedication of a hobby painter.

I think the painting techniques are LOVELY!!! But I think this style of photography is tainting the true colors you have put on the models. I'd like to see them lit with daylight bulbs or some combination of lights that is white balanced in the camera, so I can see what the color theme truly is throughout the crew. I wanna see these looking as best as they can, and judging by the technical side of the painting, these latest photos don't do them justice!

How did your first game go, FauxPas?

I've been painting models for over 33 years.. (one would think I was better at it by now! ). I started in the very early 80s with Ral Partha and Grenadier models. I just loved adding splotches of color to LEAD miniatures of dragons, giant spiders, and lizardmen. When I was in college, I met another guy who had tons of painted miniatures in his room, and I said, "Oh, you paint miniatures, too!" He said, "Have you heard of Warhammer?" Then he told me about a GAME I could play with all the models I had collected and painted over the years, and suddenly I was hooked. 20+ years from then, I'm still painting models, still playing a lot of miniatures games (moved on from Warhammer, obviously), and yet I still SUCK at playing the games. I got into this for the painting. I can't play with a crew/gang/army that I cannot paint. And I don't enjoy painting models that I don't like to look at. Malifaux has some of the most characterful and unique miniatures I have seen in over 30 years, and that's why I'm neck deep in painting them currently! I have only played two games of Malifaux so far. Yes, I lost them both...

My Baby Kade, in a 35ss game, almost took out Lady J in TWO TURNS. Some better flips, and I would have worn her head as a hat. His Ml of 7 and Df of 7 make him VERY nasty in melee on his own (he is an Enforcer, for the love of toast!), and I know there would be other nasty upgrades or synergies to make more of him than I did. I'm still getting used to playing the game, and I have all the tactical and strategic sense that God gave a common garden slug... So when I can suss out a good synergy of tricks for him, he'll definitely be my go-to-guy for melee in Pandora's crew, I think. At 35ss, I didn't have enough to bring my buddy Tedford. I wanted to bring more Sorrows, though I realized way too late that they are REALLY slow... Now I can't wait to start playing 50ss and having an 8-ft walking teddy bear with breathtaking anger management issues!!

When the card updates arrive, I am assuming they will be in the Downloads section? I haven't heard much about the Rulebook reprint, so I'm not sure if it will have extra stuff in it. Seems that it would be a waste, almost, as the first print run doesn't have them, and we'd need (or want) to all get new ones... A smaller supplement book might be nice, like "Twisted Fate" was.

I LOVE the soft, smooth, yet strong highlighting of your models! It's a very beautiful miniature painting style that I wish I had the talent to use myself. Fantastic color palette, as well!

It is a true pleasure to see your models that you've painted, Wings. Please do keep us informed of more!! You are very, very talented!

Thanks, Viruk! Still currently working on Pandora, a little at a time. Honestly, I'm a little intimidated to paint her eyes... not that I can't paint eyes, but just because they are much smaller than normal eyes on a heroic sculpt. I think even my thinned layers of flesh tone are starting to fill in the detail. Same with the red basecoat on her hair. The strand detail of her hair seems SOOOOO shallow... I'm afraid of gumming it all up. We'll see how it goes. Hopefully I'll have a photo up soon, if I'm lucky.

Very well done!! Incredibly impressive!!

VERY well painted, Mickmountain! I love the shading and the highlights, and the overall color theory you used here. One thing, though... and this is strictly from a photographic standpoint... Try photographing with a white or a light grey background... the strong red background is actually reflecting reddish light onto your models, so, even though they have a red majority color theme, it's washing them over with red. Light reflects off of EVERYTHING, except for true black, where it gets sucked in. That's just the property of light. And so when you use a background that is colored, some of that color gets projected onto the model, tinting the color that is truly there. Sometimes it's more subtle than others. But I think in this case, it might be obscuring some of the fantastic color detail you have in the models, which I think we'd all love to enjoy from your work!

I use a combo of a couple GW paints, a few Privateer Press P3 paints, and mostly Vallejo. Most of the Golden Demon winners I know use Vallejo paints, so whenever I ask about color theory form them, they usually give me those color names, so it just helps. As far as steps, I am a "dark-to-light" painter, so I don't usually use a lot of inks, really I use some, but mostly as glazes to tint an area with an overall specific color after the shading and highlighting are done. 1. Assemble 2. Prime 3. Basecoat with shadow color 4. First highlight with main color 5. Second highlight of a lighter color 6. Final highlight with an "over the top" color (I don't always make my final highlight as over-the-top as I should... still working on that) 7. Base (with Malifaux, I am using the Base Inserts, so I just repeat Steps 3-6 on the Base Insert) 8. Seal If I am doing layering, as I usually do, steps 4, 5, and 6, become more like steps 4.0-4.5, 5.0-5.5, etc, because I water each color down incredibly in order to get a very thin layer of pigment. With each successive layer of a single color, I add more pigment. Time consuming as all hell, and can be VERY frustrating... But when it works out well, it's really smooth and gorgeous. I try to do that with really important areas on a model. And, just for SBRunner... "Chelsea, Chelsea! Chelsea, Chelsea! We're gonna make this a blue day...!" A good friend of mine is from Chelsea.

Wow... McMourning looks like I do when I wake up in the morning... Painted very nicely, Lucky!

Awwww... he IS cute, isn't he?? Well... except for the whole carving knife bit... Thanks, Wings!

Thanks, Sybarite! I don't know if they are inspirational (I definitely have to defer to Mako and SpiralingCadaver for that honor, among the countless other incredibly talented artists here!!), but it is very kind of you to say so! SC, you have some stunning work, as well, so your compliments really come with some weight. Thank you! I am finding that the Wyrd Base Inserts are so characterful for all the models, and I am having just as much fun painting them as I am the rest of the model. For Teddy, one of the most fun bits was painting the building blocks on the base that I added from the Orphanage Accessories blister. They are just a little detail, but they add so much to the ambience of the model. I am looking forward to painting Candy (I have tried to solve the problem of affixing tiny plastic feet to a metal base by putting a metal building block just at her heels to stabilize her... we'll see how that goes), because of all her detail, and the fantastic base she has, though I think I really need to paint Pandora. Kinda important. She's a bit daunting, though... so much detail, very shallow in areas. I was looking at the primed model this morning, and I have no idea how I am going to paint her eyes...

Finished Baby Kade tonight! Again, using the iPhone camera, which has crap for depth of field, but it's just gone midnight, and I'm not dragging all my photo crap out to just shoot this guy... But he was LOADS of fun to paint! Lemme know what you think... It's not that I WANT to shoot him on a blue background... it's just the color of my ironing board...

I have to agree with the majority... I take FAR TOO LONG to paint an individual model. But I guess other factors come into play - like Webmonkey said, it depends on how much detail there is to do, how complex the miniature is, it size, how smooth I want the layering or blending, etc. For Teddy, I suppose I took about 5 three-hour stretches. I paint VERY slowly... For Baby Kade, though (just finished him tonight!), It was only 2 sessions... yesterday afternoon and evening, and this evening. All in all, about 6-7 hours, I think. I REALLY enjoyed painting him (like I did Teddy!), so it went a bit quicker. I always paint faster when I'm really into the model I'm working on. For Malifaux, it's a bit different, because EVERY model is like a champion or hero character. With squads or units, I paint several at a time, production line style. I suppose I could do that with my Sorrows, really... But it's more rewarding for Malifaux figures to paint each one separately. Each one has such character and integrity of its own, and each one deserves the undivided attention.