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2020 Monthly Painting Challenge - January


Caedrus

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On 12/31/2019 at 7:03 PM, Nikodemus said:

Its moustache can be a bit fragile but other than that, an enjoyable figure to paint. Very simple sculpting, which I prefer. Good rules for Plant Explosives as well. Are you going for the box art colour scheme or something a bit more personal?

It will likely be my own scheme, but it might be similar to the box art. To be honest, no idea as yet. One problem is that I often don't have a strong scheme idea (and rarely like copying the "standard" scheme, where such a scheme exists), or when I do have an idea I don't have the right colors in my paint collection (dried out or never bought)...

Meh, excuses :(

Still, it's assembled already, so that part is done. I should prime today while the weather is good.

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@Cats Laughing

Heh, I too like to avoid "official" colours. Sometimes all I know is "I want something here to be red" and everything else goes from there. It's why I often like to sketch colours straight onto a model. I'll get a better idea of what I like when I actually see some colours on the model. Helps me make up my mind before committing too much. And luckily there's enough local stores with well stocked paint racks that I'm not left wanting in that regard.

Best of luck with the serpent. And if it's any help, I did mine in purple. Fits it quite well I think.

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I might join but I am not sure I will go very far.
At the moment I have Basse, Youko, Marcus, Lady J and Som'er teeth core boxes assembled.
I could pledge to choose one (highly likely Basse or Youko) and paint 1 mini per month.

My issue is: I can make nice primer with zenithal, nice base coats, and then I botched everything cause my highlights and shadows are rubbish. :( And therefore I am nbot staisfied and I stop progressing that mini.

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Pledge is more of a minimum thing. I did 2019 on Minion level (1ss per month) despite painting at least Enforcer level ss values (6ss/month I believe). I merely shortchanged myself there. Perfectly fine to do it that way if it suits you. My admittedly modest pledge level drove me to paint more Wyrd than I otherwise would've, and even just paint more than I would've otherwise.

2 hours ago, Antinea said:

My issue is: I can make nice primer with zenithal, nice base coats, and then I botched everything cause my highlights and shadows are rubbish. :( And therefore I am nbot staisfied and I stop progressing that mini.

tldr: perfection is bad.

___

How new are you to painting? How many minis have you finished? Part of your post just sounds like you're never finishing stuff, which means you don't really gain any experience. I can't stress enough the importance of having a library of finished minis. It does so much to teach you and give you a better perspective on things.

If you can, maybe next time consider taking a photo and showing where it went bad. Usually things aren't rubbish. Usually things are wip (work in progress). "It's gonna look bad before it looks good" is a thing I've heard many accomplished painter say, and it's certainly something that often applies to my own work as well. Thing is, I've seen enough minis to the end that I know I'm just visiting in ugly town, so to speak:)

Without a photo I can't really offer more concrete tips. And while I'd love to grab a drink and discuss "philosophy" of painting, as I'm rather into being a carefree happy painter myself, it's not something that translates well to text. Certainly not at this hour of the night where I live:D

But please, if you hit a roadblock do reach out. This isn't just a "yay look what I did" thing.

 

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39 minutes ago, GlowingFruit said:

P.S. If someone has a good trick to apply yellow I'll be interested to know it ;)

If you just want to do something like an outcast base rim I'd go for a basecoat of yellow ochre (I use VGC Heavy Goldbrown, but alternatives exist). Ochres tend to be a lot more opaque than "pure" yellows but yellow ochres still look pretty yellow. Bit dull in colouration but that's perfect for a base rim.

It's also a decent base for building up more nuanced yellows on actual models.

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10 hours ago, GlowingFruit said:

P.S. If someone has a good trick to apply yellow I'll be interested to know it ;)

Yellow is one of the more difficult colours to paint, but what works is applying yellow over a white base. Paint the area with a well-covering white/beige, you can even apply highlights and shading. Then paint over with yellow. You'll get a nice vibrant yellow.

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12 minutes ago, PetitDalek said:

Yellow is one of the more difficult colours to paint, but what works is applying yellow over a white base. Paint the area with a well-covering white/beige, you can even apply highlights and shading. Then paint over with yellow. You'll get a nice vibrant yellow.

Yellow ink is my personal secret weapon for yellow. I get opacity I want from yellow ochre, I get easy highlights by mixing in white to it, and I turn it all a nice yellow by going over the whole thing with ink. Works with paint too I'd imagine, but inks vibrancy and natural transparency really helps in this regard.

