Twelve months of painting with Caedrus!

[Caedrus]

Caedrus, reporting in!

So, a few months ago, I tried a black-lined style. Honestly, it didn't work, so this month, I'm pulling out all the stops. I'm going to try the blacklining again, and pushing for as much contrast as I can. This is where I'm up to!

Also, I've been working on my plans for upcoming months:

June's Beastman will be painted, using ONLY an airbrush.

July's Beastman will be painted, using ONLY oil paints.

August? Monochrome.

September? I'll be hopefully doing a Beastman, as well as a guest 40K marine to try out the super-saturated, coloured-NMM effects of the Infinity style.

October? November? December? Not sure! Any requests?

See you soon with an update!

Caedrus.

[lusciousmccabe]

The contrast being so high makes his muscles look like their polished metal. Kind of reminds me of some of Ron Spencer's paintings, very 80s. 😀

[Nikodemus]

Excellent 😎

 

[Caedrus]

Halfway through May, and I have finished my May Beastman!

He turned out better than I originally planned. I've gone for some super-saturated, blacklined effects. It's utterly not the style I'd used on such a miniature as this, but I like him anyway!

Just as an aside, I've been working on my copper tones for NMM, using Black > Vallejo Flat Brown > GW Ratskin Flesh > Reaper New Copper > White. Any critiques, or other recpires are very welcome. My gradients are getting slowly better. My main problem is impatience!

Have a great one!

Caedrus.

[Caedrus]

Good Lord, it's June!

So, this month is just getting out of control for me. Crazily busy doesn't even begin to describe it. So, I have been forced to put my airbrush-only beastman on the to-do list, and instead, I decided to not use paint, at all!

After a primer coat (which I am not counting as paint), I planned to use inks, clears (I ended up not using these), and washes only. Here's where I ended up!

I think the hero of this piece was Winsor and Newton white ink. It's quite easy to use, and allows for a glazed highlight really easily!

What do you think?

Caedrus.

 

 

[Caedrus]

Greetings, All!

Well, this month has been crazy (again), so once again, the airbrush idea has taken a back seat.

Instead, I thought I'd try out the flavour-of-the-month, new-hotness, which is the GW Contrast Paints. 

I started out with this:

...and I gave myself thirty minutes, using the GW "Splash it on" method. I used no other paints (except primer on the edge of the base), and only used a single coat. Here's what happened:

So, my thoughts on the model are that it's certainly more than acceptable tabletop quality. Obviously, you can't readily do metallics with one coat of contrast paint. However, I could slap this miniature down on a gaming table, and be far from ashamed.

What do I think of the paints?

PRO

• Very friendly to a newer painter. Possibly the friendliest beginner paint I could imagine.
• It can teach painters the value of contrast, for future skills.
• The colours are quite vibrant (obviously over a very light basecoat).
• Pretty decent pigment saturation, considering everything.

CONS

• Even recognising that they are a 'two-for-one' paint, they're expensive.
• They require a fairly decent amount of brush control, lest you splash some in the wrong place (see the right side of the Mohawk, above).
• Their density, across the range, is wildly inconsistent.
• I found that water wasn't a good mixer for them. They really wanted Lahmian or the Contrast Medium to get a decent consistency when diluting.
• You really need texture to get the best out of them. Flat, smooth surfaces are not the place for these paints.
• You get a rotator cuff injury from the amount of shaking these paints need before use.

MY CONCLUSION?

I really try to avoid the idea that "advanced painters never do (X)", or "product (Y) is a crutch". There are paints, tools, and media for every effect, and every painting style. They are a tool, to achieve a result. They do what they say remarkably well. That being said, it's a tool that I don't think I'll use very often. If I need twenty skeletons by tomorrow, they'll be the first thing I grab. If I am painting to have fun painting, they'll stay in the rack.

So, now that I have painted my July Beastman, my next step on this mini is to see how far I can push the Contrast Paints. I'm going to see just how much I can improve this same miniature. I'll try some NMM, some second coats, and maybe (maybe) some inks.

I'll check back in again soon!

As always, I'd love to hear your experiences and thoughts!

Caedrus.

[Caedrus]

Hello All!

Well, a quick update to let you all know that not only did I complete the Beastman from July, I've already finished August's!

This is the July effort. This guy was swiftly painted, with the blade being the most time-intensive. This miniature was painted entirely with GW contrast paints, with the majority being one coat. The pale blue is very weak pigment, and I think the white has to be the most-needing-to-be-shaken paint I've ever used. Ever.

I stand by my earlier comments. They do what it says on the box, and they'll be a tool, for when I need to paint something fast.

Onto August!

[Caedrus]

So, jumping immediately into August, I've completed my August pledge in record time!

I decided to try my hand at a highly-contrasting OSL style, inspired by one of our own painters, the prolific @SpiralngCadavr; A Google search of spiraling cadaver will take you to his blog.

It's an interesting style. It's not quite as intuitive as it might look. I think a  lot of the efficacy comes from the background and base. Now, in truth, the image above has had a black background inexpertly photoshopped onto it. It looks like this on a white background:

I enjoyed trying out this style. It's not something I would do frequently, but I learned a lot, and it could make for an incredibly atmospheric effect.

So, what's up for September? Anyone have any suggestions?

Enjoy your painting, and keep putting pigment to plastic!

Caedrus.

[Butch]

Black and white with strong dedication to values and textures?

[Caedrus]

Caedrus, reporting in!

As requested by @Butch, the month of September has had a Beastman painted in Black and White (with a coloured base so you can be certain of saturation levels).

