precinctomega

D'aaaw! Panda! And now, suddenly, I'm inspired to do a Teddy based on Knut...

Well, in that case, let me throw http://precinctomega.co.uk We're the UK's fastest growing miniature painting service, offering reasonable rates to suit every budget, and quality from basic tabletop to competition standard. I'll be kicking around at Salute tomorrow, too, although I'll not have a stand there (next year!). R.

This is the sort of colour I had in mind: http://willows95988.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/09/08/oldporchchair_2.jpg However, I realize that this is a rattan chair. I've seen other chairs with a similar colour to yours, but they are all sanded smooth and varnished to enhance the natural colour of the wood. Abuela's chair is clearly rough-cut (see the depth of the visible grain). A sandy yellow would, though, work nicely. Something like Citadel Tausept Ochre followed by a light overbrushing of Dheneb Stone or Bleached Bone? As for Abuela herself, I think her hat is awesome. Main crit, if anything, is that the colour of her smock and the colour of her skin are too close and her features are lost. I'd say a wash on her face of Ogryn Flesh or - for a much darker finish - Devlan Mud would give her a more weather-beaten, darker flesh, and if you lightened up the upper half of her smock with the original basecoat and perhaps mixed with some white for the raised areas, the two would stand more distinctly apart. Not sure about the bandoleers. I know leather does come in that shade, but again I think it's a bit too light...? Perhaps a Devlan Mud wash is all it needs just to darken the recesses and act as a dividing line between the bandoleers and the smock. Personally, I'd've chosen a darker brown for the leather (even the same colour you've used on the chair), but that depends on what effect you're after, I suppose. R.

I'm painting some Britnan Dragoons. I'll try to remember to post some comparison pics with Wyrd minis so you can see what they look like. They probably would be too large, though. Incidentally: love the hats on the Day Dreams! The one with the topper is brilliant. Not having seen the minis before, I would've believed the hat was part of the mini, it looks so natural. R.

A toothpick to paint stripes? I find it strange enough that people use them for eyes. With stripes, you have to have a smooth flow of paint from the instrument to the surface, which you just couldn't get with a toothpick or cocktail stick. Anyway, I've made some good progress on Sybelle, so I must update the thread today. I don't know why I got it into my head that he was "Shamus" rather than "Seamus", but I think I'll keep calling him Shamus even though it's wrong. This is my Shamus and he's different from your Seamus. None of this doppelganger nonsense. R.

The chair is really well made and positioned cleverly on the base so that the whole thing doesn't look overbalanced. But I'd recommend going back over the wood with some overbrushing. Real old wood like that just isn't brown. It's grey and white and orange and black and even a bit green, but it just ain't brown. An overbrush of lightening shades of grey and perhaps some stippling would make it look a bit more like it had actually spent a few decades sitting on some Bayou porch. R.

Will you be going for a much darker finish on the rest of Perdita's clothes and belts to off-set the pale skin and trousers? I like Astaroth. Is that an Andrea miniature? R.

Umm... a paintbrush? I think it was my Daler-Rowney Series 34 watercolour brush. I think it's a size 0. Possibly a 00. I got it second-hand and the haft is a bit knackered but the bristles are just perfect. And I abuse my brushes something rotten. R.

Sanding the minis won't make any difference. Sometimes (very occasionally) washing them will make a difference to getting glue to adhere, but will have little or no effect on painting them. You do sometimes get minis with a grainy finish to their surface but these are miscasts with a bad batch of metal and should be returned to the manufacturers and replaced. Using separate paintbrushes to mix and to apply paint can be helpful, but shouldn't be over-emphasized as a technique compared to just getting the consistency of the paint right. You might like to look into making yourself a wet palette, tutorials for which can be found all over the place (Google "homemade wet palette"). R.

Getting a smooth finish from your paints is a matter of dilution and patience. When you make up your basecoats, always thin the paint on a palette until you can see that it's nice and smooth with no lumps or clumps. Then wash your brush and, with a clean brush, take paint from the palette and apply it to the miniature. You may need to apply two or three coats to get a good, solid basecoat, but as long as you make sure that the paint you're putting on is smooth before you apply it, you should end up with a good smooth base from which to work. The other option for smooth basecoats (which still involves dilution, of course) is to apply your basecoats with an airbrush or spraygun (I recommend the former). With practice, you can even apply initial highlights and washes with an airbrush, too. R.

Some modular walkways would be really cool, especially if you also built walkway hubs where three or more walkways could intersect in the middle of a water section. Very nice work. R.

I'm new to Malifaux, having picked it up partly on a whim and partly just because I love new games and can be fairly sure of finding opponents locally. But I hate playing with unpainted minis, so I'll be getting my first crew - Shamus and the Rotten Belles - painted up tout suite. I decided to go all out on Shamus with a view to entering him in the Salute 2011 painting competition. I wanted him to look as sharp as his reputation but without any over-bright colours. The model is already very cartoony with that enormous hat and the funky zoot suit, so I chose a subdued colour scheme to drag him a little way back into the realms of conceivability. The purple on the hat and kneepads give him a bit of flair and tie him in with his Rotten Belles, who will also be dressed in themes of purple and grey. Other views of Shamus: Right - Rear - Left Here's a wip shot of the Rotten Belles: Very early days, as you can see. I've actually nearly finished Sybelle, but forgot to take a picture of her. I'll get around to that in due course. The Rotten Belles (and Sybelle) have their flesh painted with Citadel Dheneb Stone and washed with Thraka Green to give a starting point of a nice, unhealthy, slightly rotten tone. That's then worked up through more Dhened Stone to a Dheneb Stone/Space Wolf Grey mix with pure SWG at the highest points. R.