I don't go for it very often but for really quick 'n dirty approach I'd look into GW's Casandora Yellow. It's sort of an orange-y wash. Putting it over beige (="bone") colour gets a decent tabletop yellow IMO. Not something I utilise often, but it's been helpful in the past.

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16 hours ago, Nikodemus said:

Pledge is more of a minimum thing. I did 2019 on Minion level (1ss per month) despite painting at least Enforcer level ss values (6ss/month I believe). I merely shortchanged myself there. Perfectly fine to do it that way if it suits you. My admittedly modest pledge level drove me to paint more Wyrd than I otherwise would've, and even just paint more than I would've otherwise.

tldr: perfection is bad.

___

How new are you to painting? How many minis have you finished? Part of your post just sounds like you're never finishing stuff, which means you don't really gain any experience. I can't stress enough the importance of having a library of finished minis. It does so much to teach you and give you a better perspective on things.

If you can, maybe next time consider taking a photo and showing where it went bad. Usually things aren't rubbish. Usually things are wip (work in progress). "It's gonna look bad before it looks good" is a thing I've heard many accomplished painter say, and it's certainly something that often applies to my own work as well. Thing is, I've seen enough minis to the end that I know I'm just visiting in ugly town, so to speak:)

Without a photo I can't really offer more concrete tips. And while I'd love to grab a drink and discuss "philosophy" of painting, as I'm rather into being a carefree happy painter myself, it's not something that translates well to text. Certainly not at this hour of the night where I live:D

But please, if you hit a roadblock do reach out. This isn't just a "yay look what I did" thing.

 

I'm both not a new painter and a new one. I started painting about 30 years ogo. Did about a dozen or so minis then had to stop because IRL went bad, very bad.
I restarted about 1 year ago and I have finished 4 minis.
I have also Taelor and Student of conflict being done at about 75%.

3Ronins.jpg

BigJake1.jpg

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@Antinea Those models look like your well on your way to becoming a good painter. Do you thin your paints? as the paint looks a little thick. My advice to you would be (as you already mentioned) working on your contrast. Bringing out the shadows and highlights. There's plenty of tutorials on youtube about those techniques. If your struggling to find out where the highlights should be, shine a directional light on the minis to see where the light and shadow naturally occur.

Also the eyes looks a bit skewed. Eyes are one of those things that can completely change the focal point on the model. I often don't even bother painting them if they're too small, instead i just drop a bit of wash in them and it looks fine. Hope this helps - keep up the good work :) 

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@Wintergloom I thin my paints. On these I probably thinned them too much (1:1 Vallejo Model color:Water) so it didn't cover well. Hence I put many layers and probably didn't waited enough for them to dry. So basically ended up with overworked paint.

 

For the eyes, i didn't even went there. They're way too small. I just put a blob of black ink then cleaned up with base skintone around. I'm already struggling painting eyes on a 75 mm bust. I can't think how painful it will be to do that on a 32 mm mini.

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Trick with thinning paint, and @Antinea might already know this, is to touch the brush (already loaded with paint) on a paper towel or something similar before painting the mini. This wicks off excess moisture/paint off the brush. That gives a way better control over the paint. It's not enough to have thinned paint, there needs to be little enough of it in the brush as well.

And yea overworking the paint is bad. No cure to that other than patience. Dastardly thing, that. Thankfully water thinned, thinly applied paint dries in seconds (Your Climate May Vary). I use a lot of Vallejo Model Colour but can't really help with ratios. I thin as much as I need to, and that varies. But it's on both sides of the 1:1.

As for eyes, I usually do them these days, but it's mostly just me wanting to be able to. I don't think they particularly add to the finished mini though. Too basic for fancy online photos, and well, they're eyes so not really relevant for gaming purposes. But as that 90's song went... "I can".

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Starting 2020 with bases for my crazy pyromaniac crew. It was my first time working with GreenStuffWorld textured rollers and I like them a lot. The results aren't as elaborate as store-bought resin bases, but you can make as many as you want in any size.

 

A good idea for tiny Malifaux legs is pressing the model's legs into the Green stuff while it's still soft, making the contact point for gluing bigger. I did this for Kaeris and it worked very well. Her base is the one in top left corner.

All that said, 0 SS so far lol

 

IMG_20200106_124901.jpg

 

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3 hours ago, PetitDalek said:

A good idea for tiny Malifaux legs is pressing the model's legs into the Green stuff while it's still soft, making the contact point for gluing bigger. I did this for Kaeris and it worked very well. Her base is the one in top left corner.

 

Also good for preventing floating foot syndrome.

Great looking bases by the way. 

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