The majority of this was zenithal airbrush work. Some areas of fabric were stippled, and some paintbrush gradient work on the halberd.

A quick job, but enjoyable!

See you next month for a new challenge. Perhaps it's time to bust out the oil paints?

Caedrus.

[Caedrus]

Hello All!

So, with two months (and two beastmen) left in my odyssey of painting, here's my October beastman.

I have started my next-to-last model already, but for October, I decided to have a bit of fun. This is a painting style I call "Ebony and Ivory".

For this miniature, I have chosen one base colour for each section, but I have only used two other colours for highlighting and shading: Vallejo 'Black Grey' ('Ebony'), and Vallejo 'Ivory' ('Ivory', obviously!). The idea here is that the the ebony will darken and desaturate the colours, whereas the Ivory will provide a unifying highlight colour, representing a singular source of light.

Does it work? Hmm. Maybe. It looks, to me, like a call-shaded Borderlands character. If you like the look, give it a try.

For me, I like a little more variation in hue, so I think I'll classify this one as "Maybe, for a special project".

Have a great November, and get ready for another beastman, soon!

Caedrus.

[Nikodemus]

How's the November beastie boy coming along?

Loving the look for October. I quite often use a very limited set of highlight colours, but doing the same for shadows is quite a bit rarer. I should probably give it a go.

[Caedrus]

Caedrus, reporting in!

Well folks, I've learned quite a bit this month, painting the November Beastman.

My technique for this month was to see how well a Beastman could be painted with only using an airbrush.

Now, the Beastman is not a miniature that lends itself well to airbrushing. Airbrushing is simply one of the weapons in a miniature painter's arsenal. You choose the right weapon for the application, and this month I attempted to use a flamethrower for sniping. Here's what happened!

It's not great.

Oh, and my masking work was done poorly, as evidenced by the awful, awful work on the blade. If you combine poor masking, too thick a paint mix, and impatience, this is what you get. It needs more highlighting, more tangential spraying, or maybe just fire.

There are worse miniatures out there, but this is easily the worst beastman I've painted, and that's OK! Always nice to learn a lesson.

Next month, I'll be trying oil paints, and perhaps even a bonus miniature or two!

See you in December!

Caedrus.

[Graf]

On 11/4/2019 at 1:59 AM, Caedrus said:

the Ivory will provide a unifying highlight colour, representing a singular source of light.

Gradually I use bone/ivory colour more and more often to highlight any colour instead of pre-mixed lighter tones. The latter usually only, when I have to paint larger areas and/or the same colour on multiple models. To get real: light colours are nothing else than a base pigment combined with white pigments anyway, so not much difference anyway. This way I can control the tone myself though. One has to be a bit careful when mixing it with cold colours, as ivory is a slightly warm tone, but as long as I assume the sun as the light source, a tint of warm tone in the highlights fits anyway.

 

6 hours ago, Caedrus said:

Oh, and my masking work was done poorly, as evidenced by the awful, awful work on the blade. If you combine poor masking, too thick a paint mix, and impatience, this is what you get. It needs more highlighting, more tangential spraying, or maybe just fire.

There are worse miniatures out there, but this is easily the worst beastman I've painted, and that's OK! Always nice to learn a lesson.

Yeah, when I looked at the pictures, my first thought was the question if you used masking at all. On second look it still became clear you did, as the hair and horns are well separated. I looked forward to this month, now I'm a bit sad the model doesn't show what can be done with an average airbrush paint job. The lesson to execute the technique properly and take all necessary steps and the required working time, is still a VERY important one though! I full agree even "failures" are successful learning experiences, sometimes even more so.

I would love to see you trying this again with a bonus model. Still doesn't have to be perfect, but it would be great to see an improved version. I don't know about your equipment, and airbrushing is one of those techniques where good equipment helps a lot, but to give you personal tips in the hope to motivate you to try again:

- use black primer, if you use zenital priming less grey/white areas gives you more room for mistakes later on

- make sure that the black is still visible at the end, don't spray even your first colour all over the model and instead use at least a 45 degree angle already

- prepare templates for the highlights, just take a bit of cardboard or plasticard, punch/cut holes of different sizes and use them to limit the area you spray on, that helps me often when I apply highlights, especially on muscles and similar sections

 

This thread is awesome, should be in a pinned link collection imho. That you for experimenting and sharing your result with the community! You do great work here.

[Caedrus]

Caedrus, checking in for December!

So, in December, I had these grand plans for doing an oil-paint based Beastman. I got things started, and then promptly lost my paints in the December Christmas rush.

So, I have extended the Beastman Challenge by a couple of months. In January, you can expect the oil paint Beastman, but in the meantime, here's a Beastman painted with an emphasis on glazing and high-highlighting.

Of course, this miniature doesn't show much of the subtler glazing well (such as blue glazing in less-lit areas, and some of the blade colour glazes.

It also represents a time commitment that is far beyond what would normally be put into a standard warrior in a large force.

Nonetheless, he was fun to paint, and glazing practice never hurts (I'm super-impatient in glazing!)

Have a great 2020, and I'll wrap up this challenge in the next couple of months!

Caedrus.

[Nikodemus]

12 minutes ago, Caedrus said:

Nonetheless, he was fun to paint, and glazing practice never hurts (I'm super-impatient in glazing!)

Doesn't that sound familiar 

I'd say the time investment certainly shows. Lovely looking goatboy. And that ginger👌

[lusciousmccabe]

This whole threads a real show excellent painting skills and dedication. Keep it up Caedrus!