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Monthly painting challenge - January


Franchute

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Gaming's been switched to tomorrow night now, so here's my January entries, and the first of many Malifaux miniatures I'll be painting over the coming months/years :D

Nurse Heartsbane @ 8SS, Withcling Handler @ 7SS and Witchling Stalker @ 5SS for a total of 20SS in my first month (and I've got a free evening so I might even cram some more in tonight! :)).

Very much just going for tabletop ready at the moment, so a bit rough around the edges (it still took me about 8 hours on the Handler and 4-5 hours apiece on the other two!). I didn't realise just how poor my brush skills were until I started to paint again this month, so I'll work on that before I try to move onto more advanced techniques. I didn't expect the jump in scale from painting 28mm to 32mm to make much of a difference, either, but it definitely has, I'm noticing a lot more imperfections than I have done previously (and certainly more than I ever have on my 10mm stuff! :P ). Any C&C is more than welcome at this point - I've got a long way to go before I'm painting to the standards that I want to be, but I'm proud of these efforts nonetheless :)

edit : forgot to mention as well, I'm basing with Stirland Mud for the sake of it being easy and was intentionally a little messy with it as I made the mistake of using super glue accelerator on plastic when I was gluing some of the models onto their bases, so was covering up the mess that caused - lesson learnt there!

 

32.JPG

1.JPG

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11 hours ago, Franchute said:

I'll take pictures tonight and the horribly mess with the light and focus, or do you think it's easy taking crappy pictures? It takes more effort than actually painting! :D

Jokes aside, I have my models ready, tonight I'll upload the pictures! Thanks for the heads up!

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@Treehouse That golem is really striking. I dig it.

@Franchute Nothing wrong with that "cheap" OSL. The severity of the effect matches the perceived brightness/heat of the flames. If you'd made the effect more dramatic I don't think it'd look as realistic.

@Caedrus Glad to see the finalized vomit worm. :-) Those day-glo colors are surprisingly effective! They don't look gimmicky or garish to me at all. The only critique I have is for the OSL. I like that you've gone bold and bright - it's a good experiment and I think it mostly works. I'd like to see brighter highlights on the flame itself so it looks hotter. That'd give you more room to play with brightness/contrast on the reflected light areas. Also the reflection on the middle tail segment (front of the third picture) should be more diffuse - a bit less bright in the center and more spread out with the darker tint. It doesn't quite hang together with the reflected light on the stones.

Your Lynch model is super fun! I like the duality of color and the attention to detail: card face, peeling wallpaper, necktie, buttons, all very clean. I totally feel your pain with the varnish frosting. I had that happen to me on a competition model once, just a couple of days before the comp. 10 hours of work down the tubes and no time to repaint. Had to scrap the entire mini-diorama. FWIW you've done an excellent recovery job. I wouldn't have been able to tell if you hadn't said anything.

@Stonewall78 Very tidy paint job. Nice work.

@tjgreenway I don't see any poor brush skills here! Your paint is smooth and the colors are painted neatly. I like your color choices. As a next step (before you get into highlighting and shading), I suggest building on the clean brushwork you're already practicing. Try some darklining - painting very thin lines of dark paint between areas of the model where colors meet each other. Examples: between hand and coat on the nurse, between jacket and vest on the handler, between glove and arm on the handler. This technique helps to make the model "pop" from a distance and adds polish when viewed up close. Darklining's also very helpful as a brush control exercise for painting fine detail and correcting small errors. Make sure you've got a decently sized brush (no smaller than a 0, I'd say) that holds a sharp point. My go-to paint for this is Reaper Master Series brown liner (part #09064) because it's not as stark as pure black and I like the flow.

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15 hours ago, Caedrus said:

That bronze really unites these units really nicely. What colour is that?

I thank you for asking.

Base color was Formula P3 Molten Bronze.

Soulstone Miners:
1. basecoted with Formula P3 Molten Bronze over black primer
2. Washed with GW Nihilakh Oxide (very diluite water solution + F P3 Mixing Medium);
3. Metal spotlights recovered with P3 Molten Bronze;
4. F P3 Armour Wash.

Metal Gamins:
1. basecoted with Formula P3 Molten Bronze over black primer;
2. Washed with GW Agrax Earthshade;
3. Some Metal spotlights recovered with P3 Molten Bronze.

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here are my finished pledges for the month - the Midnight Stalker and a Kentauroi for a total of 16SS

The Midnight Stalker. I went for a very stylized look with this one - more of a grayscale with some peek-a-boo pops of color. The idea being he is out at night, so colors are washed out - more rods than cones.
small.5a7145967b1ae_midnightstalker.jpg.

Kentauroi. This is for a Horror Molly build, so I wanted him to be bloody and gross. I was going for a skinless look on the human half, a la Frank from Hellraiser after he re-materialized from the pool of blood on the floor. I used lots and lots of Blood for the Blood God for this one.
small.5a7145997ec4a_kentauroiB.jpg.79726

Expect more Horrors to come for February!

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I've been highly relieved since first learning of the term "tabletop quality" by Miranda (Wargamer Girl) on YouTube. ;) I'm going to shout it at my miniatures, like Homer Simpson shouting "Sanctuary!" while running into Rev Lovejoy's church.

Sorry, I still can't post images. I use a Chromebook... I don't have MS Paint to use to resize the JPGs. Maybe next month I'll borrow my gf's laptop to post the pics. 

Frontsies: https://ibb.co/go1ctm

Backsies: https://ibb.co/faemm6

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22 hours ago, misterfinn said:

 

@tjgreenway I don't see any poor brush skills here! Your paint is smooth and the colors are painted neatly. I like your color choices. As a next step (before you get into highlighting and shading), I suggest building on the clean brushwork you're already practicing. Try some darklining - painting very thin lines of dark paint between areas of the model where colors meet each other. Examples: between hand and coat on the nurse, between jacket and vest on the handler, between glove and arm on the handler. This technique helps to make the model "pop" from a distance and adds polish when viewed up close. Darklining's also very helpful as a brush control exercise for painting fine detail and correcting small errors. Make sure you've got a decently sized brush (no smaller than a 0, I'd say) that holds a sharp point. My go-to paint for this is Reaper Master Series brown liner (part #09064) because it's not as stark as pure black and I like the flow.

Thank you, I really appreciate the feedback. I am really happy with the smoothness - I mostly use the Warcolours range of paints and I've found that their longer drying time really helps me with managing the smooth finish, I'm able to pretty much push the paint around until I've got it where I want it. Seriously can't say enough good things about these paints at the moment! 

Where I really struggle control-wise is on the smaller details,  which it's much harder to see on these pics - I'll have to start a bit of a blog with some close up's soon and some pics in better lighting so I can get some C&C on that side of it too. Although I feel that that's mostly going to be down to practice and getting used to using my tools more than anything,  so hopefully February's entries will see a bit of an improvement again :)

I'll definitely try some darklining too on my next lot of mini's, the plan is to crack on with both sides of the starter set this month :D If I'm to use paints already in my collection for the darklining, would a higher ratio of water be advised or would it be better stick with the same ratio and just use the tiniest bit of paint on the brush tip? And muchos gracias again for your kind words! :)

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